Feminism | Posted by Georgia L on 11/19/2012

The Red Menace?

When it comes to competitiveness, I am the winner. I choose to be ridiculously competitive about certain things, and my fight to beat everyone else is bloody, bitter, and vaguely worrying. Of all the things I’ve fought hardest to win though, puberty was maybe not one that you’d expect. I wanted to grow up faster than all my friends, and I wanted it badly.

Maybe that’s why I never understood – and still don’t understand – the negativity that menstruation seems to evoke. Periods, to me, seem messy, annoying, and slightly nerve-racking. However, they’re also to thank for, oh, you know, just the entirety of the human race.

When it comes to the perception of menstruation, one could argue that our attitude towards it has almost regressed. In Ancient Greece …

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Feminism | Posted by Reb V on 12/2/2010

Tell It Like It Is: Demystifying Childbirth for Teens

Last Sunday the Guardian website published an article highlighting the rise in reported birth trauma in the UK. The piece, reported on the National Health Service’s response to the number of women requesting caesarian sections for second births, after bad first experiences have left them too scared to opt for traditional methods.

Tocophobia, or the fear of childbirth is said to be increasing at an alarming rate on these shores and an official study is now under way. As someone who last year had a child of her own, I read the Guardian’s article with great interest, even more so when the selected interviewee Angela Almond described a ‘traumatic’ childbirth experience that was not too dissimilar to that of my own and other mothers I know. Now I would …

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