Inquiry: Lara Freidenfelds: THE MODERN PERIOD: MENSTRUATION IN TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICA

Don’t swim! Don’t hike! And for goodness sake don’t hold hands with boys! There was a time, and it wasn’t that long ago, when having your period was something shameful and embarrassing. It didn’t help that numerous medical texts, right up to the 1930s, promoted the worst erroneous notions about menstruation. Many girls born in the early decades of the 20th Century could not even rely on their mothers or older sisters to inform them about what was happening to their bodies. But then a dramatic change happened in the way women viewed having their periods and this was inspired by new products, text books, pamphlets, educational films and an interest in adopting a more ‘modern” scientific view of their bodies. Tonight on Inquiry, we talk with LARA FREIDENFELDS, historian of women’s health, on her revealing and interesting book THE MODERN PERIOD: MENSTRUATION IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICA.