Check out the new video about the latest developments from Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE).
(Previously at re:Cycling — SHE featured in Marie Claire; Girls, Periods, and Missing School II: Breaking the Silence.)
S.H.E. = Sustainable Health Enterprises
October 13th, 2010 by Elizabeth KisslingYou’re Never Too Young to Wax
September 16th, 2010 by Elizabeth KisslingVia Virginia at Beauty Schooled, who is celebrating her graduation from Beauty U by republishing selected posts, I found this August 24 article about the trend of spas offering hair removal services to increasingly younger clients – starting at age 8.
Wanda Stawczyk, owner of Wanda’s European Skin Care Center in New York, says girls who start waxing young, even before they have dark hair, will always have lighter, thinner hair.
“It’s a very big result,” she tells ParentDish. “The hair is diminished almost 100 percent.”
She advocates for it even more strongly on her website.
“I call it the ‘Virgin’ — waxing for children 8 years old and up who have never shaved before,” the website reads. “Virgin hair can be waxed so successfully that growth can be permanently stopped in just 2 to 6 sessions. Save your child a lifetime of waxing … and put the money in the bank for her college education instead!”
Pediatricians consulted for the article raise concerns only about removal of pubic hair:
Waxing pubic hair if a girl is too young can make it difficult for doctors to tell if a girl is maturing as she should, Williams says.
“We use development of a certain type of hair and distribution of hair as a marker of normal puberty,” she says.
No worries, though. Wanda says her salon doesn’t do bikini waxes on their prepubescent clients:
“Everything but bikini. We don’t want to introduce them to that kind of service yet.”
Regular bikini waxing starts at 14 or 15 for her clients, Stawczyk says. Apparently they missed the latest issue of Cosmopolitan.
Social Effects of Menstrual Pain for Turkish Teens
September 10th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Illustration via sexualityandu.ca
A new study published in the Journal of Pediatric Adolescent Gynecology reports on a study of how dysmenorrhea affects girls’ relationships with families and friends and school performance for girls in Turkey. Previously, we reported on research documenting that menstrual pain is the norm for adolescents; this study represents a next step by looking at the effects of that pain. 1951 girls from 26 high schools completed surveys assessing the level and the nature of menstrual pain they experienced and answered questions about how their pain affected their school work and relationships.
Unsurprisingly, more than half of the girls surveyed reported that dysmenorrhea does affect their ability to perform well at school, with 50% of the girls reporting “lack of focus on the content of the courses” and 26.9% reporting “not being able to answer the questions in exams despite having the knowledge”. A staggering 77.3% report “having problems with their families” when they are experiencing menstrual pain.
The Leap from Younger Puberty to Fat-Shaming
August 12th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
'Puberty' by Edvard Munch. Photo courtesy of Flickr user independentman // CC 2.0
When the story that girls are reaching puberty earlier than ever began popping up everywhere this week, I did not doubt its veracity. It was no coincidence that I received an email from a friend yesterday, observing with mixed feelings that she had just purchased a first bra for her oldest daughter. Her daughter is 9.
News about girls reaching puberty earlier and earlier isn’t exactly new. We saw a flurry of stories in late 2009, when studies found an association between early menarche, late menopause and breast cancer. Additionally, the finding that African American girls often show signs of pubertal development earlier than other girls is well-established.
The study that triggered this new explosion of publicity, published this week in Pediatrics, assessed girls’ development by evaluating the size of breast buds (as breasts are called in early stages of development). The researchers evaluated an ethnically diverse population of 1,239 girls ages 6 to 8 across three research sites. They found that 10.4 percent of white, 23.4 percent of black and 14.9 percent of Hispanic 7-year-olds had reached “Sexual Maturation Stage 2.” Stage 2 is more typically reached at age 10, but may occur any time from age 8 to age 13. Menarche, the first menstrual period, occurs on average at age 12, in Stage 4, but it, too, varies, occurring as early as age 9 and as late as age 17.
The Pediatrics study does not, however, reveal what has caused the age of puberty to fall. Many are quick to blame the alleged obesity epidemic, as the study found that heavier girls were more likely to have more breast development. But Dr. Frank M. Biro, the first author of the study and the director of adolescent medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, told the New York Times that it is unlikely that weight alone explains the findings. Instead, he speculates that environmental chemicals may influence early breast development, and he and his colleagues are presently running lab tests to assess the girls’ hormone levels and chemical exposure.
Fat is one of many factors affecting pubertal development. Others include:
- environmental toxins, including phthalates and Bisphenol A, commonly known as BPA, which can be found in nearly anything made of plastic: baby bottles, toys, plastic serving utensils, and more
- premature birth and low birth weight, which affect endocrine function
- psychosocial stressors, such as family dysfunction or abuse
- formula feeding, especially without breast feeding
- in-utero chemical exposure
- and, often neglected in these discussions, endocrine disruptors–the hormones used in raising beef and dairy cattle as well as chicken in this country. Almost all foods in a modern North American diet contains endocrine disruptors.
(For a more thorough analysis of causes of early puberty, see Sandra Steingraber’s report, The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls: What We Know, What We Need to Know, published in 2007 by the Breast Cancer Fund. Among other findings, Steingraber reports that new research has revealed that the amount of natural hormones a child’s body produces on its own is much lower than previously estimated; this means “safe levels” of exposure to synthetic hormones and endocrine disruptors must be recalibrated, and policy modified accordingly.)
Sadly, much of the public discussion of this research seems to be centering on the possible role of the alleged obesity crisis (or in fat activist Kate Harding’s preferred terminology, “the obesity crisis OOGA-BOOGA!”), despite a lack of concrete evidence. I’d hate to see this research lead to increased fat-shaming and body image issues for young girls, as there are far more serious consequences of a dramatic decline in age of puberty.
Reproductive Coercion
July 29th, 2010 by Elizabeth KisslingIn our May 28 “Saturday Surfing” round-up of recommended reading, we highlighted Lynn Harris’ essay for The Nation about new research on “reproductive coercion”: the alarming frequency with which young men try to get their partners pregnant, often by sabotaging birth control methods. Yesterday, GritTV with Laura Flanders interviewed Harris and Elizabeth Miller, the researcher who conducted the study, about the phenomenon and public health responses.
The Red Scare: Blood Rituals
July 16th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Anyone else seen the premier issue of Whore! Magazine (Fast, Feminist, and Feminine) yet? My copy arrived yesterday and while I haven’t read the whole thing yet, I’m enjoying the quality of the writing and the production values.
I’m also pleased to see a positive story about menstruation in a magazine, in Tracy Merlau’s essay, “The Red Scare”. It’s short, sentimental essay about adolescence and menarche, and the sadness of the nearly complete absence of any public recognition, let alone celebration, of menarche for girls in the U.S.
Recommended.
Teens and the IUD
July 8th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Art by Flickr user Buhny | CC 2.0
A new study published in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology has found that adolescents are usually able to tolerate the Mirena® IUD rather well. The mean age of girls in this British study was 15.3 years, and they were prescribed the Mirena® for painful and/or heavy periods that did not respond to oral medications. 93.4% of girls in the study (45 young women) reported “significant improvement” within four months. The researchers conclude “that Mirena is a well tolerated and effective alternative for heavy periods±dysmenorrhoea in adolescents who do not respond to oral therapy.”
So will this finding make it easier for young women to obtain an IUD if they’d like it for birth control, now that there is evidence that it is well tolerated?
Teens Using the Rhythm Method? It’s Time for Body Literacy
June 8th, 2010 by Laura Wershler
Teen sex: More use rhythm method for birth control.
It was an odd headline for an Associated Press story on the 86 page report on teen sexual activity just released by the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. Not all that relevant to the broader subject of the study on which the report is based: Teenagers in the United States: Sexual Activity, Contraceptive Use, and Childbearing, National Survey of Family Growth 2006-2008. If you’re interested, it is a fascinating read.
But it was the headline and this excerpt from the story that caught my attention:
About 17 percent of sexually experienced teen girls say they had used the rhythm method – timing their sex to avoid fertile days to prevent getting pregnant. That’s up from 11 percent in 2002.
They may have been using another form of birth control at the same time. But the increase is considered worrisome because the rhythm method doesn’t work about 25 percent of the time, said Joyce Abma, the report’s lead author. She’s a social scientist at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.
You can’t study what you don’t understand. The study authors demonstrate their lack of knowledge about natural birth control methods by the question they asked study participants: Have you ever used rhythm or safe period by calendar to prevent pregnancy?
There are many brands of natural birth control. Some , like the Rhythm and Calendar methods, are not effective. No proponent of Natural Family Planning (NFP) or Fertility Awareness Based Methods (FABM), which have effectiveness rates as high as 99.4 percent, would recommend them. Yet this study does nothing to differentiate between these methods of natural birth control, thereby confusing the public, the study results and themselves.
It’s high time researchers studied up on natural birth control methods if they want to include questions about them in a study on the contraceptive practices of teens or adults.
Until they do, I suggest anyone interested in the sexual and reproductive health of teen girls start buying copies of Cycle Savvy: The Smart Teen’s Guide to the Mysteries of Her Body. This book can help our daughters acquire the life skill of body literacy – to understand the mysteries of their menstrual cycles and how this knowledge can serve them well as they make decisions about their sexual and reproductive health and lives.
Will Kotex Break the Bank with “Break the Cycle” Campaign?
March 16th, 2010 by Elizabeth KisslingThis week, Kotex is launching a new campaign “that aims to encourage women to talk candidly and without embarrassment about periods and vaginal care”. Research statistics from the brand indicate that “vaginally-aware women” are more likely to have a positive body image (40% vs. 31%) and to be satisfied with their level of self-confidence (64% vs. 43%) and ability to express themselves (76% vs. 55%). In the same survey, 70% of women said they wish society would change the way it talks about vaginal health, but less than half feel like they can do anything about it.
Of course, this means new products from Kotex. But from where I sit, there’s little new here. The products seem to be the same old Kotex pads and tampons, now individually wrapped in bright, “fierce” colors instead of the usual pastels. The same old plastic applicators are now yellow, blue, or green, instead of just pink. The anti-ad advertisement technique (see video at right) was pioneered by Sprite (a CocaColaTM product) in their mid-1990s “Image is Nothing. Obey Your Thirst.” campaign. The Sprite ad was featured in Douglas Rushkoff’s 2001 film, The Merchants of Cool, as an example of how corporate advertising appropriates youth culture to appeal to young people.
And that seems to be what Kotex is doing with “Break the Cycle.” The new web site has a hip, blocky style and multiple ways to interact with the company and with other customers (hello, Twitter! hi there, Facebook!). Quotes from girls and young women appear throughout the site, many in handwritten fonts. The FAQ file (“Real Answers“) features three answers to each question: one from a peer, one from a mom, and one from a health expert.
At the same time, this looks likes an honest effort to increase education and honesty about menstruation and vaginal health. Kotex surveyed 1,607 North American girls and women aged 14-35 about their knowledge of menstruation, vaginal health, and self-esteem and body image. The findings won’t surprise anyone at re:Cycling:
- Most women are satisfied with their personal relationships, self-confidence, and level of happiness – a majority describes themselves as intelligent, independent, and happy. However, the majority are not satisfied with what their body looks like and only a minority describe themselves as beautiful or sexy.
- Many women think of their vaginal area as ugly and are self-conscious about what a potential sexual partner might think of how their vagina looks.
The specific findings about menstruation are sadly familiar; I recall finding similar statistics in a widely-cited survey conducted in 1981 on a similar population when I first began studying menstruation 20 years ago.
- Society’s attitudes toward vaginal health – menstruation in particular – have had an effect on how women experience certain milestones, communicate with each other, and how they feel about
themselves.- More than half of women (59%) felt awkward around others when they first got their period, and about 3 in 5 (62%) report that they felt uncomfortable discussing the experience with other people, even their close friends and family.
- Though a majority (66%) say getting their period didn’t really change anything else about who they are or how they behave, more than half (55%) report that they became more self-conscious about their body once they started menstruating, and even now, more than half of women (54%) feel dirty when they have their period, and 2 in 3 (67%) don’t want people knowing when they’re menstruating.
- One in three women (32%) think buying period products is embarrassing.
The Cloth Pad Gets Around the African Continent
February 17th, 2010 by Chris Bobel
We at re: Cycling have been tracking the African-girls-miss-school-because-they-menstruate equation for a while now.Specifically, we’ve questioned the assumption that menstrual FLOW management is girls’ biggest menstrual problem (it is not, says at least one recent study–cramps are!). And we’ve been MORE critical of so-called altruistic solutions that are, underneath the (silent?) disposable wrapper, little-more than consumer socialization. Menstrual shame, sexism and poverty are not ameliorated though the cultivation of brand loyalty. Girls need information, support and the tools to develop awareness of their bodies while learning to live sustainably–this does not come in the shape of a box of single-use products that ends up clogging landfills.
Making green products available to girls while supporting economic growth and self-sufficiency in the Global South seems a more enduring and girl-centered initiative and there are number of projects that are doing just that. There Elizabeth Scharpf’s SHE initaitive in Rwanda and Lunapads donation program in collaboration with a number of related initiatives:
- Sexual Rights Centre (Zimbabwe)
- Lugari Community Resource Centre (Kenya)
- Kibaale Community School (Uganda)
- Imagine1Day (Ethiopia)
- Pads for Prisons Project (Sudan)
- Rafiki Africa (Kenya)
Yesterday, the NYTimes reported on a new study of Ghanian girls that found: ” Many schoolgirls from poor families stay home up to five days each month when they have their period.” (but could cramps be the culprit as they were in the study released in December 2009?)
The same piece described another cloth- pads- for- girls outreach effort, this one organized by a group called Huru International and supported by this eclectic list of backers: President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the Elton John AIDS Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, Sunflag Steel, Warner Brothers. Huru International developed washable cloth pads and packaged them together with a few pairs of panties, laundry soap and HIV/AIDS info into kits for school girls in Kenya. Cloth pads–though admittedly not every menstruator’s preferred menstrual care option, does make sense especially for girls who lack the resources to buy single use products (one Kenyan girls reports that a box of pads costs is equivalent to the cost of a bag of corn flour).
It seems that the good ole’ time-tested cloth pad is emerging as a viable option for girls throughout Africa.
We think that’s encouraging news, for the planet AND for girls.
Book Review: The Modern Period
February 8th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
If I correctly understand the terms of SHM’s copyright agreement with Oxford University Press, I am permitted to publish this unedited version of my review as a “pre-print” article. The final version will be available only from Social History of Medicine.
Lara Freidenfelds, The Modern Period: Menstruation in Twentieth Century America, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Pp. 242. £31/$60. ISBN 978 0-8018 9245 5.
Lara Freidenfelds, an historian currently teaching in Women’s Studies at Wellesley College, has written a thorough and engaging history of menstruation in twentieth century USA. Her title, The Modern Period, is more than a succinct description; it cleverly references her discussion throughout of how advancing Progressive values shaped beliefs and practices surrounding menstruation. These Progressive values included faith in scientific rationality, belief in the value of education, and unqualified endorsement of technological progress. The ‘modern period’ also references the evolution of menstrual management practices into a coherent whole and the movement away from practices and beliefs considered old-fashioned, such as worries about catching a chill or the use of cloth pads. Her analysis throughout addresses the class implications of modernization; that is, the perceived need to adopt modern practices of bodily presentation and self-control for class mobility. Such modernization, asserts Friedenfelds, is a key component of Americans’ ability to see themselves as middle-class across great gaps in education and income.
Friedenfelds skillfully integrates a variety of historical sources, such as advertisements, promotional brochures, educational texts, and previous historical and sociological research on menstrual beliefs and practices with her own extended interviews with women and men of a range of ages, occupations, social standings, and ethnic backgrounds. This adroit synthesis helps Friedenfelds show how the modern period was created collectively by advertisers, health educators, manufacturers of menstrual products, and other ‘experts’, with the eager assistance of ordinary people.
The diversity of age and ethnicity among Friedenfelds’ interview participants is particularly striking and significant in a work such as this: the oldest informant was born before 1910, and the youngest after 1970. The 75 interviewees included white Americans in New England, African Americans in the rural South, Chinese Americans in California, as well as 13 people from other backgrounds. Examples from these interviews are well contextualized and grounded with historical research.
Friedenfelds’ choice to organize The Modern Period thematically rather than chronologically made the text a more appealing read as a whole while simultaneously making it possible for each chapter to stand alone. This organizational choice also makes clear how changes in the evolving modern period came about gradually and often in fragmented ways. The book is divided into five chapters, plus brief introduction and conclusion, around the themes of life before modern menstrual management, modern talk about menstruation, modern menstrual behavior, modern techniques of menstrual management, and a fifth chapter about tampons as a case study in controversy.
Some contemporary readers may find it difficult to believe that tampons were once controversial. But when they were first introduced as a commercial product in the 1930s and 1940s, both menstruators and physicians were skeptical about their safety and efficacy. There were also debates about the sexual implications of tampons, and whether it was advisable for sexually inexperienced women to use them. This chapter provides a keen example of how effectively Freidenfelds uses interview data to supplement documents-based research: Using tampons required women to cross boundaries of race, class, culture, and region, as well as learn different bodily practices required by tampon use compared to menstrual pads. Freidenfelds shows this with vivid interview narratives about women experimenting on their own to learn how to insert a tampon, modern daughters explaining to traditional, immigrant mothers that tampons were safe, and more. The frankness of these narratives is a testament to Freidenfelds’ skill as an interviewer.
Debating the Causes of Early Menarche
December 29th, 2009 by Elizabeth Kissling
Three of my young nieces, Labor Day Weekend 2009.
Janice Horowitiz’ “Dueling Docs” feature at Huffington Post today is about the issue of girls reaching puberty at increasingly earlier ages than previous generations. Both Dr. Alisan Goldfarb and Dr. Stephen Safe talk about endocrine disruptors such as BPA (bisphenol-A, a carcinogenic component of some plastics found in some baby bottles and water containers) and pesticides. Certainly both types of chemicals are likely to be a factor in early menarche, but I find it surprising that those are the only factors mentioned. There’s no discussion of the roles of psychosocial stressors, low birth weight, or formula feeding. Neither physician gives serious consideration to the endocrine disruptors that are the hormones used in raising beef and dairy cattle as well as chicken in this country; Dr. Safe acknowledges that “[a]lmost all foods have endocrine disruptors”, but qualifies that statement with, “particularly fruits and vegetables.” (Do you suppose the beef and dairy lobby advertise at Huffington Post?)
For a more thorough, nuanced analysis of this issue, see Sandra Steingraber’s report, The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls: What We Know, What We Need to Know, published in 2007 by the Breast Cancer Fund. Among other findings, Steingraber reports that new research has revealed that the amount of natural hormones a child’s body produces on its own is much lower than previously estimated; this means “safe levels” of exposure to synthetic hormones and endocrine disruptors must be recalibrated, and policy modified accordingly.
Readers should note that statements published in re: Cycling are those of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Society as a whole.
