Periods in Pop Culture: Menstruation in Film and Television

(Hardback)

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Menstruation seldom gets a starring role on screen despite being experienced regularly by nearly all women for a good many decades of their lives. Periods in Pop Culture: Menstruation in Film and Television, by Lauren Rosewarne, turns the spotlight on period portrayals in media, examining the presence of menstruation in a broad range of contemporary pop culture. Drawing on a vast collection of menstruation scenes from film and television, this study examines and categorizes representations to unearth what they reveal about society and about our cultures continuingly fraught relationship with female biology. Written from a feminist perspective, menstrual representations are analyzed for what they reveal about sexual politics and society. Rosewarnes thorough investigation covers a range of topics including menstrual taboos, stigmas and fears, as well as the inextricable link between periods and femininity, sexuality, ageing, and identity. Periods in Pop Culture highlights that the treatment of menstruation in the media remains an area of persistent gender inequality.

Reviews

Periods in Pop Culture contributes to the burgeoning critical scholarship-as-prism refracting the dynamic complexities of gendered embodiment. Rosewarne supplies a globetrotting and genre spanning taxonomy of the uneasy presence and telling absence of menstruation. This is a book that clearly reveals how menstruations significance lingers far beyond the punch line. -- Christina Bobel, University of Massachusetts Boston
Periods in Pop Culture is an engaging and thought-provoking read. Are the increasing mentions of menstruation and menopause in films and television shows a good or a bad thing for women Read this book, and decide for yourself! -- Joan Chrisler, Connecticut College

Author Bio

Lauren Rosewarne is a lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia.