USA Today reports Serena Williams deal with P&G

10) She is upset and wants someone to know

9) Something about estrogen levels

8 ) She is about to start her period

7) Matter over mind…her body has taken over

6) I don’t know, but she will feel better in a week or less

5) Hormones

4) Women do that about every 28 days

3) Time for tampons

2)We gave up trying to figure that out a long time ago, but it will pass

1) PMS, of course.

I know I am not the only one exasperated with the easy dismissal of women’s anger as little more than PMS.

Sometimes (and I’d venture, MUCH of the time), an angry woman IS simply, well, an angry woman.

But WE (culturally-speaking), tend to immediately link women’s anger with PMS. This is lazy and effectively trivializes and silences women. While I don’t dispute that hormonal fluctuations can and often do explain the TIMING and/or SEVERITY of a woman’s emotional expression, I argue that is it important, no IMPERATIVE, that we resist the temptation to immediately attribute a woman’s rage to the biological.

On 12 September 2009, Serena Williams verbally abused a line judge during the US Open. In the following days, the blogosphere hosted a hungry feast on the event. Racists had their usual deplorable field day; biological determinists joined in for the fun. Bloggers (many of them devoted fans) breezily attributed Serena’s outburst (and sure, it WAS a doozy), to PMS. One blogger referred to the incident as “Serena’s PMS Moment.”

“It was a total PMS moment…. completely unexplainable…

Another blogger wrote,

“Serena has already told the world that she has very difficult periods, in particular, menstrual migraines. And where there are menstrual migraines, PMS poisoning can’t be too far away.”

One more sample:

“She had a bad day on court, but to me, it just sounds like classic PMS emotional roller-coastering.

Then on 21 September 2009, Procter & Gamble’s announced that Serena Williams will headline a series of their “Outsmart Mother Nature” ads (print and video). Williams, says, P&G, was chosen because she “represents the energy, independence and strength of women they want to celebrate.” (And P&G supports her apology for her outburst.)

See the ad here. (Great fodder for another post, another time.)

Even though this deal was in works months (longer?) before the US Open and thus, unrelated to Serena’s “PMS Moment,” the press, like USA Today, still implicitly makes the link.

Take a good look at this story.  Notice the juxtaposition of a very angry (and very powerful) Serena Williams underneath the brand name TAMPAX. No cognitive dissonance there, right? Even funny, as in, ‘that’s rich….now Ms PMS is the spokesperson for a MENSTRUAL product. Good one, Tampax!”

Yesterday, I entered PMS + Serena Williams + US Open into google and I got 45, 000 hits. The feast continues.

Maybe Serena was PMSing that fateful day. Maybe not. I am not in a position to evaluate what motivated her to come unhinged. But neither are the legions of others who think they’ve got it all figured out, or worse, code anger as PMS, reducing a woman’s emotional expression to a “PMS moment.”

I realize that often, people use PMS to (generously?) excuse a woman’s anger (as in ‘she didn’t mean it, she was just hormonal’). But that’s no better, really. Anger should be neither erased nor excused. Anger is powerful stuff. Anger is energy. Anger is information.  Continue reading...