😌😐😨😰😭😷💟💥💧💙👉
(Yes, of course, Victorian women had periods, or how could they have babies, which was supposed to be their main function in life... . However, those periods may have not been monthly, because the style in those days was for women to be very slim, pale, delicate and frail-looking, and to achieve this many fashionable girls, especially of upper high society, would eat as little as possible to still stay alive. Now, if you know anything about medicine you know that when a female human body is malnourished the function of "monthlies" can shut down, as a natural defense process, --- to survive. But, --- even so, how did they handle IT???... Mmmm... Well, there were no disposables to buy over the counter. So, they made do with homemade products. These were called "rags," and they were washed out after use... Ugh-ugh. My mom told me that they were hung on the line like other laundry, --- and, my mom was mortified., when my grandma told her this. Also, there was the wearing of dark clothing to hide accidents.... More ugh-ugh. Aren't we glad for moderconveniences???)
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“That’s in the past. That’s more from the Victorian era!” Isabel Mao’s* daughter exclaimed. I was interviewing Isabel about her experiences with menstruation for my book, The Modern Period: Menstruation in Twentieth-Century America. Isabel, an immigrant from Taiwan, figured her American-born daughter must be fibbing when she claimed her swim team coach let her practice during her period. Her daughter, who had just walked into the room, rolled her eyes in protest. She explained that she was always encouraged to play in gym class and participate in sports unless she was feeling really crampy, and she had only felt the need to sit out once during high school. Isabel laughingly conceded that her worries were perhaps outdated. “Oh, that’s called Victorian. I see! Old-fashioned!"
Isabel and her daughter, like many of us, associate the Victorian era with an image of a delicate woman swooning on a couch, incapacitated by her monthly visitor. Where did this image originate? And how closely did it hew to the reality of women’s lives in Victorian America?
Nineteenth century medical writers certainly seemed convinced that women were complete wrecks when they had their periods. In 1869, Dr. James MacGrigor Allan told the Anthropological Society of London that during menstruation, women were invalids, “unfit for any great mental or physical labour.”
In his 1891 Ladies’ Guide to Health and Disease, health reformer John Harvey Kellogg opined that, "it was important for girls’ development to rest completely during menstruation. A teenage girl “should be relieved of taxing duties of every description and should be allowed to yield herself to the feeling of malaise, which usually comes over her at this period, lounging on the sofa or using her time as she pleases."
(Right... Carry on, then...) 💋💖💗👌👀🌸🌹🌷🍵🌻
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