Materializing the Modern, Middle-Class Body: Menstruation in the Twentieth-Century United States (2003)
Freidenfelds, Lara (Author)
Harvard University
Brandt, Allan M.
Edition Details: Advisor: Brandt, Allan M.
Physical Details: 379 pp.
Language: English
Looking at how Americans thought about and managed menstruation provides a particularly broad window into the ways in which women and men applied Progressive ideas in the most intimate settings, and generally experienced their new views and practices as emancipatory. At the turn of the twentieth century, the management of menstruation was tightly woven into three primary aspects of bodily experience: sexuality and reproduction, preservation of health, and appearance and self- presentation. It was (and continues to be) a mundane aspect of daily life for most women, and could not be completely ignored by male partners and peers. Over the course of the century, in applying Progressive values to their ways of thinking about and managing menstruation, women and men changed significantly the ways in which their bodies mattered. In doing so, they instituted a shared set of bodily practices and beliefs which served as an important basis for the eventual inclusion of most Americans, despite objective differences in income, education and prospects, in a self-perceived middle class. In thinking about menstruation, twentieth century Americans envisioned a modern body which would not leak, smell, hurt, cause anxiety, appear unfashionable or lose efficiency (productive or reproductive) at inopportune moments. This modern body would integrate specialized technologies seamlessly, so that both the signs of menstruation and the technologies themselves would be invisible and undetectable. Finally, the envisioned modern body could be brought under control because it would be well-studied and understood, and deviations requiring special attention would be anticipated and discussed in numerous settings, including school education programs, advertisements, magazine articles, doctors' offices, and between mothers and daughters. Using evidence from 75 oral history interviews as well as archival materials, this dissertation traces the development of three new menstruation discourses: first, a discourse of scientific education; second, a discourse of technological management; and third, a discourse of health and work productivity. It then examines Chinese- American immigrants' relationships to these discourses, and finally looks at how women and men born after 1960 modified the vision of the modern body, extending bodily discipline still further while beginning to demand acknowledgment of their disciplinary efforts.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 64 (2003): 1816. UMI order no. 3091558.
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