Robin getting her hands taped at Heavy Hitters Boxing Club (Photo by trainer Jay Morales, used with permission).
Guest Post by Robin Percyz
In the boxing ring, droplets of blood are often an indication of triumph. In fact, if you’ve ever had the opportunity to fight, seeing blood on an opponent’s face will often evoke a primal, animalistic pleasure. Boxing is, arguably, one of very few scenarios where bleeding is encouraged.
In this sport, the notion of blood is a funny thing, depending on where it’s coming from. When I sit in my corner after Round 2 of a fight and stare across the ring at my opponent’s bloodied face, my trainer encourages me with zeal. He’ll boast, “Look at the blood, mama- you’re hurting her!! GOOD!” Even my own blood, running down my nose and into my mouth is somewhat appealing, reminding me of the “beast” I am trained to be.
At my boxing club, the carpet lining the ring is stained with visible traces of bloody bouts and sparring. We can point and laugh at whose blood is whose and remember the victory and triumph that resulted from those stains. However, that blood-induced pride would quickly dissipate had it resulted from menstruation.
In the gym, menstruation is held to a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. You would be right in assuming that female boxers are the minority in this culture. As such, my monthly menstruation is never the topic of the day, nor will it ever be discussed. “Menstrually” speaking, we want our women to have healthy cycles, yet we generally regard menstruation as disruptive, unspoken, and above all, disgusting. In the boxing community, we encounter a clear and evident divide between that of “good” and “bad” blood. It’s as clear as this: Blood from the nose – GOOD! Blood from between a woman’s legs – BAD and, further, DISMISSED!
As a female boxer, I think about my “blood” on a fairly regular basis. Bleeding is something that should innately occur to my system every 28 days (more or less). However, like many female athletes, my menstruation has taken a hiatus for some unknown amount of time. They call it amenorrhea, symptomatic of the female triad. This is all fancy jargon that basically communicates one simple fact: I don’t get a period – ever.
Boxing is an interesting sport in that it exercises much more than physicality. As fighters, we are expected to fight within a certain weight class. For many competing athletes, this often means excessive physical exertion on top of brief bouts of starvation prior to fighting. Smart? Of course not!
After some time without a menstrual period, I certainly began to experience some psychological hypersensitivity. Am I woman? Where did my period go? These were the kinds of thoughts running through my head prior to each bout, when the doctor would ask me, “When was the last date of your menstrual period?” I don’t know.
As women, we associate our first menstruation as a coming of age that says “I AM NOW A WOMAN!” The loss of a menstrual cycle would, reasonably, mean that you are now LESS of a woman. Or, perhaps, am I woman at all?
It’s just blood. I wondered why blood between my legs would have anything to do with feeling like a woman. After all, it was annoying to have to worry about it for four to seven days out of the month, not to mention training with it.
