Eating in the Light of the Moon by Anita Johnston Ph.D

Author:Anita Johnston, Ph.D. [Anita Johnston, Ph.D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gürze Books
Published: 2010-08-09T23:00:00+00:00

How might your relationship to your body, to your feminine self, be different if your introduction to your menses had been like Tanya’s?

Take a moment to recall your earliest experiences with your menses. Were you caught by surprise, or did you know what to expect from your body? What were you taught and how? Were you taught that it was something troublesome, painful, disgusting, dangerous? Were you taught that you were better off ignoring it, as though it weren’t happening? How did you interpret what was said (or not said) to you? What implication did you get about what it means to “become a woman”?

How did you feel? Were you frightened, ashamed, or excited? Did you have conflicting feelings?

What messages did you get from society at that time? How was “having your period” handled at school? What did it mean? How did the girls or women in your life respond to it? How did the boys or men react?

Think about the messages you still get from society today. Look at the messages the media give. Are women’s menses discussed openly, in a matter-of-fact way, or is there much vagueness and innuendo? Pay attention to advertisements of tampons, pads, douches, vaginal deodorants. What do they suggest?

It is not surprising to find that the onset of menstruation often coincides with the onset of disordered eating. Many girls first show signs of being preoccupied with fat and weight around the time of their first menses. That is the time when their bodies are beginning to change, to follow a deeper, more primitive set of guidelines that they cannot control. They may not realize that most girls experience a significant weight gain sometime during the year preceding their menarche. It is the body’s way of accumulating the fat necessary for processing progesterone, the hormone essential to menstruation. If these girls are already living lives where they feel as though they don’t have much power or control, they may start dieting in response to this weight gain to give them some sense of being in control.

Feelings about what it means to become a woman and issues of feminine sexuality begin to surface at the time of menarche. If a girl’s first palpable impressions of being a woman are not favorable, if she is afraid of her sexuality, she may try to suppress her fears by eating compulsively or she may turn to dieting to distract herself from her concerns. A desperate attempt to stop the tide of maturity can herald the beginning of an ongoing battle with her body, a seemingly endless cycle of weight gain and loss that she can only view as evidence of her flawed personality, her lack of “willpower”.

So we find that, just as ancient societies had special rituals for girls at the onset of menarche to celebrate this rite of passage into womanhood, our modern society also has a ritual for adolescent girls to mark their entrance into womanhood. It is called dieting.

Women who struggle with disordered eating often report that when they are premenstrual, they have the most trouble with compulsive eating.

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