Every time there I heard a class reluctantly square dancing in a gym or heard the clank of weights in the nautilus room, I took a deep breath and inhaled the sweet relief of chlorine from the 9 foot pool where I stood guard.
In exchange for struggling through P.E., I dutifully taught and watched over freshman swimming classes, required of every new student for nine long weeks of their first year. The pool room where students, at one time all boys, once swam naked, became the place where young men and women congregated in bleachers and then were divided into groups according to skill. But even in the early 90s, twenty years after females filled the halls, some of those swimming practices were clinging to some strange era from the way-past.
Part of my job was to take attendance while the students sat shivering in swimsuits, caps and inadequate towels. I did as I was instructed, calling out their names one by one, and they did as the P.E. teacher yelled at them to do: Respond "Here!," "Sick!," or "Red Day!"
Take a moment to ponder the choices.
Yes, Red Day is what you think it is. Fourteen-year old girls, already made to sit on cold metal bleachers in their swimsuits and horrible baldifying caps, had to yell out to the entire, echoey room full of boys and men and each other if they were choosing to skip swimming because of their period.
Each and every time I heard it over three years, I was horrified. Not because young women were menstruating, but because the attendance ritual was so archaic, disrespecting of privacy at such a tender age and so bizarre. Strangely, many girls seemed to be on the rag for nine weeks straight (although, even more bizarre, the Red Day allowance changed in my third year so you could only take a certain number of days during the swimming class). And just as strange to me was that, then and there in the age of synthesizer pop and assymetrical hair-dos, some girls were opting out of activities because of their periods.
What?! Didn't everyone just use a tampon and go about their daily business? Didn't we all just pop a Midol or six and get on with our cramps and complaining? Wouldn't this whole Red Day horror be solved by not wearing white and tucking a purse into your backpack? I was so confused.
"RED DAY!," the girls would call out and it felt like the 1950s in there, minus the naked boys but plus the period weirdness. "RED DAY! RED DAY again!"
I thought about that (and oh God, the red slash I had to Sharpie into the box next to the names of the girls from That Period) when I came across this user post asking if other readers stop working out during their cycle. She encourages us to keep exercising in order to feel better and less ugh, but it made me wonder how many of those girls in the bleachers grew up to be women who still opt out once a month.
Do women really stop everything once their periods start?
I'm not judging here. Some of us suffer from terrible, debilitating periods that turn us back around and plunk us in bed and miserable for days. Others of us need more sleep, time alone, meditation, hot baths just to get through the ugh-ness. And those of us who yoga know that many instructors suggest that certain positions (like inversions) aren't philosophically or physically beneficial when we have our periods. Clearly, there are valid reasons and we've all had at least a bit of them when we've bled.
But really, do most of us most months need to sit out activity, exercise or other opportunities to dive into our lives when we have our periods?
What about you? What do you yell "RED DAY!" at when you have your period?
