The Scourge of Womanhood

It was a windy, overcast day shortly after the beginning of my fifth grade year.  I was at my friend Britt’s house after school, and we were climbing trees near the creek that ran through her back yard.  I was wearing a cotton button-down shirt with some hideous design on it in bold colors (it was 1985), tucked into white cotton shorts.  I was hanging from a branch when I became aware that my chest felt as though someone had scraped it with sandpaper.  I peeked down my shirt and didn’t see anything unusual.  I didn’t remember scraping myself on the tree on the way up.  I pulled the fabric away from my body to alleviate the stinging, and then, distracted by Britt’s dog, forgot about it.

A few weeks later, my mom picked me up from school and announced, with no preamble, that we were going to the local department store to get me a bra.  I sat in the capacious backseat of our Chevy station wagon in stunned silence.  A BRA?  For me?  The lanky tomboy?  I didn’t see the point, really.  Hardly anybody in my grade wore a bra, except for a few of the fat girls, who had been shopping in the juniors’ department since third grade.  I wasn’t fat, and I didn’t think I had “developed,” as my mom liked to say about such things, enough to warrant additional support of any kind. 

In the store parking lot, I scoped out the cars to see if anyone I knew might be there to witness my public humiliation.  We entered the store in the girls’ department, and without even bothering to browse around first, my mom walked right up to the nearest saleslady and asked in a voice one might use to rouse slumbering Marines, “WHERE ARE THE BRAS?” 

The saleslady, Ramona, smiled and said, “Ladies’ lingerie is upstairs.” 

“No, FOR HER,” my mom answered, pointing at me as I ducked behind a rack of Esprit clothes.

“Oh!  Well.  Here they are.”  Yes, there they were – two feet away from us, as if we couldn’t have just quietly found them ourselves without alerting the entire town to the purpose of our errand.

I stared at the display.  Yellow and blue boxes announced their contents as “My First Bra” and “My First Bra – In Lace!”  Shuddering, I pointed to the blue box. 

“IS THAT THE ONE YOU WANT?  WHAT SIZE DO YOU THINK SHE IS?” my mom asked Ramona.

As the two of them opened up packages and compared sizes, I tried to look very interested in a Generra outfit in case anyone were to walk by – nope, that’s my mom, just shopping for herself, I would explain. 

“You’re going to have to try this on,” Ramona called to me.  After a deep sigh, I rushed toward the dressing room.  I shrugged off my shirt and struggled into the new contraption, never once looking in the mirror.  Ok, fine; it was fine.  I would never wear it, but fine.  I crammed it back into the box and jammed my shirt over my head.  We bought two My First Bras – In Lace!, which I stuffed into the back of my underwear drawer as soon as we got home.

A few weeks later, Allison and I were on the bus on the way to school.  She leaned her head forward onto the seat in front of us and motioned for me to come closer.  I hunched in, ready for a new secret to be divulged. 

“Ok, you cannot tell ANYONE this,” she whispered.  I nodded.  “My mom took me to Mansour’s the other day, and guess what I got?”  She paused for dramatic effect.  “A BRA!” 

My eyes widened.  “Oh my gosh.  ME TOO!”

“It’s called ‘My First Bra.’  Isn’t that retarded?” she rolled her eyes extravagantly.

“Mine is ‘My First Bra – in Lace!’  How GROSS is that?”

“Does yours have ‘Gro-Cups’?” 

“Totally!  This thing is so ugly!”

“I know,” she said.  “I’ve been taking mine off every day after math and carrying it around in my bag.  I HATE it.”

We laughed loudly, and then remembered our secrecy, and huddled against the seat again.  I sagged with relief, now that my secret was out, and I wasn’t alone. 

A year later, though, things took a turn for the worse. 

My mom had gone away to a conference for the weekend.  On Saturday morning, I got up and went to pee.  As I sat there, I looked down at my underwear and saw blood.  Oh no.  OH.  NO.  NO.  This can’t be.  Is this…IT?  But.  But I’m eleven!  This isn’t supposed to happen until I’m 13.  At least!  I immediately felt sick.  My mom had given me “Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret?” to read and we’d gone to this “Growing Up” seminar at the hospital, but that was all for LATER.  Not NOW.  I wanted to throw up. 

Fortunately, at the seminar we had gotten bags with samples of feminine products in them.  I took out the box of two pads from under the sink and put one in place.  Then I got dressed – I put on my loudest Jams, which I figured were the least likely to show any stains if anything went awry – and went down to the kitchen, where my dad was making pancakes.  I tried to act natural, but my mouth was dried up and I was trying my best not to cry.  There was no way I was going to tell him what was happening – mostly to save him from the terrible awkwardness.  I didn’t really relish telling my mom, either.  I just didn’t want it to be real.  Maybe it would go away on its own.  Please God, I thought.  Please let this go away and come back when I’m, like, 18 or something. 

The next day, my mom came home.  I didn’t know how to tell her.  I was  embarrassed to even utter the word “period”, and I knew that she would feel terrible that she hadn’t been there; so I wanted to save both of us a big emotional scene.  I decided to write her a note.  It said, “Dear Mom, I started my period yesterday.  Can you please get me some things?  Love, Me.”  When she took me to ballet that afternoon, I slid out of the car as I threw the note into the front seat, then slammed the door and raced toward the studio without looking back. 

When I got home later, my mom came up to my room with a grocery bag.  She sat down on my bed and hugged me.  “Well that was a surprise, wasn’t it?” she said into my hair as I snuffled into her shirt.  We talked a little and she showed me the things she’d bought.  And then I mostly never spoke of it again. 

At school, nobody I knew had started yet, and I certainly didn’t want to be the first to announce my successful journey into womanhood.  I was already the nerdy, too-tall, too-smart freak, now with a freaky period.  I carried pads around like they were packets of cocaine, burying them deep in the lining of my backpack and only handling them when I had made certain that the bathroom was completely empty.  I wouldn’t admit to anyone that I had my period, not even Allison.  To do so would have, I don’t know, shown some kind of weakness, some inability to overcome the trappings of the female body and all of its messes. 

Until that point, we had all been equal, girls and boys; we played the same sports in school and we did equally well in our classes, including math and science classes (if anything, the girls were way smarter).  This was just the first step, it seemed, in a pulling away.  A separation between us.  Suddenly, the girls were wearing eye shadow and earrings and not running around on the playground so much.  They were reading Sweet Valley High books and thinking a lot about boys and school dances.  But I was still the same tomboy who loved Laura Ingalls Wilder and wanted to be an astronaut and a ballet dancer.  I didn’t want any of this new stuff.  I didn’t want to be the one to have to change myself to be more attractive to boys, to play dumb or smile coyly or wear perfume.

After a couple of years of monthly torture, sneaking around and hiding things as best I could, I got the reprieve I’d asked for.  I had thrown myself even more into ballet, and with all the extra classes and activity, my period stopped.  When I went to college at 18, it eventually came back.  At least by then, I was ready for it and I didn’t have to sneak around so much (although I always canvassed the area before entering the tampon aisle at the drugstore). 

Now, I’m not traumatized when nature takes its course every month, but I still think the whole thing is a total racket – if men had periods, you can bet your ass they’d have come up with a way by now to make them only happen once every five years, or to make ovulation occur on demand only at the moment one wants to get pregnant.  Not to mention that tampons would not be $10 a box, employers would be required to make emergency chocolate available to all employees at all times, and the study of PMS and cramps would receive billions in federal funding.  However far we’ve come, it’s still not quite far enough, is it?

Comments

[chirky]

This entry made me laugh. I remember when I first got my period: I was in 8th grade, volunteering at the local library's Children's Hour. My mom came to pick me up, and I told her that I had started my period and bought a pad from the machine in the bathroom that sold them for a quarter.

The look on my mom's face, after I told her, was almost EMBARRASSING. She was so proud! She was beaming! I wanted to sink into my seat because REALLY, MOM, YOU DON'T HAVE TO LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT.

[thisgirlremembers]

Oh, god. The first period!

I was away at SUMMER CAMP, and some girl came up to me and said she thought I'd sat down in some paint. I still want to die when I think about that.

That was several years after my own first-bra trauma, when my mother also took me shopping and bought me a "training bra" and made me wear it to school. She neglected to teach me the subtle lessons of bra-wearing - that first day I wore a thin yellow t-shirt, and it was only after some severe humiliation that I realized that everyone could SEE I was wearing it, oh god! I took it off in the bathroom after that class and refused to wear one for at least another year. I also don't think I've bought a yellow shirt since.

Incidentally, I found your blog through your comment today on Dooce, and had flashbacks of my own Georgia summer camp days, also being told to check for scorpions in my shoes! Please say you didn't go to Camp Toccoa, because that would just be too weird.

[lawyerish]

Hi, Thisgirl -

Holy crap! In the summer of 1986, I was registered to go to Camp Toccoa; but about a week before camp, I fell off a trampoline and injured my foot, so the doctor told me I couldn't dance - ergo, no reason to go to camp. A couple of girls from my ballet school went that year, and then the following summer we all started going away to big smmer dance programs. Isn't that nutty? When did you go? No one I've ever met has even heard of Camp Toccoa. My Girl Scout camp, incidentally, was Camp Pine Valley. It was down in central GA, near some tiny-ass town - I want to say Greenville? Or something like that? It was a pretty horrid camp; but every year I would cry like a baby on the last night, when we would send pieces of pine bark out into the lake with candles on them as we sang "Barges" and "Pass It On."

Jes -

I think my mom wanted to be beamingly proud and everything, but (1) I was such a freak about everything that she couldn't really talk to me about it, and (2) she was equally traumatized by how it all happened - how young I was, that she was away, and my pitiful little note. It wasn't quite the sisterhood-affirming event one would like it to be.

[Pioneer Woman]

Were we separated at birth? I still cringe at the memory of my mom buying me my "All Stretch--Her First Bra". My mom announced it to my dad that evening, and I hid. I MADE them refer to it as "the item"---the word "bra" could not be uttered ever again.

I'm cringing as I type this.

[lawyerish]

Pioneer Woman,

Your name confirms that we were, indeed, separated at birth (also, I read and commented on your post re: bruised toenails - um...me too!!) -- have you read on here about how I used to DRESS UP as Laura Ingalls Wilder? Voluntarily? I also went to a day camp in Iowa (while staying with my grandparents) at a place called Living History Farms. We got to live like pioneers every day. God, it was geeky. But I LOVED it.

Anyway.

I had a friend in high school who refused to utter the word "tampons"; so whenever she needed feminine hygiene products, she would tell her mom she needed "stuff." Apparently, one time her mom had some sort of lapse and she was like, "stuff? what stuff?" My friend kept repeating it with little significant eyebrow movements and what have you, and nothing. Clueless. Finally, she yelled, "MOM, I'M HEMORRHAGGING! STUFF!!!!!!"

Ahhh. Womanhood.

[thisgirlremembers]

Ok, two months later I've finally wandered back over and remembered that I wanted to respond again to this post! :)

I went to Camp Toccoa for six years straight, from 1985 until the summer right after I had moved from Georgia to Ohio when I was 13 (1990) - I convinced my parents that I just HAD to go and that no other camp experience would do. That was the year I had my first period, as mentioned above. Coincidence that it was my last time there??

I always went to horse camp, but do remember that there was dance camp there, too, and toward the end of each week there was a show that each group put on for all the campers. And we had a "Council Fire" on the last night (complete with a beautiful song that we sang only on that occasion) and sang "Barges" and "Pine Trees" and lots of other songs that are still dear to my heart. Ah, camp!

Thanks for bringing it all back. :) Who knows - if you hadn't been injured we might have been at camp together in 86!

[lawyerish]

Thisgirl - That is too funny. Camp Toccoa. That stupid trampoline!

Baaaarges, have you treasures in your hold/do you fight with pirates brave and bold...