If men got periods, the world as we know it would be a different place. Men having periods would have been a very big deal from the beginning of time. Literally: the actual calculation of time. Time would not be heliocentric, but lunar-centric. The year would not be measured in relation to the earth’s orbit of the sun, but rather the moon’s orbit of the earth. There would be thirteen months in a year. Twelve months would have 28 days, and February would have 29. Ours would be a moon-centered, not a sun-centered world. Luna would have to swap her identity with Mars.
The modern advertising industry would certainly capitalize on male menstruation. When I was a kid, most drug stores in my neighborhood were small businesses. They didn’t have big advertising budgets and would decorate their knee-to-ceiling windows with giant pyramids of blue Kotex boxes. I was humiliated just walking past one of these window displays, as if mere proximity exposed my nether regions.
Now that all the drug stores are big chains, think of the huge advertising campaigns they could launch if men got periods. Men menstruating would be a sales bonanza. Men would not need much encouragement to consider their monthly flow a big deal, and advertisers would want to make menstruation a pathology. The ad men would invent heroic terms for male menstruation and products to relieve its symptoms, like Mega Menses Cramp Relief. It would not take many beers for men to brag to their buddies about the number of days they bled and the PSI of their flow. Products for staunching male menses would indicate that all men have a heavy flow, like the sizes of Starbucks’ cups: they’re all a lot of coffee, whether Tall, Grande, or Venti. There would be products tailored to different lifestyles: pinstriped pads for the businessman, camouflage for the outdoorsman, tampons sold by the caliber.
The coming-of-age parties for boys would be epic with Hawaiian punch and red velvet cakes. Gifts could include other visions of blood, like knives, BB guns, and archery sets.
And war! Would there have been any wars? Would menstruating men have the will to fight? Would we now lack all the great inventions of war, like gunpowder, nuclear energy, Teflon and Tang? Would men with periods be more bellicose? After working so closely together, training and living in rows of bunk beds and then lying in foxholes side by side, the periods of all the men would synchronize, so that they were all menstruating at the same time. They would all be irritable at the same time, just before their periods began. Fights would break out, followed by weepy regrets. Every soldier would need a second uniform with his “fat pants” to accommodate an interval of bloating and water retention. Finally, the military would have to declare a cease-fire every four weeks, while the men went to bed with cold compresses on their heads.
This could be good for the future of the world.
***This piece is an homage to Gloria Steinem’s 1978 article in Ms. Magazine entitled “If Men Could Menstruate.”
Glenna Heckathorn is the president of the League of Women Voters of the Mid-Shore