PMS
A rant! :D I haven't done this in a while.
Okay, I've known a lot of people who do this, and since they're my friends it doesn't bother me much, but I hate when people blame every single change or abnormality in mood to one of four things:
1. Too much / too little sleep
2. Too much / too little sugar
3. Too much / too little caffeine
4. PMS
Very commonly, if I'm giggly, my friend (who knows I generally get very little sleep) will ask me, "How much sleep did you get last night, again?" I'll reply (trying to foil her), "A decent amount, actually: seven hours." "Ah," she'll reply, "You must be hyper because you actually got a decent amount of sleep for once."
Or, people will make cracks like, "Somebody's had too much chocolate today."
Or, people who are agitated must have had too much caffeine. Or, if they drink caffeine usually, but haven't had much, they are agitated from not having enough caffeine.
And then we get to PMS.
First of all, PMS does not mean that a girl is having her period, even though its meaning is creeping in that direction (it started out as one or two days a month; now it's about two weeks a month). It means the week before her period (supposedly) marked by mood swings and irritability or depression.
But heck, you know what? I've never been unreasonably depressed or angry BEFORE my period. I may be unreasonably depressed and angry DURING my period because my stomach hurts and at some point I'm probably getting blood on my underwear. Which are reasonable reasons, but not obvious reasons.
But anyway, it's a huge insult when I hear people chalking a woman's foul mood up to PMS. We're people. And as people, we have good days and we have days that are purely awful. And they're NOT purely awful because we're in a certain point in our cycle -- they're awful because we have a test tomorrow, and a paper due after that, and we overslept and missed dinner, and we tripped and fell while running down the hallway, and then later got a papercut.
It happens once in a while, and yes, you get snappy. Or you'll cry over apparently trivial things (the papercut). But it is stress. It's your environment. It happens to everyone.
This rant is brought to you by a feminist book on menstruation called The Curse. The chapter on PMS made me so freaking happy because it's what I wanted to say whenever some idiot makes a PMS joke.
The book goes very in-depth, by the way, about the social/political forces behind PMS. See, the placebo effect in PMS sufferers (meaning, the percentage of people whose symptoms improved when treated with a placebo) is remarkably high. The implications of that is that the "syndrome" is largely psychological. That is, women who suffer from PMS are undoubtedly suffering, but not from anything physically wrong with their bodies -- it's from stress or even (in serious cases) clinical depression.
So basically, if I'm really cranky, you can be sure it's because I'm stressed out. Just like if I'm giddy, it's because lots of good things happened to me recently. It has nothing (or comparatively nothing) to do with sleep, sugar, caffeine, or PMS. Although if I've been getting very little sleep consistently, yeah, that'll make me cranky. But it's also because of the homework that has made me stay up that late in the first place.
Okay, I've known a lot of people who do this, and since they're my friends it doesn't bother me much, but I hate when people blame every single change or abnormality in mood to one of four things:
1. Too much / too little sleep
2. Too much / too little sugar
3. Too much / too little caffeine
4. PMS
Very commonly, if I'm giggly, my friend (who knows I generally get very little sleep) will ask me, "How much sleep did you get last night, again?" I'll reply (trying to foil her), "A decent amount, actually: seven hours." "Ah," she'll reply, "You must be hyper because you actually got a decent amount of sleep for once."
Or, people will make cracks like, "Somebody's had too much chocolate today."
Or, people who are agitated must have had too much caffeine. Or, if they drink caffeine usually, but haven't had much, they are agitated from not having enough caffeine.
And then we get to PMS.
First of all, PMS does not mean that a girl is having her period, even though its meaning is creeping in that direction (it started out as one or two days a month; now it's about two weeks a month). It means the week before her period (supposedly) marked by mood swings and irritability or depression.
But heck, you know what? I've never been unreasonably depressed or angry BEFORE my period. I may be unreasonably depressed and angry DURING my period because my stomach hurts and at some point I'm probably getting blood on my underwear. Which are reasonable reasons, but not obvious reasons.
But anyway, it's a huge insult when I hear people chalking a woman's foul mood up to PMS. We're people. And as people, we have good days and we have days that are purely awful. And they're NOT purely awful because we're in a certain point in our cycle -- they're awful because we have a test tomorrow, and a paper due after that, and we overslept and missed dinner, and we tripped and fell while running down the hallway, and then later got a papercut.
It happens once in a while, and yes, you get snappy. Or you'll cry over apparently trivial things (the papercut). But it is stress. It's your environment. It happens to everyone.
This rant is brought to you by a feminist book on menstruation called The Curse. The chapter on PMS made me so freaking happy because it's what I wanted to say whenever some idiot makes a PMS joke.
The book goes very in-depth, by the way, about the social/political forces behind PMS. See, the placebo effect in PMS sufferers (meaning, the percentage of people whose symptoms improved when treated with a placebo) is remarkably high. The implications of that is that the "syndrome" is largely psychological. That is, women who suffer from PMS are undoubtedly suffering, but not from anything physically wrong with their bodies -- it's from stress or even (in serious cases) clinical depression.
So basically, if I'm really cranky, you can be sure it's because I'm stressed out. Just like if I'm giddy, it's because lots of good things happened to me recently. It has nothing (or comparatively nothing) to do with sleep, sugar, caffeine, or PMS. Although if I've been getting very little sleep consistently, yeah, that'll make me cranky. But it's also because of the homework that has made me stay up that late in the first place.