Menstruating During the Great Depression

FINALLY!

PERIODS ARE BEING ACKNOWLEDGED IN BOOKS.

And not in a missed period or late period pregnancy story line. Just your typical every month period.

ALWAYS wonder how female characters manage their periods. How can they just whisk off into unknown worlds at the spur of the moment? What happens when their periods show up and they haven’t brought the right supplies? Or there aren’t bathrooms around? Or they don’t have changes or ways to clean their clothes?

Whenever I daydream and imagine myself living these fantastical lives, my anxious brain sends intrusive reminders that life wouldn’t actually be that easy. And one of its favorite go-to’s is, “What happens when you start bleeding?”

Followed closely by, “Would you really last that long without showering?”

And sometimes, “You’d be too tired and hungry to think this clearly.”

Or, wildly, “How do they get eyelashes out of their eyes with no mirrors?”

Please tell me I’m not the only one who can’t suspend reality well enough to forget about all my bodily maintenance issues and instead ends up veering off the story line to consider how or if I could actually handle it all.

No? Just me?

Apparently, NOT.

Because Kristin Hannah threw this gem of a line in her book, The Four Winds — a novel about a woman with two young children escaping the Dust Bowl only to be met with poverty and discrimination in California:

“There were no bathrooms in the fields, so it wasn’t easy for a woman at certain times of the month, and Loreda had just begun menstruating.” — Page 267 of The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

It’s not much, I know.

I’d really appreciate 2 to 3 pages dedicated to a detailed explanation of how all these women toiling away for 12 hours a day in a hot cotton field actually did manage their periods. Did they stuff their underwear full of rags and hope for the best? Did they have to spend hours washing and drying these rags every night?

Or, did they do the opposite and wear nothing underneath their skirts to let their blood fall to the ground? Did all these women have blood stains all over their clothes?

Honestly, can someone send me a link that explains how women have managed their periods through all of history?

I need to know so that when I’m annoyed that I have to wake up in the middle of the night to change my tampon, I can remind myself how I have it so easy compared to my ancestors. It’ll help take the edge off my constant annoyance that I have to manage this bleeding every month of my life for the next 15 years, at least.

And if that research hasn’t been done yet, you’re welcome for the flawless Women’s Studies dissertation idea. Also, please send me your paper when you’re done.

Even without the thorough “how to manage your period while working in a cotton field” explanation that we all need, this line is enough to acknowledge that, “Hey, there’s no bathroom. And, hey! That’s even harder for women to deal with.” And that’s a start. It also proves that I’m NOT the only one thinking about the practicalities of living in these story lines, which I find great comfort in knowing.

And it’s details like this that make these characters REAL. They aren’t just fictional women. They represent the real women who lived through these situations. Many of our own family members — our great great (and beyond) grandmothers — had to live their whole lives without tampons and guaranteed bathroom access.

Women are the backbone, the grit, the heart of a functioning society. This book really highlights that.

Hannah also brings life to the rampant pregnancy and child loss that was a common aspect of life for many women. All three female characters of child-bearing age experience the loss of a child, and it bonds them deeply.

I love that women in this book are dynamic, multi-layered characters, while the men are mostly relegated to flat, side characters. This is especially important in the historical fiction genre. Because women’s roles in history have been nearly erased, telling these stories is essential to see how and where we fit into historical events.

Rather than escape my life, The Four Winds made me want to soak it all in and appreciate everything that I have. Raising kids feels impossible some days, and that’s without fear of financial ruin or hunger or unknown dangers lurking just around the corner. I truly can’t imagine watching my children go hungry and have no support system to fall back on to help me. It was surely terrifying.

But that’s the power of women. We carry on. We shoulder the responsibility and make whatever we can out of the situation. We muster the strength and provide what our children need. I want to read more stories like this. Elsa wasn’t a hero. She wasn’t in some unique situation (for her time). She was just an average woman who was unlucky enough to live through one of the most devastating times of American history, and this is her story.