1. Normalization
Once every month people between the onset of puberty and the beginning of menopause who possess a functional uterus shed their uterine lining through the vaginal opening. This uterine lining contains blood, an unfertilized egg or two, and various tissues. Since a baby didn't quicken that month, the body doesn't need all that extra material lying around getting old and stale and gross, so it hits the eject button and forces the uterus-possessor into a little mini practice labor, which lasts for somewhere between three and seven days. For most women, and some men, it happens every month for somewhere around thirty-five or forty years.
Periods happen. It's a biological fact and a day-to-day reality. Sometimes it sucks fat honking monkey dicks; sometimes it only sucks a patch of crabgrass. Either way, it's something as normal as eating or sleeping, and it happens literally every month for like half your life, if you live a long life. If you add up your average number of bleed days a month and calculate the math, the average uterus-owner will bleed for somewhere between seven and ten nonconsecutive years of their life.
If you think about it, it's kind of metal. I mean, we can bleed for /seven days straight/ without dying! I'd like to see a penis-bearer do that! Yet because--one second. *Steps onto feminist soapbox* Ahem. Yet because the Penis is King, our patriarchal society treats periods as something weird and gross and unusual, like having one is freaky-deaky and mad strange, yo.
There was a photographic series that was popular a while ago wherein a photographer took pictures of women going about their daily lives when their period set in, with blood trickling down their thigh as they walked out of a restaurant or swirling in the bathwater as they luxuriated. The controversy the series was met with, and the disgusted responses, were really quite astounding--people who watch people fart on each other as a recreational activity acted as if capturing such an everyday aspect of the human condition was crossing some horrible, unspoken line. Hell, people are more comfortable watching blood siblings bone each other than they are with seeing women bleed (unless it originates from the head, legs, or torso, of course, because a gaping chest wound is perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of).
We even treat piss and shit better than we treat menstruation, and menstruation is both more hygienic and better smelling. Imho, at least; matters of sense are of course a matter of taste (buhdum tiss), but personally, I've never gagged cleaning menstrual blood up off the floor. We even treat the blood that flows from our veins like it's somehow safer than menstrual tissues, glorifying things like the blood brothers ceremony, then acting like so much as touching an unused tampon will give you a horrible disease.
But guess what! Unless you have an STD, or a yeast infection or something, your uterine blood is sterile! And really, why wouldn't it be? It's all the food that would have nourished a baby had you conceived one within that moon-cycle. It may not stay sterile once it's exposed to the elements and bacteria find their way onto it (as they inevitably find their way into everything, sneaky little bastards), but when it's coming out, and shortly thereafter, it's totally safe, it usually doesn't smell all that awful.... It's kind of like spit; maybe you don't want it on you, but if someone drools on your arm a little bit while they're sleeping all you have to do is wash your arm and it's like there was never an issue.
But here's the thing; in this patriarchal western society, Penis=King, Vagina=Prisoner. Sort of. We treat male as the default, is what I'm saying; pants are considered genderless but a dress automatically indicates femininity; a flat chest could mean male or female or neither but boobs automatically equal woman; guy is male and gal is female but even though guys is gender-neutral, gals is still strictly feminine; male nipples are a just part of their physiology but female nipples are a political statement; and the list goes on, and on, and on....
The really weird thing is, if any sex were going to be the default, shouldn't it be the sex that was in the majority? And yet, despite the statistic that there are 2% more uterus-owners than penis-owners, penises (penii?) are the default sex organ. And nothing ever comes out a penis that isn't piss or semen (unless you are very very ill, in which case you should please consult a doctor immediately), yet it's more acceptable to talk, in great detail, about a penis emitting biological waste or sexual fluids than it is to mention the very existence of menstrual blood.
And why? Because, as I said, we live in a patriarchal society. This means that everything is tailored to the cis male experience; male is automatically normal, female is automatically abnormal, which is why it's totally cool to have a movie with only dudes in it, but totally weird and sexist to have anything at all ever with only women/girls as the leads. So penises are funny and normal and vaginas are weird and disgusting, both alluring and vaguely intimidating, greatly sought after--but only if they never do anything that hints at biological processes, because why would you want to fuck something that's like, alive, and like, human and equal to you and stuff?
Okay, I'm getting off topic, and I could go on for hours so I'll just stop myself here. What I'm getting at is; periods are not a political statement. Periods are not weird, they're so normal more than half the world has them. There are so many myths attached to periods that it can be hard to keep from backhanding someone who tries to plant misinformation within your range of hearing, and some families are so embarrassed by this biological fact of life that they never tell their uterus-bearing children about it until it's too late.
Some people still call it "Eve's Curse." Kids make fun of you in the locker room if you don't have it, then they make fun of you when you do. People get laughed at for leaking through their pants or skirt or what-have-you, like they could have helped it. People act like putting in a tampon provides a sexual thrill, or if you're involved in sports you can get ridiculed by your coach for choosing to wear pads instead.
I repeat; there are teenagers who don't even know that periods are a thing!
Periods. Are. A. Thing. That. Happens. And chances are good that if you have a uterus, you have either had one, or will have one in the future. And yet in all the many, many, many years that I've been reading books, I've only come across periods three and a half times; in the Earth's Children series, Ayla's period isn't a big plot point, but it is mentioned from time to time. Jean M. Auel talks about the method Ayla uses for dealing with and collecting her menstrual blood, and the small effects it has on her life, such as her sex life with Jondalar.
In what I believe was A Girl Named Disaster (I'd forgotten the name of the book over the years, and this is the only book I could find in which a girl from Mozambique makes her way to Zimbabwe whilst becoming a woman, so I'm going to say that it is the one I read as a ten-year-old), young Nhamo begins to menstruate for the first time while alone on a deadly journey to find her distant relatives, and struggles with the pressures of becoming a woman while so utterly cut off from everyone she loves. Later on, she also struggles to let go of the concept that menstruation means that one has become a woman, since the fact that your body is technically ready to bear children has nothing to do with emotional and intellectual maturity.
It was a sizable enough plot point that it's most of what I remember from the book, and it touched on important aspects of the experience of "first blood" that no one ever talks about because no one ever wants to talk about it. If I hadn't been raised with a mother who saw no reason to be ashamed of biology, this book could have been my only exposure to menstruation outside of school "your body and you" seminars, and that kind of writing is pretty important. "Your Body and You" seminars ghost over the details of pubescent changes and what's happening physically, but it never delves into the emotional and psychological effects of a reaching a milestone that one is being constantly told one should be both proud (you're a woman :D!) and ashamed of (you're a woman >:|).
Menstruation is so, so, so physiologically simple, but as simple as it is to explain biologically, it is every bit as difficult to navigate socially, culturally, emotionally.
These books both treat periods as a normal thing in different ways--Earth's Children by incorporating it into the world as a fact of life and mentioning it largely in passing, and A Girl Named Disaster by supersizing it, bringing it out into the light where young uterus-owners can stick knives in it and say, "Even though it's normal to feel this way about these things, maybe I don't have to." At the very least, they can identify with the struggles of the character, which is sometimes all a kid needs. To know they aren't the only one.
So why should you write periods? Reason number one: Normalize. How can something be seen as normal if we lock it in the dark and pretend it doesn't exist? That's why there's been such a big push lately to write more female characters, more gay and bi and pan and trans and genderqueer and PoC and disabled characters, etc etc, it's why I talk about Tourette's and did presentations all across New York state--because you can't normalize something you don't talk about. If you can't talk about it, it must not fall under our current societal definition of "normal."
So let's talk about periods. Let's write about periods, write about characters having them, write about characters talking about them, hating them, laughing about them, bonding over them. Let's write about people having to borrow a tampon from a friend or offering a spare pad to a stranger on the bus, about the infinite kindness and desolate cruelty that surround the biological process. Let's talk about it as a scientific event, as a social milestone, as just a daily bother.
Let's normalize, normalize, normalize, so that maybe one day, when one of our grandchildren reads Carrie, they balk at the motives and actions of the characters, seeing them as completely unreasonable.
Bleeding from your vagina is not weird, damn it.
2. Plot Complications
Okay, so the desire to normalize menstruation isn't strong within you, or you can't find a good reason for it in your story. Consider: Plot Complications.
"How could it complicate my plot?" you ask. "My character getting PMS and tearing someone's head off?"
"No!" I shout, thwacking you with the hammer of Don't-You-Sass-Me-Fool. "That's one for the garbage fire!"
See, periods are normal, they're usually sterile, but they can be messy, they can be embarrassing, it may not smell as bad as feces but menstrual blood does have a distinctive odor, and when it hits you unawares, it's definitely something that needs dealing with.
There could be a whole subplot wherein a character has to sneak off to the nearest hygienic-materials-dispenser at an inopportune time, or they could meet the love of their life by offering them their jacket to help cover the stain forming on their ass. Hell, a young person's quest for a Maxi Pad when they find out the bathroom dispenser is jammed could be what leads them to find the Sword of Destiny or discover the horrible secret that the principle's been keeping.
And if your story takes place out in the wilds, your uterus-owners coming into their monthlies could be a deadly issue if they don't have a good means of flow-stoppage and/or self-defense. Predators are hella good at sniffing out blood, menstrual blood in particular since in a lot of animals it indicates heat, which is a great time for boning. If a predator gets a sniff of that blood trail, it can mean big trouble, and if your team is already being hunted by something with super senses, it can be all the more deadly. ESPECIALLY if it hits in the middle of the night, when the character in question is defenseless and unawares. >:3
And yes, the symptoms that go hand-in-hand with the blood can be used to complicate the plot, too. Some people do experience emotional sensitivity or mood swings during menstruation, which can cause arguments that might not otherwise happen, especially under stressful situations. Periods can also be very painful, particularly on day one, making it hard to so much as get up and walk around, which if you're trying to get somewhere fast--or get away from somewhere fast--is going to be a problem.
Even if the stakes are only maintaining your character's current lifestyle, period day one can muck things up, dampening desire for social interaction, diminishing social and intellectual energy as well as physical, embarrassing you in front of your friends, whatever the case may be. Plus, that pain I just mentioned? Makes it a lot harder for a lot of people to maintain a pleasant attitude when talking to assholes or misogynists, so maybe when Angelina gets her period on the day of the big test and has to walk around with her sweater tied around her waist all day is also the day she punches Big Bigot Bob in the face and gets suspended from school.
If your villains tend to be of the misogynist sort, oh boy, is there no end to the shit you can stir up! Like I said, menstruation can be messy and uncomfortable, and just like anything else, that can be used to kickstart drama, to heighten tension, or to cause problems, and as we all probably know by now, causing problems is the best way to keep a story going strong!
3. Realism
It comes down to this; periods happen. And you can write a perfectly good book without ever once mentioning menstruation, as many have done! You can also write a great book that's all about menstruation, or centers heavily around it, or just bandies it around a lot. Or you could just mention it in passing.
One of my favorite parts of a fanfiction I read recently was a passage in which a woman excuses herself to use the restroom, realizes her period has started, puts on a pad, and returns to her date. Why is it my favorite? Firstly because it wasn't that great a fanfic, but mostly because it was just so casual. Just a detail. One of the many small details we pepper in that don't really matter. The fact that her period had started mattered as much as the color of the diner walls, and I had never seen it dealt with so realistically before.
The thought that ran through the protagonist's head when she realized she was menstruating? I'm glad I don't work tomorrow.
That made me smile because, I mean, how fucking real is that? My first thought when I realize I'm bleeding is usually, So that's why I've been so tired today. Plus, I had an instant connection to the protagonist (an OC) because for me, the first forty-eight hours are always the worst, and life is always better when I don't have to be responsible for the first day or two. I relate. And I may not have loved the direction the story took after that chapter (the character became too impossibly humble for all her incredible talents for my liking), but that section of that fanfic is now stuck in my head, and I think I'll remember it for a long time.
Mentioning something small and real--"Mike took a piss behind some weeds while Edgar scoped out the scene," "Johnny pulled at the loose tabs of skin around his fingernails and chewed on the inside of his cheeks," "Mary stopped by the store to pick up Kotex and Raisin Bran,"--can make your world and characters seem more real. You don't always need to be detailed about it, but mentioning that your characters do normal human things is often refreshing in our world of godmodded protagonists and underpowered villains.
Let's be real. Let's be complex.
Let's naturalize.
