A 28-Day Transformation We Were Taught to Hate
From “wandering wombs” to modern PMS jokes, the menstrual cycle has been used to discredit women. We’re done playing along.
Few things feel as triggering as being called “hysterical” or getting hit with, “Are you on your period?” And with good reason.
For centuries, one of nature’s wonders, our menstrual cycle, has been weaponized against us by a patriarchal society that never tried to understand it nor had any interest in doing so. The spiritual and physical transformation that happens to us across a typical 28-day rhythm has been framed as weakness, impurity, inconvenience, comedy, or pathology. So, of course many of us grew up feeling like something was wrong with us.
So let’s start at the beginning.
What actually happens in your body
The day one of your period marks the beginning of the menstrual phase, when the uterine lining sheds, which causes bleeding. This phase is a time of lower estrogen levels and nutrient loss due to the shedding process.
Your body also moves through a normal range of cycle lengths. A normal menstrual cycle can last between 21 and 35 days. We often expect to bleed between three and seven days.
Meanwhile, mood and energy can change, but those shifts do not make you “crazy.” Lower energy and irritability can come with this phase, and it can be common to experience increased feelings of sadness and depression during the whole menstrual phase. Similarly, it is a moment when estrogen and progesterone sit at their lowest, which can help explain why energy tanks and moods dip.
What happens in the days leading up, and why everything feels louder
For many of us, the hardest stretch is not the bleeding. It’s the lead-up.
What’s known as the luteal phase follows ovulation and lasts about 12 to 14 days, as the body prepares for a potential pregnancy. During this phase, a ruptured follicle becomes the corpus luteum, and progesterone levels rise. If fertilisation does not occur, the corpus luteum atrophies, progesterone declines, and menstruation begins.
That hormonal change can show up as mood shifts, bloating, and fatigue. Common luteal symptoms include mood changes, bloating, and energy fluctuations.
Now, let’s talk about the cultural and religious stigma around the menstrual cycle
Many societies taught women to hide menstruation, treat it as unclean, or avoid even naming it. We are talking about centuries of indoctrination.
In Western industrial societies, many norms around conduct and communication rest on the belief that menstruation should remain hidden. In fact, many traditional religions consider menstruation ritually unclean, and menstrual taboo can involve menstruation being seen as embarrassing.
Even outside religious practice, that cultural hangover sticks. In Western industrial societies, menstruation is expected to remain hidden, both verbally and physically.
So when a woman tries to speak plainly about her cycle, she will probably face disgust, jokes, or silence, both from men and other women. What’s worse, she’s encountering a rulebook a lot of us never agreed to.
Hysteria, medicine, and how the menstrual cycle got tangled on purpose
Language tells on power.
The Online Etymology Dictionary traces the word “hysterical” to the 1610s and notes it originally meant “of the womb,” tied to hysteria, a nervous disease once defined solely by men as a condition “peculiar to women” and believed to be caused by dysfunction of the uterus.
That history bleeds straight into modern stigma. In a column for The Daily Texan, London Lack writes, “The word ‘hysteria’ comes from a misogynistic and overgeneralized female medical diagnosis,” and notes that what we now recognize as depression, anxiety, epilepsy, or menopause was once dismissed as “female hysteria.”
Historically, women were often dismissed as “hysterical,” and symptoms of anxiety and depression were attributed to fragility and “wandering wombs.”
So yes, when men call women “hysterical,” they echo a long tradition of medicine and culture labeling women’s reality as pathology.
The magic of hormones, without the mystification
Hormones run the show during your cycle, but they are not a moral verdict.
The menstrual cycle is the body’s monthly prep for pregnancy, driven largely by estrogen and progesterone, which rise and fall, affecting mood, energy, sleep, appetite, stress, and confidence. Estrogen often boosts mood through serotonin, while progesterone can contribute to mood swings and irritability, especially as it drops before menstruation.
At the same time, we should hold onto nuance. Hormones influence mood, but they do not single-handedly define your emotional life.
That being said, our cycle is more than medical terminology
It’s not surprising that men don’t understand how a person can, in fact, be 28 different people in a month. After all, what happens in our bodies is not simple. But there’s a big difference between that and stigma, or worse, teaching us to stigmatize ourselves.
This is to say that there is nothing to “control” during our menstrual cycle. There is no calendar to follow, as if we were afraid of turning into Mr. Hyde. While it is true that learning about our bodies and their rhythms helps us feel more comfortable—God knows how uncomfortable our periods can be—perhaps the first thing we should learn is to be kind to ourselves and stop repeating the echo that was forced into our heads.
Prioritizing sleep, dietary supplements, vitamins, exercise, and meditation are not recommendations only for women, but for any human being who wants to improve their lifestyle.
The problem has never been the menstrual cycle, but the story we were told
Here’s the truth that cuts through all of it:
We live in a culture that calls women hysterical for having feelings, then tells us our menstrual cycle “proves” we cannot be trusted with power. Just watch the current status of the world and see how that argument debunks itself.
This bias has created glass ceilings for women in leadership, despite a lack of evidence that menses alone drives mood instability in healthy young women.
Furthermore, the mental health system, like many institutions, was built by men in a time when women were considered the “weaker sex.” That dismissal still echoes in how women experience healthcare today.
So when you feel like a different person at different points in your cycle, you don’t need shame. You need context. You need language. You need care. And you need a world that stops treating the emotional complexity of women as a punchline.
Because the problem was never you, it was a patriarchal system based on emotional simplicity and fear of what it cannot control.