Chapter Girlhood menstrual management and the 'culture of concealment' in postwar Britain
In 1996, 238 cis-gendered women responded to the Mass Observation (MO) Directive ‘Women’s sanitary protection and menstruation’. The Directive asked for stories, anecdotes, beliefs, and observations about menstrual management, education, technology, and stigma. Challenging what Karen Houppert termed...
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| Materialtyp: | Online |
| Språk: | engelska |
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Manchester University Press
2025
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| Länkar: | ONIX_20250703T165813_9781526170675_8 |
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| _version_ | 1869521254913933312 |
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| author | Froom, Hannah |
| author_browse | Froom, Hannah |
| author_facet | Froom, Hannah |
| author_sort | Froom, Hannah |
| collection | Directory of Open Access Books |
| description | In 1996, 238 cis-gendered women responded to the Mass Observation (MO) Directive ‘Women’s sanitary protection and menstruation’. The Directive asked for stories, anecdotes, beliefs, and observations about menstrual management, education, technology, and stigma. Challenging what Karen Houppert termed the ‘culture of concealment’ surrounding menstruation, the responses to this Directive are a rich and rare source base about a hidden aspect of everyday health. This chapter uses this source material to examine the day-to-day menstrual management experiences of girls growing up in Britain between 1960 and 1980. Utilising phenomenological insights, it explores the thoughts, feelings, and sensations elicited by managing menstruation, illuminating the importance of girls’ sensory perceptions of dress, space, and place to their menstrual experiences. Many women wrote in detail about the physical and emotional aspects of how it felt to menstruate, wear menstrual products, and live in a culture that prioritised menstrual concealment. A focus on descriptions of sensation and feeling reveals the ubiquity of feelings of shame and embarrassment amongst young menstruators, but also reveals that it was not just stigma that made menstruation an uncomfortable experience for girls. Drawing on Joanne Entwistle’s work on the phenomenology of dress, this chapter understands menstrual technologies as items of dress that, like clothes, orient individuals to the world, shaping their self-esteem, interactions, and comportment. Interpreted in this way, this chapter reveals how ill-designed, ill-fitting, and ineffective technologies made menstruation more difficult for girls in postwar Britain, compounding their anxieties about menstrual concealment and their own menstruating bodies. |
| format | Online |
| id | doab-20.500.12854ir-162495 |
| institution | Directory of Open Access Books |
| language | eng |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| publishDateRange | 2025 |
| publishDateSort | 2025 |
| publisher | Manchester University Press |
| publisherStr | Manchester University Press |
| record_format | ojs |
| spelling | doab-20.500.12854ir-1624952025-07-05T05:00:45Z Chapter Girlhood menstrual management and the 'culture of concealment' in postwar Britain Froom, Hannah everyday health health humanities intersectionality medical humanities social history of medicine wellbeing thema EDItEUR::M Medicine and Nursing::MB Medicine: general issues::MBX History of medicine thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHT History: specific events and topics::NHTB Social and cultural history thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day::3MP 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999::3MPQ Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999 In 1996, 238 cis-gendered women responded to the Mass Observation (MO) Directive ‘Women’s sanitary protection and menstruation’. The Directive asked for stories, anecdotes, beliefs, and observations about menstrual management, education, technology, and stigma. Challenging what Karen Houppert termed the ‘culture of concealment’ surrounding menstruation, the responses to this Directive are a rich and rare source base about a hidden aspect of everyday health. This chapter uses this source material to examine the day-to-day menstrual management experiences of girls growing up in Britain between 1960 and 1980. Utilising phenomenological insights, it explores the thoughts, feelings, and sensations elicited by managing menstruation, illuminating the importance of girls’ sensory perceptions of dress, space, and place to their menstrual experiences. Many women wrote in detail about the physical and emotional aspects of how it felt to menstruate, wear menstrual products, and live in a culture that prioritised menstrual concealment. A focus on descriptions of sensation and feeling reveals the ubiquity of feelings of shame and embarrassment amongst young menstruators, but also reveals that it was not just stigma that made menstruation an uncomfortable experience for girls. Drawing on Joanne Entwistle’s work on the phenomenology of dress, this chapter understands menstrual technologies as items of dress that, like clothes, orient individuals to the world, shaping their self-esteem, interactions, and comportment. Interpreted in this way, this chapter reveals how ill-designed, ill-fitting, and ineffective technologies made menstruation more difficult for girls in postwar Britain, compounding their anxieties about menstrual concealment and their own menstruating bodies. 2025-07-04T05:00:18Z 2025-07-04T05:00:18Z 2025-07-03T15:02:59Z 2024 chapter ONIX_20250703T165813_9781526170675_8 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/103941 9781526170675 9781526170651 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/162495 eng Social Histories of Medicine open access image/jpeg image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/103941/1/9781526170675-ch13.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/103941/1/9781526170675-ch13.pdf Manchester University Press Manchester University Press 10.7765/9781526170675 10.7765/9781526170675 bcb4ab08-c525-4e6c-88e5-a0cf0a175533 ‘Everyday health’, embodiment, and selfhood since 1950 Wellcome Trust d859fbd3-d884-4090-a0ec-baf821c9abfd 9781526170675 9781526170651 Wellcome Manchester University Press 20 Manchester [...] open access |
| spellingShingle | everyday health health humanities intersectionality medical humanities social history of medicine wellbeing thema EDItEUR::M Medicine and Nursing::MB Medicine: general issues::MBX History of medicine thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHT History: specific events and topics::NHTB Social and cultural history thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day::3MP 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999::3MPQ Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999 Froom, Hannah Chapter Girlhood menstrual management and the 'culture of concealment' in postwar Britain |
| title | Chapter Girlhood menstrual management and the 'culture of concealment' in postwar Britain |
| title_full | Chapter Girlhood menstrual management and the 'culture of concealment' in postwar Britain |
| title_fullStr | Chapter Girlhood menstrual management and the 'culture of concealment' in postwar Britain |
| title_full_unstemmed | Chapter Girlhood menstrual management and the 'culture of concealment' in postwar Britain |
| title_short | Chapter Girlhood menstrual management and the 'culture of concealment' in postwar Britain |
| title_sort | chapter girlhood menstrual management and the culture of concealment in postwar britain |
| topic | everyday health health humanities intersectionality medical humanities social history of medicine wellbeing thema EDItEUR::M Medicine and Nursing::MB Medicine: general issues::MBX History of medicine thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHT History: specific events and topics::NHTB Social and cultural history thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day::3MP 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999::3MPQ Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999 |
| topic_facet | everyday health health humanities intersectionality medical humanities social history of medicine wellbeing thema EDItEUR::M Medicine and Nursing::MB Medicine: general issues::MBX History of medicine thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHT History: specific events and topics::NHTB Social and cultural history thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day::3MP 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999::3MPQ Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999 |
| url | ONIX_20250703T165813_9781526170675_8 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT froomhannah chaptergirlhoodmenstrualmanagementandthecultureofconcealmentinpostwarbritain |