September 14, 2009 • 30 mins
Menstruation is a fact of life for women, but there is still a reticence to discuss the topic, even in modern society. Join Molly and Cristen as they have a frank, humorous discussion of an "unmentionable" topic in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stop mom never told
you From housetop works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen is
(00:20):
true or false? We have best listeners in the world.
True course, it's true because you guys are so well spoken,
you are very thoughtful, and you write to us. We're
just loving what you guys have to say. And what's
kind of neat about our listeners is they have these
conversations with each other and they don't even realize it
because they're sending it all to us and we get
to see both sides of it. So UM. The most
(00:43):
recent conversation that's just been fascinating for kristimmy UM is
something that we're calling gross skate. Now a little background
on this. Uh we did a Shark episode about whether, um,
you would get attacked by shark if you were having
your period, and the word gross was used in reference
to menstruation, which prompted many listeners to write in and say,
(01:05):
you know what, this is not gross. You shouldn't be
using There were gross in relation to menstruations natural. We
need to talk about it, so on and so right,
we need to address it in a more mature and
honest way because it is a you know, natural function
of a woman's body exactly, and so um Kristen made
a correction as such on another episode, which prompted more
listeners to write and say, what say, um, you know this,
(01:27):
this is really gross, Like, don't pretend it's not gross,
Like taking a poo is natural. But I'm not going
to sit here and say that's not gross. And uh.
And one email that comes to my molly is from
a male listener who pointed out that you know, he
does he thought that, yeah, periods are gross, but he
also thinks that semens gross and evidently, you know, it's
(01:48):
uh the release of it as part of his you know,
daily routine. So he was like, I mean, I'm not
He was like, I'm not trying to discriminate against periods.
It's just just a gross bodily fluid. Yeah, and we
have periods once a month, whereas that sounded a little
more daily. Yeah, So why is it so taboo to
talk about a period because you never see it mentioned?
(02:10):
You never, I mean, it's not part of popular culture discussions,
and even in comedy Molly, um, a lot of bodily
fluids like poop and p and even semen show up
fairly regularly, and especially in like things like jet Avatale films.
But you you may brought the point that, um, you
found a blog post recently that said that the movie
(02:30):
super Bad was like the first real kind of graphic
menstruation joke that was made. In case you guys haven't
seen it, there's a scene where a girl is wearing
white pants and she's grinding on a guy, and you know,
she gets her period, and you can put the rest together.
And that was really the first time, I mean in
two thousand eight when it came out, that's the first
(02:51):
time that we're really having you know, kind of it's
really entering comedy. And even in nineteen seventy three, the
first sitcom to have a period related plot line came
around with an episode of All in the Family where
Suzanne Summer's character gets her period, and uh, that episode
(03:12):
got more viewer mail than any other in the history
of All in the Family because viewers were so disgusted
that they would even mention periods on national television mentioned
the unmentionable. Yeah, in the seventies and all in the
family like, that's not like that couldn't be the only
hate mail they were getting about it. So anyway, and
(03:32):
if it is in popular culture, it's used as this
insults like you know, a woman is moody, she you
know exactly. Um. And that's also carried over into real life.
You think about allegations lobbied at women who are running
for higher office, like oh, you know, I hope the
bomb doesn't go off when she's having her period. How
(03:54):
will she deal with it? No? Yeah, so why so
we have, Yeah, the this whole like idea of menstruation
being gross or it's used as some kind of an
insult against women. There's just this whole taboo around it.
And we didn't come up with this idea of you know,
the menstrual taboo. It's actually um an accepted term. Right,
So we're gonna talk about the menstrual taboo. And Kristen
(04:17):
I the question when I was researching this, is menstruation
the last taboo? Yeah, I'm gonna argue yes, Yeah, I
would say from our research, I would agree with that
as far as something that is found in so many
different cultures and still lingers today, right. I mean, this
is something that you know, women go through, and yet
we still can't talk about it. I can't think of
(04:37):
a mail equivalent of that. Yeah, I mean even you know,
erectile dysfunction is on during primetime. So let's go back,
let's go Let's go to anthropology first. So there's this
book called Blood Magic Um The Anthropology of Menstruation by
Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb if I'm pronouncing that last
name correct and uh. And they're talking about there looking
(04:57):
for menstruation taboos and different cultures, and they find that
from all the studies from all these different tribes, the
menstruation taboos are nearly universal than in some form or another,
every society has some kind of menstruation taboo about you know,
either you know, sending the women away to a special
hut while they're on um their period, or um thinking
(05:22):
that assuming that women have some kind of special um
power that they have during their period, that some kind
of purification process. Right, And when it comes to actual women,
like Kristen said, it can either be something kind of
good for the woman, like she's having this kind of
mystical experience, she's in sort of a holy place, she's transforming,
(05:42):
or it can be just that the woman is kind
of a demon, which is sort of the modern stereotype.
If you want to say, like, you know, a woman
can't be president because she's on our period, it's either
the sign of weakness starts the sign of empowerment. But
regardless of how they feel about the women, UM, the
actual blood itself is always associated with evil forces. The
actual product is considered you know, a waste product, something
(06:04):
something gross for lack of a better word, and uh
and then carrying forward to today, a lot of those uh,
those taboos have created this set of cultural givens if
you will, about UM periods. There was UM. One source
that we found said that there are more than a
hundred and twenty English terms and phrases that we used
to discuss periods, all those period euphemisms like aunt, flow, etcetera.
(06:28):
And most of them either focus on just the cyclical
nature of of periods or um sexual and availability, discomfort
and inconvenience. So overwhelmingly these UM, these cultural cultural ideas
of menstruation UM usually carry negative connotations. Right, you never say, oh,
joy a period. Well, I'm all you could say, you
(06:49):
could use the phrase I've got my flower. Um, you
want me to throw out some of some of these
on eight. Yes, this is gonna be fun for everyone. Okay,
we've got old, faithful, cyclical nature. We got safe again. Okay,
so that pregnancy exactly, this one that you and I
had never heard before, the old cotton bicycle. Yes, I
did not realize I was ever riding a cotton bicycle. Yeah.
(07:11):
Then there's the tides in Eve's curse, which is UM.
I think that one needs to be banished from our terminology,
UM indisposed UM riding a white horse, which you might
want to qualify if you say that you're riding the
white horse, because people might, you know, send you off
to rehab instead of by a pack of tampons. UM.
And then they're the monthlies and the red flag is up.
(07:33):
And then some of the ones we were talking about
from our own childhood. I believe that you were told
that you had a visitor come. Yeah, when my when
my older sister, I know, if this is tum I
for our audience, But when my oldest sister UM found
out that, uh, you know, monarchy had descended upon me. Um,
she uh. She came up to me and said, Kristen,
I heard, I heard he had a visitor last night.
(07:54):
And I was so confused. And then she and I
asked her what the what she was talking about, and
she said, you know, aunt flow, And I was just befuddled.
Maybe it was because I was you know, homes a
little times, just didn't didn't really get it. But then
she explained it to me, and at first I was horrified,
But then you know, I felt like I was also
being initiated you know into uh into the conger women,
(08:17):
you know, the conger claim my mom and my two
lital sisters, and now i'd i'd finally become a woman too.
But because we don't really have great terms to stick
on it, it's kind of like this wordless initiation. Even
when you think about advertisements about getting your period, you know, um,
it's usually like a blue liquid that they're pouring onto
paths to show how absorbent they are, or the bouncing
(08:38):
red dot scene, or like the latest ones where Mother
Nature comes to visit this girl and she's just like
a woman dressed up as a fairy. Yeah, like if
you're a young girl trying to figure out what's going
on with your body? How is that going to help you?
You have to like, you know, swim through all these
figure out all these euphemisms, you know, to actually get
to the point of like, oh, they're talking about talking
about periods, so much like let's go, let's try back
(09:00):
in time and figure out where this menstrual taboo started. Um,
because it's got a pretty ex sense of history, it
really does. And I think that once you learn about
the history, you kind of understand why no one ever
talked about it, because people just had no clue what
was going on. But to some extent, that's because women
didn't really have that many periods back in the old
(09:20):
hunter gatherer days. Yeah, and hunter gatherer days, um, not
only were women, you know, were women's lifespans much shorter
than they were now, and women were getting their periods
much later than girls do today, more in their UM
in their teens than in say, like eleven twelve years old.
But um, according to an article by Tracy Clark Floory
called the End of Menstruation and Hunter Gatherer Days, women
(09:41):
had um only about a hundred and sixty periods in
their lifetime because a lot of the times they were
either pregnant or breastfeeding, right, And that's something we did
talk about briefly, and um, do you need to have
a period every month? Where we talked about how just
women are having more periods. But then because these hunter
gather women are spending so much time pregnant, the fact
that you are having a period immediately becomes kind of worthless.
(10:03):
This is from a book called is Menstruation Obsolete? And
they were talking about since ancient civilization, if women are
are having the babies, if that's their primary role in society,
then um, you know, having a period, it's kind of
almost like a loss. Yeah. And the women who were
having periods obviously were the ones who were unmarried and
not bearing children, so they were the prostitutes basically. Very
(10:23):
early on, there was I kind of this link with
the loose woman and a period. Yeah, and um, and
so it's it starts to carry this, uh, this negative
connotation far back in time. For instance, Uh, the Persians
allowed women four days in isolation to have their periods,
and if they weren't finished with it by then, they
were given a hundred lashes and then sent back into
(10:45):
seclusion for five more days because They thought that it
was some kind of you know, purification process they were
getting rid of, you know, evil spirits, and that if
it wasn't done by then, that they needed to have
it lashed out of them. Hurry up your hurry up
your purification girls. Now and looking at the history of menstruation,
we have sort of one bright shining light, and that's Hippocrates,
a man before his time who did see menstruation as
(11:07):
positive because it was a cleansing process, although he did
think that what was coming out we're bad humors, Yeah,
because they don't really understand that. Like back then, they
understood that it was some kind of cyclical thing that
happened to most women, and they knew that it had
something to do with pregnancy because it was only until
after a girl had um her first period that they
would you know, she would be considered um marriageable. But
(11:30):
they didn't really understand why this was happening because it
doesn't seem it wouldn't seem natural for you know, for
blood be coming out of a girl's china every twenty
eight days. Um. So then we come up to Pliny
and who wrote the who wrote natural History, which was
civilization's first encyclopedia, and he can't stand periods. Um get this, Molly.
He he blames periods for blighted crops, killed bees, wine
(11:55):
turned vinegar, dimmed mirrors, blunted razors, et cetera. Basically, a
woman on her period is going to ruin your life,
so you should stay away. And it really wasn't until
the fourteen hundreds that natural history, the information in natural
history was questioned in full. So here's another um genius
in action. Then she thought that menstrual blood turned into
(12:17):
breast milk. I kinda like that, you know, if I
didn't know what was going on, I think that's a
nice assumption. He thought that the the um, like a
woman's reproductive system in her breast, were somehow connected. So basically,
after you stop having the periods to have your baby,
at some point it goes up. Yeah, I don't know
about that. Yeah, you know, it's a fun, fun fact
(12:40):
though it was a fun fact, But it also goes
to show for such you know, genius of his time,
he's still you know, the idea of a woman's body
was still very very unknown and very mystical. Yeah, it
wasn't until they started dissecting bodies you know, kind of
around that time that they actually see like, oh, women
have this totally different reproductive anatomy m H and uh.
(13:01):
And then not until the eighteenth century, with the invention
of the microscope, do you start to have a better
understanding of the process of menstruation, of why, you know,
what's actually going on with the uterine lining and the
shedding and all of that. And nineteen o five, nineteen
o five, that's just why a hundred and five years ago, basically, okay,
(13:22):
scientists didn't understand until then that there were changes in
the uterus that were um responding to hormones. We like
to joke about hormones. No one knew about the mutil
five and molly. Not only that, but they weren't even
calling them hormones at the time. They just referred to
them as some kind of secretions from the ovaries. And
it wasn't until nineteen twenty nine that we have progesterone,
(13:43):
one of the most important hormones a gets our periods
kicked off, discovered co Tex events is first maxipad and
nineteen thirty six Tampacs invents the first tampon with an
applicator in a string. Now I will say, we get
tons of requests for the history of the tampon, and
we will definitely do this at some point, but we're
gonna stick on our cultural track and come back to
(14:07):
how women have contained their periods at a different time. So, really,
when it comes down to it, only in the past
hundred years or so have we even figured out what's
going on with periods, you know, but we still have
this lingering cultural taboo that's lasted for millennia. Yeah, and
I guess that makes a lot more sense when you
realize that they had no idea what's going on. Fear
(14:27):
of the unknown. You're not gonna immediately celebrate something that
just freaks you out right. And going back to that
idea that you said, it's it's linked to, you know,
the unmarried women who aren't having children, who are still
having their periods, that it becomes, you know, establishes this
idea of of you know, a negative process. But we
should point out that not every culture finds it negative.
(14:49):
While every culture has kind of a taboo, and some
of them are positive or negative related to the woman.
What was interesting to me is Kristen found um the
origin of the word taboo, which is Polynesian, which means
both holy and forbidden. So therefore the opposite of it
would be profane or common. Yeah, we think of a
taboo is something that's, um, that's bad, and the opposite,
(15:11):
you know, an antonym of taboo would be you know,
something positive. But it actually has more of a mystical
route because going back to those um, those early tribes, Um,
like we said it, it seemed like the women were
sent away to huts and in some situations weren't allowed
to see the sun or have contact with other people because, um,
(15:32):
they thought that when period came, they were um, you know,
in contact with some kind of you know, just mystical power,
and they wouldn't want to um infiltrate that by having
contact with people who were just you know, just commoners. Yeah,
and especially keep the men away from them so that
they're not influenced by this. Yeah. There's also this idea, yeah,
(15:52):
that that a a menstruating woman can also take away
the power some kind of power from men as well,
which is kind of interesting. But um, you know, sometimes
I think we put our I put my modern glasses
on at least and say, you know, if they're secluding
a woman in a hut. That may sound like they're
doing something that benefits the one, but it's really not.
I mean, I I don't think you should isolate a
(16:12):
woman from their tribe, but you did find one instance,
um with these tribes in Venezuela and Western Canada, where
it was actually kind of nice from be secluded because
that's when they had all their affairs and they were autonomous.
I mean, they had no one tilling on what to do.
They lived in this hut and could kind of just
be themselves. And it was also kind of like a
mini vacation because if they're secluded away in this hut,
(16:34):
then they don't have to do their normal chores. Um.
You know, it's probably backbreaking work. So once a month
they get to uh you know, it's like moms taking
a break at the spa or something, but much different
from the spa. Uh So some of these other traditions
Carrier Indians in British Columbia, you're left alone for three
(16:55):
to four years in the wilderness at the time of
your monarchy, I mean monarchy rights kind of you know,
we probably just got like ice cream from our mom, right.
Well I didn't get ice cream mom, I think I
got ice, screams, I just got picked on by my
older sisters. Um. But you know, imagine being sent up
to the wilderness for three to four years. Yeah. And
(17:16):
then the reason why um, the carrier Indians do that
is because they don't want the girls footsteps to defile
the tries past. So that kind of is linked with
the more negative connotations of the menstrual taboo. And then
in Cambodia, some um, some groups people will um send
a girl away for a hundred days UM when she
(17:36):
has her monarchy. And then uh in India, in some
places um monarchy means a four day seclusion without the
girl touching the ground or seeing the sun, because they
feel like she is in a state suspended between heaven
and earth and she becomes a woman. Now, sometimes these
ceremonies can um turn on unfortunately, like often at all,
(18:00):
mute mutilation is done at the time of your first period,
and so even to you know, it's still sort of
that that double edged to doors. Some culture see it
as this very positive thing, you're becoming a woman, you're mature,
and then some see it as this time to basically
cut off your weakness and isolate you, cut off your gentil, etcetera.
(18:21):
And even today, um uh, menstruation can be a big
problem for girls, especially in developing countries, because there aren't
sanitation facilities available at schools especially for them to or
hygiene products available for them to be able to deal
with their period and be able to go to school.
And um. For instance, there is a World Health Organization
(18:41):
report from A two thousand four says that of the
hundred and thirty million children currently not enrolled in school worldwide,
six are girls. Because a lot of times in these
very rural areas, UM, when girls have their period, they
have to stay home. And if you're staying home one
week out of every month, that's adding up, you know,
to a huge educational gap, and they're basically having become
(19:05):
school dropouts because of of their periods. And so there
are some efforts to provide more more sanitation facilities and
more um more you know, tampons and pads for girls
be able to to do that. And I will say, um,
I've learned that tampons and pads are one of the
best things to donate to homeless shelters because that's something
(19:27):
that sort of overlooked when you don't have a home
you sort of you know, we take having that bathroom
counter of tampons for granted, Yeah, but only for some women,
especially in um, the western world. Uh. We have the
choice now to have a period or not at all,
because with certain birth control options that we've talked about
before on other podcasts, Uh, women either have fewer periods
(19:50):
every year or eliminates your period altogether, which is also
a point of contention among women, much the same way
that gross or not gross is because some would argue,
why are you getting rid of the one thing that
kind of makes you a woman, which we also touched
on that podcast. Um. But you know, I think that
having the period is still linked with having children. I
(20:10):
mean I remember very early on thinking, Okay, I have
to put up with this once a month, and then
one day, far down the road, I can have kids,
which is a weird thing to tell yourself in middle school.
But you know, that is sort of like the bargain
that I think women make when they're having their period.
Which is why I wanted to ask questions. We've had
a few listeners right in and say I never want
(20:31):
to have children. Enough with society glorifying children, what's your
relationship with your period, like yeah, if that's not too personal,
type out and sent to me well. And also, you know,
I think it is important for for girls, especially younger girls,
to be able to um, to have discussions about frank
discussions about periods and not have to you know, not
have it associated with this you know, time of you know,
(20:53):
hiding away and you know all the pain and cramping
and moodiness that may or may not go along with it, um,
because it is something you know that, like you said,
that is a defining part of being a female, right.
It's almost we're talking earlier about how it's kind of
a double edged towards you don't want any boy to
know you've had your period. Yeah, but when you go
(21:14):
around with like your friends at middle school, it's like,
you definitely want a padri period, yeam only I definitely.
I remember UM being around that age of like eleven, twelve,
thirteen and being in conversations with girls where we go
around and ask, you know, how do you had your
period or not? And you didn't want to be the
odd girl out you hadn't had it. I mean, it
is this definite ride of passage. But then as you
(21:36):
get older, you know, you don't want it to ever
seem like it's any kind of hindrance, even though sometimes
you do have debilitating cramps and mood swings and UM
it is a pain too, you know, change your champ
on every couple of hours. UM. But at the same time, UM,
having a positive UM view on menstruation and having a
(21:58):
personal comfort level with being able to deal with it
and being able to talk about it does seem to
have benefits not only for women but also for men.
For instance, UM, there was a study in the Annals
of Sexual Behavior that came out in two thousand three
that UM found that a comfort with personal sexuality was
associated with a comfort with menstruation as a normal, publicly
(22:20):
acceptable event. And it seems like that kind of goes
into this idea of being able to UM, you know,
accepting as a woman, accepting how your body works and
dealing with it and kind of owning it. Yeah, it's
still this very fine line, Christen, where we want everyone
to be accepting of it, to understand how it works.
But it's still you know, it's still not something that
I want to have UM come up in polite conversation,
(22:43):
so that I think that's sort of The big divide
is how do you have the honest conversation about it
without it being kind of crude to bring up. Yeah.
I mean, like my colleg dreammate and I were best friends,
but as far as we were both concerned, the other
one never had to go number two or have a
period because it just wasn't discussed. But I mean, if
if I should have been able to talk about it
with anyone, it probably should have been her. Yeah. But
(23:06):
as my mom would always say, there was a time
and a place for everything true. So we have tried
to make this a place to start a conversation about menstruation. Yeah,
so we want to hear from you. Guys. Do you
think that menstruation is the last taboo? I mean, Molly
and I crazy in thinking that, um, it's time for
us to get over it and uh, you know, be
(23:28):
open and frank about our periods if we if we
need to be or want to be. Um, and guys,
what do you think? Are you completely horrified that you
now know stories about mine and Molly's menstrual experience and um,
you know where if they're if they're even listening, if
you've gotten through this guy's kudos go UM, so yeah,
(23:52):
right to us. We would like to hear from you
on this topic because it's kind of an open discussion.
Molly and I just kind of wanted to open it up.
See the history of mentional taboo and why it is
that that it's still kind of lingers today. So I
would for your responses, yeah to mom stuff at house
suffolks dot com. We'll go ahead and read some responses
(24:12):
to people who have are you written us sly. I'm
going to start out this week's listener Mail segment UM
with a correction from our podcast do Strorities Get a
Bad rap Um? In that episode, we said that two
girls UM died while rushing the sorority Delta Sigma Theta.
I was wrong. That should actually have been the sorority
Alpha Kappa Alpha. That happened a couple UM a few
(24:35):
years ago. Actually, UM and I also have a couple
other emails in response to that podcast, and the first
one comes from Bailey and she said that she went
to an all women's college UM that was on a
coordinate system within all men's college. So although I took
classes with men, participated in clubs with men, lived on
the same dorms, as men, my diploma, deans, college colors
(24:56):
and traditions were different from those of my male colleagues.
Will their fraternities on campus. My colleges constitution forbid sororities.
Approximately every four years some woman challenges this, and each
time the majority of the student body rejects the challenge.
Many of us felt that since our school is all
women and is in some ways its own sisterhood um
with its own traditions in history, a sorority would be
(25:18):
a superfluous, would be superfluous, and might even break up.
Are fairly small and cohesive student body. I would not
have personally joined a sorority if it had existed, but
my parents were both Greeks, and I was inducted um
into two academic honor societies that evolved out of traditional
Greek societies. So perhaps one of the consequences of the
bad reputation of sororities could be campuses that don't have
(25:41):
any Women who don't want to be in sororities may
still feel that they would be affected by the presence
of sororities on campus. I thought that was interesting. Yeah,
good perspective, and I'll throw in her reading list as well. Um.
A few of her books she's reading, uh include The
Trouble with Physics by Lee Smollen, His Majesty's Dragon by
(26:02):
Naomi Novik, and Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson.
Those are three of many and that's from Bailey, and
the next one we have is from page She said, Hey, girls,
I just want to share my stority experience after listening
to your podcast. I grew up in the Seattle area
and sixties seven kids from my graduating class went to
(26:24):
University of Washington. I always said that I would never
join a sorority because I you're the types of girls
from my high school that we're joining them at you
w I decided to dub you dubbed. Sorry, that's for
the Washington folks out there. Corrected. Did you dub know
that Northeastern, LINGO Western or grdinal directions either? Evidently? Um,
(26:46):
I decided to go to the University of Oregon. You
have one for that, ducks wow. Um. She went to
the University of Oregon and a friend coerced to joining
her for sorority rush. Even though I never thought it
was something to be interested in. I loved the whole
process and had instant friends within a few weeks of
getting to school at a house on campus where you
were required to live um sophomore in junior year. This
(27:09):
was a great compromise because it gave you the year
in the dorms to meet other people on campus in
a year of freedom or at the end of college,
but two fun years in between to live with all
the girls. We were not allowed to have alcohol in
the house or boys above the first floor, and since
senior years lift out of the house, they there weren't
a ton of people around to buy booze, and the
older girls got really annoyed if you asked them to
buy alcohol, so it was a rare occurrence. However, the
(27:30):
alcohol came into play when boys got involved. The fraternity's
unlike sororities, had no house moms, no rules, and while
technically UFO is a dry campus, there was always alcohol
readily available in the frat houses. It sounds a lot
like the Greek system actually at my alma mater um,
and in fact, I remember several trips to the beer
docks in Springfield, Oregon, where they could buy past date
(27:52):
beer for pennies to supply their parties. Mind you know
about this penny beer, the bear dogs, I'm making a
trip to where was that Springfield or him? So it
was always a fun time. We never really had any
scary incidents or death while I was there, but there
were definitely a few trips to the hospital for stitches,
including myself. And she said the worst hazing shiver encountered
was when her big sis would give UM them a
(28:14):
pledge name that was really that was a dirty or
explicit phrase that rhymed with your name, and then um
they would blindfold you and stand all the pledges in
a circle in alphabetical order, and you had to say
your full pledge name, and if you forgot it or
messed up, everyone had to take a drink and then
start over. Some of them were really long and ridiculous
and harder to remember with every drink. It sure was
(28:34):
fun the next year when you were a big sis, however,
but she didn't drop out of her sorority her junior
year because she went abroad and it was expensive and
I kind of grew apart when she came back from
her sorority for for her senior year. But the scar
on her chin will always remind her of all the
crazy fun nights with a bunch of girls she never
thought she'd have anything in common with, So I thought
(28:55):
that was a nice story. Thank you page for writing in.
It's slightly scary. Stitches on the chin. Yeah, I just
sitch in though now so now the scars of memory, Molly. Okay, Um,
I'm just gonna close up with ster mail with a
quick shout out to our listener, Emily from Wisconsin. Emily.
Emily is going on a ten hour flight to Poland
(29:18):
and she's taking a ton of stuff I've never told
you podcast with her. Spread the word to Poland. Emily.
She wanted us to do a podcast on Poland, but
unfortunately Poland is not mine and Mollay's area of expertise. Um.
But there is a lot of fantastic information out there
on the world wide Web, and you know where I
bet she can also find some information on Poland, Molly,
I have a guess it also works whoa Jakes? Um? Yeah.
(29:42):
You can also check out our blog. It's called how
to stuff and um yeah. If you want to learn
about Poland, or about menstruation, or or both or both
and uh, you can head over to how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot Com. Want more how
(30:05):
stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff
works dot Com home page. Yes, brought to you by
the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stop mom never told
you From housetop works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen is
(00:20):
true or false? We have best listeners in the world.
True course, it's true because you guys are so well spoken,
you are very thoughtful, and you write to us. We're
just loving what you guys have to say. And what's
kind of neat about our listeners is they have these
conversations with each other and they don't even realize it
because they're sending it all to us and we get
to see both sides of it. So UM. The most
(00:43):
recent conversation that's just been fascinating for kristimmy UM is
something that we're calling gross skate. Now a little background
on this. Uh we did a Shark episode about whether, um,
you would get attacked by shark if you were having
your period, and the word gross was used in reference
to menstruation, which prompted many listeners to write in and say,
(01:05):
you know what, this is not gross. You shouldn't be
using There were gross in relation to menstruations natural. We
need to talk about it, so on and so right,
we need to address it in a more mature and
honest way because it is a you know, natural function
of a woman's body exactly, and so um Kristen made
a correction as such on another episode, which prompted more
listeners to write and say, what say, um, you know this,
(01:27):
this is really gross, Like, don't pretend it's not gross,
Like taking a poo is natural. But I'm not going
to sit here and say that's not gross. And uh.
And one email that comes to my molly is from
a male listener who pointed out that you know, he
does he thought that, yeah, periods are gross, but he
also thinks that semens gross and evidently, you know, it's
(01:48):
uh the release of it as part of his you know,
daily routine. So he was like, I mean, I'm not
He was like, I'm not trying to discriminate against periods.
It's just just a gross bodily fluid. Yeah, and we
have periods once a month, whereas that sounded a little
more daily. Yeah, So why is it so taboo to
talk about a period because you never see it mentioned?
(02:10):
You never, I mean, it's not part of popular culture discussions,
and even in comedy Molly, um, a lot of bodily
fluids like poop and p and even semen show up
fairly regularly, and especially in like things like jet Avatale films.
But you you may brought the point that, um, you
found a blog post recently that said that the movie
(02:30):
super Bad was like the first real kind of graphic
menstruation joke that was made. In case you guys haven't
seen it, there's a scene where a girl is wearing
white pants and she's grinding on a guy, and you know,
she gets her period, and you can put the rest together.
And that was really the first time, I mean in
two thousand eight when it came out, that's the first
(02:51):
time that we're really having you know, kind of it's
really entering comedy. And even in nineteen seventy three, the
first sitcom to have a period related plot line came
around with an episode of All in the Family where
Suzanne Summer's character gets her period, and uh, that episode
(03:12):
got more viewer mail than any other in the history
of All in the Family because viewers were so disgusted
that they would even mention periods on national television mentioned
the unmentionable. Yeah, in the seventies and all in the
family like, that's not like that couldn't be the only
hate mail they were getting about it. So anyway, and
(03:32):
if it is in popular culture, it's used as this
insults like you know, a woman is moody, she you
know exactly. Um. And that's also carried over into real life.
You think about allegations lobbied at women who are running
for higher office, like oh, you know, I hope the
bomb doesn't go off when she's having her period. How
(03:54):
will she deal with it? No? Yeah, so why so
we have, Yeah, the this whole like idea of menstruation
being gross or it's used as some kind of an
insult against women. There's just this whole taboo around it.
And we didn't come up with this idea of you know,
the menstrual taboo. It's actually um an accepted term. Right,
So we're gonna talk about the menstrual taboo. And Kristen
(04:17):
I the question when I was researching this, is menstruation
the last taboo? Yeah, I'm gonna argue yes, Yeah, I
would say from our research, I would agree with that
as far as something that is found in so many
different cultures and still lingers today, right. I mean, this
is something that you know, women go through, and yet
we still can't talk about it. I can't think of
(04:37):
a mail equivalent of that. Yeah, I mean even you know,
erectile dysfunction is on during primetime. So let's go back,
let's go Let's go to anthropology first. So there's this
book called Blood Magic Um The Anthropology of Menstruation by
Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb if I'm pronouncing that last
name correct and uh. And they're talking about there looking
(04:57):
for menstruation taboos and different cultures, and they find that
from all the studies from all these different tribes, the
menstruation taboos are nearly universal than in some form or another,
every society has some kind of menstruation taboo about you know,
either you know, sending the women away to a special
hut while they're on um their period, or um thinking
(05:22):
that assuming that women have some kind of special um
power that they have during their period, that some kind
of purification process. Right, And when it comes to actual women,
like Kristen said, it can either be something kind of
good for the woman, like she's having this kind of
mystical experience, she's in sort of a holy place, she's transforming,
(05:42):
or it can be just that the woman is kind
of a demon, which is sort of the modern stereotype.
If you want to say, like, you know, a woman
can't be president because she's on our period, it's either
the sign of weakness starts the sign of empowerment. But
regardless of how they feel about the women, UM, the
actual blood itself is always associated with evil forces. The
actual product is considered you know, a waste product, something
(06:04):
something gross for lack of a better word, and uh
and then carrying forward to today, a lot of those uh,
those taboos have created this set of cultural givens if
you will, about UM periods. There was UM. One source
that we found said that there are more than a
hundred and twenty English terms and phrases that we used
to discuss periods, all those period euphemisms like aunt, flow, etcetera.
(06:28):
And most of them either focus on just the cyclical
nature of of periods or um sexual and availability, discomfort
and inconvenience. So overwhelmingly these UM, these cultural cultural ideas
of menstruation UM usually carry negative connotations. Right, you never say, oh,
joy a period. Well, I'm all you could say, you
(06:49):
could use the phrase I've got my flower. Um, you
want me to throw out some of some of these
on eight. Yes, this is gonna be fun for everyone. Okay,
we've got old, faithful, cyclical nature. We got safe again. Okay,
so that pregnancy exactly, this one that you and I
had never heard before, the old cotton bicycle. Yes, I
did not realize I was ever riding a cotton bicycle. Yeah.
(07:11):
Then there's the tides in Eve's curse, which is UM.
I think that one needs to be banished from our terminology,
UM indisposed UM riding a white horse, which you might
want to qualify if you say that you're riding the
white horse, because people might, you know, send you off
to rehab instead of by a pack of tampons. UM.
And then they're the monthlies and the red flag is up.
(07:33):
And then some of the ones we were talking about
from our own childhood. I believe that you were told
that you had a visitor come. Yeah, when my when
my older sister, I know, if this is tum I
for our audience, But when my oldest sister UM found
out that, uh, you know, monarchy had descended upon me. Um,
she uh. She came up to me and said, Kristen,
I heard, I heard he had a visitor last night.
(07:54):
And I was so confused. And then she and I
asked her what the what she was talking about, and
she said, you know, aunt flow, And I was just befuddled.
Maybe it was because I was you know, homes a
little times, just didn't didn't really get it. But then
she explained it to me, and at first I was horrified,
But then you know, I felt like I was also
being initiated you know into uh into the conger women,
(08:17):
you know, the conger claim my mom and my two
lital sisters, and now i'd i'd finally become a woman too.
But because we don't really have great terms to stick
on it, it's kind of like this wordless initiation. Even
when you think about advertisements about getting your period, you know, um,
it's usually like a blue liquid that they're pouring onto
paths to show how absorbent they are, or the bouncing
(08:38):
red dot scene, or like the latest ones where Mother
Nature comes to visit this girl and she's just like
a woman dressed up as a fairy. Yeah, like if
you're a young girl trying to figure out what's going
on with your body? How is that going to help you?
You have to like, you know, swim through all these
figure out all these euphemisms, you know, to actually get
to the point of like, oh, they're talking about talking
about periods, so much like let's go, let's try back
(09:00):
in time and figure out where this menstrual taboo started. Um,
because it's got a pretty ex sense of history, it
really does. And I think that once you learn about
the history, you kind of understand why no one ever
talked about it, because people just had no clue what
was going on. But to some extent, that's because women
didn't really have that many periods back in the old
(09:20):
hunter gatherer days. Yeah, and hunter gatherer days, um, not
only were women, you know, were women's lifespans much shorter
than they were now, and women were getting their periods
much later than girls do today, more in their UM
in their teens than in say, like eleven twelve years old.
But um, according to an article by Tracy Clark Floory
called the End of Menstruation and Hunter Gatherer Days, women
(09:41):
had um only about a hundred and sixty periods in
their lifetime because a lot of the times they were
either pregnant or breastfeeding, right, And that's something we did
talk about briefly, and um, do you need to have
a period every month? Where we talked about how just
women are having more periods. But then because these hunter
gather women are spending so much time pregnant, the fact
that you are having a period immediately becomes kind of worthless.
(10:03):
This is from a book called is Menstruation Obsolete? And
they were talking about since ancient civilization, if women are
are having the babies, if that's their primary role in society,
then um, you know, having a period, it's kind of
almost like a loss. Yeah. And the women who were
having periods obviously were the ones who were unmarried and
not bearing children, so they were the prostitutes basically. Very
(10:23):
early on, there was I kind of this link with
the loose woman and a period. Yeah, and um, and
so it's it starts to carry this, uh, this negative
connotation far back in time. For instance, Uh, the Persians
allowed women four days in isolation to have their periods,
and if they weren't finished with it by then, they
were given a hundred lashes and then sent back into
(10:45):
seclusion for five more days because They thought that it
was some kind of you know, purification process they were
getting rid of, you know, evil spirits, and that if
it wasn't done by then, that they needed to have
it lashed out of them. Hurry up your hurry up
your purification girls. Now and looking at the history of menstruation,
we have sort of one bright shining light, and that's Hippocrates,
a man before his time who did see menstruation as
(11:07):
positive because it was a cleansing process, although he did
think that what was coming out we're bad humors, Yeah,
because they don't really understand that. Like back then, they
understood that it was some kind of cyclical thing that
happened to most women, and they knew that it had
something to do with pregnancy because it was only until
after a girl had um her first period that they
would you know, she would be considered um marriageable. But
(11:30):
they didn't really understand why this was happening because it
doesn't seem it wouldn't seem natural for you know, for
blood be coming out of a girl's china every twenty
eight days. Um. So then we come up to Pliny
and who wrote the who wrote natural History, which was
civilization's first encyclopedia, and he can't stand periods. Um get this, Molly.
He he blames periods for blighted crops, killed bees, wine
(11:55):
turned vinegar, dimmed mirrors, blunted razors, et cetera. Basically, a
woman on her period is going to ruin your life,
so you should stay away. And it really wasn't until
the fourteen hundreds that natural history, the information in natural
history was questioned in full. So here's another um genius
in action. Then she thought that menstrual blood turned into
(12:17):
breast milk. I kinda like that, you know, if I
didn't know what was going on, I think that's a
nice assumption. He thought that the the um, like a
woman's reproductive system in her breast, were somehow connected. So basically,
after you stop having the periods to have your baby,
at some point it goes up. Yeah, I don't know
about that. Yeah, you know, it's a fun, fun fact
(12:40):
though it was a fun fact, But it also goes
to show for such you know, genius of his time,
he's still you know, the idea of a woman's body
was still very very unknown and very mystical. Yeah, it
wasn't until they started dissecting bodies you know, kind of
around that time that they actually see like, oh, women
have this totally different reproductive anatomy m H and uh.
(13:01):
And then not until the eighteenth century, with the invention
of the microscope, do you start to have a better
understanding of the process of menstruation, of why, you know,
what's actually going on with the uterine lining and the
shedding and all of that. And nineteen o five, nineteen
o five, that's just why a hundred and five years ago, basically, okay,
(13:22):
scientists didn't understand until then that there were changes in
the uterus that were um responding to hormones. We like
to joke about hormones. No one knew about the mutil
five and molly. Not only that, but they weren't even
calling them hormones at the time. They just referred to
them as some kind of secretions from the ovaries. And
it wasn't until nineteen twenty nine that we have progesterone,
(13:43):
one of the most important hormones a gets our periods
kicked off, discovered co Tex events is first maxipad and
nineteen thirty six Tampacs invents the first tampon with an
applicator in a string. Now I will say, we get
tons of requests for the history of the tampon, and
we will definitely do this at some point, but we're
gonna stick on our cultural track and come back to
(14:07):
how women have contained their periods at a different time. So, really,
when it comes down to it, only in the past
hundred years or so have we even figured out what's
going on with periods, you know, but we still have
this lingering cultural taboo that's lasted for millennia. Yeah, and
I guess that makes a lot more sense when you
realize that they had no idea what's going on. Fear
(14:27):
of the unknown. You're not gonna immediately celebrate something that
just freaks you out right. And going back to that
idea that you said, it's it's linked to, you know,
the unmarried women who aren't having children, who are still
having their periods, that it becomes, you know, establishes this
idea of of you know, a negative process. But we
should point out that not every culture finds it negative.
(14:49):
While every culture has kind of a taboo, and some
of them are positive or negative related to the woman.
What was interesting to me is Kristen found um the
origin of the word taboo, which is Polynesian, which means
both holy and forbidden. So therefore the opposite of it
would be profane or common. Yeah, we think of a
taboo is something that's, um, that's bad, and the opposite,
(15:11):
you know, an antonym of taboo would be you know,
something positive. But it actually has more of a mystical
route because going back to those um, those early tribes, Um,
like we said it, it seemed like the women were
sent away to huts and in some situations weren't allowed
to see the sun or have contact with other people because, um,
(15:32):
they thought that when period came, they were um, you know,
in contact with some kind of you know, just mystical power,
and they wouldn't want to um infiltrate that by having
contact with people who were just you know, just commoners. Yeah,
and especially keep the men away from them so that
they're not influenced by this. Yeah. There's also this idea, yeah,
(15:52):
that that a a menstruating woman can also take away
the power some kind of power from men as well,
which is kind of interesting. But um, you know, sometimes
I think we put our I put my modern glasses
on at least and say, you know, if they're secluding
a woman in a hut. That may sound like they're
doing something that benefits the one, but it's really not.
I mean, I I don't think you should isolate a
(16:12):
woman from their tribe, but you did find one instance,
um with these tribes in Venezuela and Western Canada, where
it was actually kind of nice from be secluded because
that's when they had all their affairs and they were autonomous.
I mean, they had no one tilling on what to do.
They lived in this hut and could kind of just
be themselves. And it was also kind of like a
mini vacation because if they're secluded away in this hut,
(16:34):
then they don't have to do their normal chores. Um.
You know, it's probably backbreaking work. So once a month
they get to uh you know, it's like moms taking
a break at the spa or something, but much different
from the spa. Uh So some of these other traditions
Carrier Indians in British Columbia, you're left alone for three
(16:55):
to four years in the wilderness at the time of
your monarchy, I mean monarchy rights kind of you know,
we probably just got like ice cream from our mom, right.
Well I didn't get ice cream mom, I think I
got ice, screams, I just got picked on by my
older sisters. Um. But you know, imagine being sent up
to the wilderness for three to four years. Yeah. And
(17:16):
then the reason why um, the carrier Indians do that
is because they don't want the girls footsteps to defile
the tries past. So that kind of is linked with
the more negative connotations of the menstrual taboo. And then
in Cambodia, some um, some groups people will um send
a girl away for a hundred days UM when she
(17:36):
has her monarchy. And then uh in India, in some
places um monarchy means a four day seclusion without the
girl touching the ground or seeing the sun, because they
feel like she is in a state suspended between heaven
and earth and she becomes a woman. Now, sometimes these
ceremonies can um turn on unfortunately, like often at all,
(18:00):
mute mutilation is done at the time of your first period,
and so even to you know, it's still sort of
that that double edged to doors. Some culture see it
as this very positive thing, you're becoming a woman, you're mature,
and then some see it as this time to basically
cut off your weakness and isolate you, cut off your gentil, etcetera.
(18:21):
And even today, um uh, menstruation can be a big
problem for girls, especially in developing countries, because there aren't
sanitation facilities available at schools especially for them to or
hygiene products available for them to be able to deal
with their period and be able to go to school.
And um. For instance, there is a World Health Organization
(18:41):
report from A two thousand four says that of the
hundred and thirty million children currently not enrolled in school worldwide,
six are girls. Because a lot of times in these
very rural areas, UM, when girls have their period, they
have to stay home. And if you're staying home one
week out of every month, that's adding up, you know,
to a huge educational gap, and they're basically having become
(19:05):
school dropouts because of of their periods. And so there
are some efforts to provide more more sanitation facilities and
more um more you know, tampons and pads for girls
be able to to do that. And I will say, um,
I've learned that tampons and pads are one of the
best things to donate to homeless shelters because that's something
(19:27):
that sort of overlooked when you don't have a home
you sort of you know, we take having that bathroom
counter of tampons for granted, Yeah, but only for some women,
especially in um, the western world. Uh. We have the
choice now to have a period or not at all,
because with certain birth control options that we've talked about
before on other podcasts, Uh, women either have fewer periods
(19:50):
every year or eliminates your period altogether, which is also
a point of contention among women, much the same way
that gross or not gross is because some would argue,
why are you getting rid of the one thing that
kind of makes you a woman, which we also touched
on that podcast. Um. But you know, I think that
having the period is still linked with having children. I
(20:10):
mean I remember very early on thinking, Okay, I have
to put up with this once a month, and then
one day, far down the road, I can have kids,
which is a weird thing to tell yourself in middle school.
But you know, that is sort of like the bargain
that I think women make when they're having their period.
Which is why I wanted to ask questions. We've had
a few listeners right in and say I never want
(20:31):
to have children. Enough with society glorifying children, what's your
relationship with your period, like yeah, if that's not too personal,
type out and sent to me well. And also, you know,
I think it is important for for girls, especially younger girls,
to be able to um, to have discussions about frank
discussions about periods and not have to you know, not
have it associated with this you know, time of you know,
(20:53):
hiding away and you know all the pain and cramping
and moodiness that may or may not go along with it, um,
because it is something you know that, like you said,
that is a defining part of being a female, right.
It's almost we're talking earlier about how it's kind of
a double edged towards you don't want any boy to
know you've had your period. Yeah, but when you go
(21:14):
around with like your friends at middle school, it's like,
you definitely want a padri period, yeam only I definitely.
I remember UM being around that age of like eleven, twelve,
thirteen and being in conversations with girls where we go
around and ask, you know, how do you had your
period or not? And you didn't want to be the
odd girl out you hadn't had it. I mean, it
is this definite ride of passage. But then as you
(21:36):
get older, you know, you don't want it to ever
seem like it's any kind of hindrance, even though sometimes
you do have debilitating cramps and mood swings and UM
it is a pain too, you know, change your champ
on every couple of hours. UM. But at the same time, UM,
having a positive UM view on menstruation and having a
(21:58):
personal comfort level with being able to deal with it
and being able to talk about it does seem to
have benefits not only for women but also for men.
For instance, UM, there was a study in the Annals
of Sexual Behavior that came out in two thousand three
that UM found that a comfort with personal sexuality was
associated with a comfort with menstruation as a normal, publicly
(22:20):
acceptable event. And it seems like that kind of goes
into this idea of being able to UM, you know,
accepting as a woman, accepting how your body works and
dealing with it and kind of owning it. Yeah, it's
still this very fine line, Christen, where we want everyone
to be accepting of it, to understand how it works.
But it's still you know, it's still not something that
I want to have UM come up in polite conversation,
(22:43):
so that I think that's sort of The big divide
is how do you have the honest conversation about it
without it being kind of crude to bring up. Yeah.
I mean, like my colleg dreammate and I were best friends,
but as far as we were both concerned, the other
one never had to go number two or have a
period because it just wasn't discussed. But I mean, if
if I should have been able to talk about it
with anyone, it probably should have been her. Yeah. But
(23:06):
as my mom would always say, there was a time
and a place for everything true. So we have tried
to make this a place to start a conversation about menstruation. Yeah,
so we want to hear from you. Guys. Do you
think that menstruation is the last taboo? I mean, Molly
and I crazy in thinking that, um, it's time for
us to get over it and uh, you know, be
(23:28):
open and frank about our periods if we if we
need to be or want to be. Um, and guys,
what do you think? Are you completely horrified that you
now know stories about mine and Molly's menstrual experience and um,
you know where if they're if they're even listening, if
you've gotten through this guy's kudos go UM, so yeah,
(23:52):
right to us. We would like to hear from you
on this topic because it's kind of an open discussion.
Molly and I just kind of wanted to open it up.
See the history of mentional taboo and why it is
that that it's still kind of lingers today. So I
would for your responses, yeah to mom stuff at house
suffolks dot com. We'll go ahead and read some responses
(24:12):
to people who have are you written us sly. I'm
going to start out this week's listener Mail segment UM
with a correction from our podcast do Strorities Get a
Bad rap Um? In that episode, we said that two
girls UM died while rushing the sorority Delta Sigma Theta.
I was wrong. That should actually have been the sorority
Alpha Kappa Alpha. That happened a couple UM a few
(24:35):
years ago. Actually, UM and I also have a couple
other emails in response to that podcast, and the first
one comes from Bailey and she said that she went
to an all women's college UM that was on a
coordinate system within all men's college. So although I took
classes with men, participated in clubs with men, lived on
the same dorms, as men, my diploma, deans, college colors
(24:56):
and traditions were different from those of my male colleagues.
Will their fraternities on campus. My colleges constitution forbid sororities.
Approximately every four years some woman challenges this, and each
time the majority of the student body rejects the challenge.
Many of us felt that since our school is all
women and is in some ways its own sisterhood um
with its own traditions in history, a sorority would be
(25:18):
a superfluous, would be superfluous, and might even break up.
Are fairly small and cohesive student body. I would not
have personally joined a sorority if it had existed, but
my parents were both Greeks, and I was inducted um
into two academic honor societies that evolved out of traditional
Greek societies. So perhaps one of the consequences of the
bad reputation of sororities could be campuses that don't have
(25:41):
any Women who don't want to be in sororities may
still feel that they would be affected by the presence
of sororities on campus. I thought that was interesting. Yeah,
good perspective, and I'll throw in her reading list as well. Um.
A few of her books she's reading, uh include The
Trouble with Physics by Lee Smollen, His Majesty's Dragon by
(26:02):
Naomi Novik, and Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson.
Those are three of many and that's from Bailey, and
the next one we have is from page She said, Hey, girls,
I just want to share my stority experience after listening
to your podcast. I grew up in the Seattle area
and sixties seven kids from my graduating class went to
(26:24):
University of Washington. I always said that I would never
join a sorority because I you're the types of girls
from my high school that we're joining them at you
w I decided to dub you dubbed. Sorry, that's for
the Washington folks out there. Corrected. Did you dub know
that Northeastern, LINGO Western or grdinal directions either? Evidently? Um,
(26:46):
I decided to go to the University of Oregon. You
have one for that, ducks wow. Um. She went to
the University of Oregon and a friend coerced to joining
her for sorority rush. Even though I never thought it
was something to be interested in. I loved the whole
process and had instant friends within a few weeks of
getting to school at a house on campus where you
were required to live um sophomore in junior year. This
(27:09):
was a great compromise because it gave you the year
in the dorms to meet other people on campus in
a year of freedom or at the end of college,
but two fun years in between to live with all
the girls. We were not allowed to have alcohol in
the house or boys above the first floor, and since
senior years lift out of the house, they there weren't
a ton of people around to buy booze, and the
older girls got really annoyed if you asked them to
buy alcohol, so it was a rare occurrence. However, the
(27:30):
alcohol came into play when boys got involved. The fraternity's
unlike sororities, had no house moms, no rules, and while
technically UFO is a dry campus, there was always alcohol
readily available in the frat houses. It sounds a lot
like the Greek system actually at my alma mater um,
and in fact, I remember several trips to the beer
docks in Springfield, Oregon, where they could buy past date
(27:52):
beer for pennies to supply their parties. Mind you know
about this penny beer, the bear dogs, I'm making a
trip to where was that Springfield or him? So it
was always a fun time. We never really had any
scary incidents or death while I was there, but there
were definitely a few trips to the hospital for stitches,
including myself. And she said the worst hazing shiver encountered
was when her big sis would give UM them a
(28:14):
pledge name that was really that was a dirty or
explicit phrase that rhymed with your name, and then um
they would blindfold you and stand all the pledges in
a circle in alphabetical order, and you had to say
your full pledge name, and if you forgot it or
messed up, everyone had to take a drink and then
start over. Some of them were really long and ridiculous
and harder to remember with every drink. It sure was
(28:34):
fun the next year when you were a big sis, however,
but she didn't drop out of her sorority her junior
year because she went abroad and it was expensive and
I kind of grew apart when she came back from
her sorority for for her senior year. But the scar
on her chin will always remind her of all the
crazy fun nights with a bunch of girls she never
thought she'd have anything in common with, So I thought
(28:55):
that was a nice story. Thank you page for writing in.
It's slightly scary. Stitches on the chin. Yeah, I just
sitch in though now so now the scars of memory, Molly. Okay, Um,
I'm just gonna close up with ster mail with a
quick shout out to our listener, Emily from Wisconsin. Emily.
Emily is going on a ten hour flight to Poland
(29:18):
and she's taking a ton of stuff I've never told
you podcast with her. Spread the word to Poland. Emily.
She wanted us to do a podcast on Poland, but
unfortunately Poland is not mine and Mollay's area of expertise. Um.
But there is a lot of fantastic information out there
on the world wide Web, and you know where I
bet she can also find some information on Poland, Molly,
I have a guess it also works whoa Jakes? Um? Yeah.
(29:42):
You can also check out our blog. It's called how
to stuff and um yeah. If you want to learn
about Poland, or about menstruation, or or both or both
and uh, you can head over to how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot Com. Want more how
(30:05):
stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff
works dot Com home page. Yes, brought to you by
the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
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