Essay On Menarche In America

Menarche within secular America is commonly understood as a time of transition and transformation. Colloquial understandings perpetuate that menarche, due to its biological indication of fertility, is the age of transition from girlhood to womanhood. Menarche, then becomes a time of social tension, possibly even crisis, which in many other cultures, communities and contexts necessitates ritual. But the time of menarche in America appears to be ritual-less. Yet, our actions, texts, and understandings of menarche have many of the characteristics of ritual, including mystification, ritualized or symbolic language, a life crisis, etc. But, menarche in America is not seen as ritualized, as we do not have a defined secular ritual to accompany menstruation. An examination of menarche, however, must not end with the exclamation that …show more content…
Within contemporary American society there is in menarche a movement away from notions of embeddedness within tradition. Instead, traditionalism is “replaced” with the medicalization of menarche, this medialization is seen as progress from the previous primitive notions of anatomy and practices surrounding menarche. The primitive ways of “others” and the old country are abandoned in favor of the modern silence of “hygienic,” menarche. Yet, claims of hygiene are rooted in traditional notions of menarche and its relation to cleanliness and purity. Both the medialization and the modernization of menarche have contributed to the notions of progress and distance from the “other.” Through the hygienic modernization of menstruation women have been seen as being liberated from their own