Growing Up and Liking It – a Menstrual Memoir - Notes to Self

posted 09/21/2006
I am from a time when menstrual information was cloaked in secrecy. Our elementary school nurse was the Keeper of the Mysteries, and she must have sworn a binding oath to the Goddess of Feminine Hygiene as a young priestess, for she was loathe to part with the Sacred Pamphlet.

In fourth and fifth grade the girls were sent to the cafeteria for menstrual initiation. (I don’t know why this rite wasn’t repeated in sixth grade…perhaps you’re just not vestal enough any more.) The school nurse had in her possession both a sort of a junior menstrual start-up kit by a hygiene company called Modess, and a pamphlet titled "Growing Up and Liking It".

The Modess kit cost money and your parents had to send you with a couple of dollars to purchase it. Parents in those days wouldn’t give over a DIME for anything, let alone two bucks...not even if it came in a light blue box covered with daisies. Knowing my parents bent toward frugality, I imagine they thought I could figure out something with moss and some contact paper. (Modess is long out of business, but I ran across their vintage products on eBay...just in case your feminine napkin collection is missing a few items or you are very nostalgic.) While we could only dream of acquiring the kit, the pamphlet was free and within our reach. Well, almost within our reach.

Ever since Valerie Billings left the hygiene talk and immediately showed her pamphlet to the nearest boy she could find, the pamphlet had been withheld. I don’t know what the nurse thought a boy was going to do with the information once he heard it– go out and menstruate himself?

You could only get a copy of "Growing Up and Liking It" if you sent a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the publisher. Since anything mail-ordered in the 60s was delivered at a glacial pace, chances are you were well into college by the time it arrived (my cardboard submarine from Bazooka Joe still hasn’t gotten to me). However, once in possession, you tended to kind of treasure the thing. I still have my pamphlet. I really do.

Fortunately, while we sat and longed silently for both kit and pamphlet, Nurse had the hand-to-God FILM of "Growing Up and Liking It". There were a few medical charts showing the ovum making its trek down the Fallopian tube and some discourse on the shedding of the uterine lining. They never answered the really big question anyway ("yeah, but how does a baby get IN there?"), and it was clear that if you would ever ask, some unspeakable horror would follow. The larger part of "Growing Up" concerned itself with Libby, a young lady well on her way to ideal womanhood.

Libby was actually from the 50s according to her bike, her long wide skirt and her saddle shoes. Whatever year she began menstruating, it was certainly between WWII and the Korean conflict. Libby had never pulled her bell bottoms out of her bike chain or hidden turquoise eye shadow in her fringed purse. Libby did not know of the Beatles and she most certainly hadn’t heard of tampons. Yet, besides the Nurse, Libby was pretty much all I had, and I counted on her for even a little guidance.

Standing on the threshold of female maturity, Libby taught us the importance of keeping your hair so clean that it squeaked (I don’t know how that works exactly…maybe you squeeze it really hard). Libby showed us how to be dainty while coping with the challenges of her changing body. Luckily, Libby had the kind of mother who could offer her helpful tips such as "drink lots of water" and "limit strenuous exercise" on those "special days". Mild activities like "picnicking" (a verb) were acceptable. Swimming, of course, could kill you.

Libby’s mother was understanding, sensitive and pretty. She gave you confidence that this holy mess that was about to be forced upon you was tolerable, if not actually desirable.

My own mother was of a different sort. When I made my announcement, "Hey, I got my period..." she threw up her hands and exclaimed, "Did you have to start this NOW?" I think she was accusing me of plotting the onset of menstruation to coincide with a time that would maximally inconvenience her. Like, say, during her holiday baking or while waxing the linoleum.

When my friend, Amy, started menstruating, her mother waited until the cover of darkness to sneak a box of Kotex into her room. Then she demonstrated to Amy how to hide the individual pads around her room where no one could find them (including Amy, I imagine). She tucked pads into shoes, unused purses, behind the dresser.

Following that, she showed Amy how to tear up the tell-tale box into tiny pieces and then divide the tiny pieces into individual piles. Then, over the course of days or weeks, the itsy-bitsy shards of the box were sprinkled in different wastebaskets and trash cans through out the house and yard. By following this procedure, no one else in the house need ever be alerted to the presence of a Kotex box (let alone the pads themselves) in their midst.

Nowadays, of course, Libby has not only grown up, she passed through menopause years ago (although, we don’t know if she liked it). I doubt there are many feminine hygiene assemblies held in American schools any more. Television advertising has totally embraced the campaign that menstruating is FANTASTIC and FUN! Recent commercials show women menstruating AND salsa dancing in a white dress...menstruating AND cliff diving in a white swimsuit.

Where Libby was cautioned to remain torpid and fragile when menstruating, my daughter will be encouraged by hygiene companies to participate in extreme sports. "I used to be afraid to swim with sharks while I was on my period, but with new SharkTex, I feel completely confident when I get near a Big White."

But I still flip through my pamphlet when I run across it and think about all the menstruating I’ve done since then. And, sometimes, when I visit Amy, I go into her bathroom and tear her Kotex box into tiny bits just to make her laugh.

If this article makes you long to take a stroll down Menstrual Memory Lane, then make a visit to the Museum of Menstruation.

Note-to-Self 2: After my last column, I received an email from a reader who was concerned that I was making fun of a person’s name: i.e. Buster Earl Snellgrove. While I can only approximate the peculiarity of names in Texas, please rest assured that NO Snellgroves were harmed in the writing of that article. I wrote, "Names LIKE Buster Earl Snellgrove..." Mr. Snellgrove, to the best of my knowledge, does not exist.

Note-to-Self 3: In the previous column, I made a reference to "Ozzies" as the residents of Australia. Hip Australians call their country Oz -or did, when I was there in the 80s and I played on that. Conventionally, Australians also refer to themselves as "Aussies.")

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Ingrid is currently living and respectably employed in Austin, Texas with a firm specializing in environmental law. She hopes to get back home to the San Juan Islands next spring to stay.
While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

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