Several weeks after the programme aired, I was thrilled to hear that one of the women in the editing gallery (often a male-dominated space) was suffering from particularly painful cramps, and when asked if she was OK, gruffly replied, ‘I’ve got what Emma talked about’.
I was also cheered by the reaction of viewers at home, with messages of support for my efforts pouring in on social media. Men revealed that their female partners never spoke to their colleagues about their discomfort. Women thanked me for my candour, realising how rare this kind of honest conversation was – and their response has stayed with me ever since.
A few months later, a woman stopped me in my local fruit and vegetable market, clutching at my arm with fervour that was slightly alarming. She was a lawyer and told me that she’d seen The Pledge episode – it had been a lightbulb moment for her. Close to tears, she recounted how her heavy period had flooded on the bus on the way to work one time. Ashamed and panicked, she’d desperately scrubbed and dried her suit in a coffee shop loo in case her colleagues noticed. Sadly, it wasn’t an isolated incident and she was diagnosed with fibroids – her monthly downpours forced her to quit her full-time job, turning her into a part-time shift-worker so that she could manage her working life around her cycle. She’d never spoken about this to anyone and wanted to thank me for speaking out about periods without shame – it was this that had really struck her, how simply I had admitted I was menstruating and in pain on national TV.
It was like I had started to unleash something people hadn’t known needed releasing: the shy hunger to talk about periods. It dawned on me that enabling others find their voice on periods and engaging in this forbidden conversation could be an important step in helping women stop judging and shaming themselves in all walks of life. Stories of pain, shame and hilarity have followed me around ever since.
Sitting in that glamorous, shiny-floored studio, what I didn’t realise was that I was about to be diagnosed with endometriosis – a common but often poorly diagnosed menstrual condition (where tissue similar to the lining of the womb starts to grow in other places, such as the ovaries and fallopian tubes) that causes millions, yes, millions, of women colossal amounts of bone-grinding pain every month and can have serious consequences for fertility. It turns out those painful early periods I’d had weren’t normal or acceptable. Me, the one with the big mouth and period pride, actually had a proper period illness all along. One I’d never heard of, couldn’t spell nor explain.
I soon underwent the most painful forty-eight hours of my life, as a surgeon lasered my insides for nearly three hours. Although it’s estimated at least one in ten women in the UK have endo (as it’s called by those in the painful know), it takes a scandalous seven and half years on average to be diagnosed with this progressive illness. It took me nearly twenty-one years to get my diagnosis – and even that came down to pure luck.
By chance, I’d opened up about the pain I was in every month to a doctor mate over Sunday brunch, and she’d tentatively suggested that endometriosis might be a possibility. I’d had over two decades of medical appointments in which I complained repeatedly of severe menstrual pain, but I’d still failed to convince my doctors to take my period pain seriously. I’m someone who thrives on bashing down doors and demands answers for a living, yet I still hadn’t got anywhere – so what hope was there for others?
To be frank, I am fucking furious that nobody knows what causes endometriosis – mainly because it’s a ‘woman problem’ and there hasn’t been enough investment in scientific research. And people, even gobby folk like me, walk around ignorantly ill because no one takes our complaints of abnormal pain seriously, so we just stop talking, afraid of looking like we’re moaning.
As I hobbled around for three months recovering from my debilitating op, I felt as if the rug had been pulled from beneath me. But it meant that periods were back at the top of my personal news agenda, and I felt bloody foolish.
Back at work and intrigued by the silence and ignorance surrounding our periods, my team then commissioned a study for my radio show. Over 57 per cent of women who told us they had period pain (which was 91 per cent of the total number of women polled), admitted it affected their ability to work. But only 27 per cent of them told their employer the real reason they felt poorly, with most preferring to lie, often opting to say they had stomach problems. Interestingly, many British women were open to the idea of menstrual leave.
Before presenting the findings in our programme that day, I was invited onto BBC Breakfast to discuss the results – an invitation I happily accepted. Here’s how The Sun decided to write up my calm and measured conversation with my BBC colleagues: ‘Woman Sparks Furious Debate About Menstrual Leave on BBC Breakfast – BBC Radio 5 Live’s Emma Barnett Has Sparked a Sexism Row.’
Now who’s hysterical eh? And people still wonder why women lie about their periods, preferring to tell their bosses (of both genders) they have the shits. Go figure.
Periods need to come out of the darkness because of the potential benefits to women’s health around the world. But the cultural benefits of smashing the period taboo would be major and just as important.
Alisha Coleman, an American 911 phone operator, sued for alleged workplace discrimination after being sacked for leaking during two particularly heavy periods. Once, on her seat, for which she received a written warning, and then again on the office carpet. Can you imagine how mortified she felt? How you would feel? Perhaps you’ve been there too. Alisha was dismissed for failing to ‘practise high standards of personal hygiene and maintain a clean, neat appearance whilst on duty’ the lawsuit states. I am utterly dismayed that women can lose jobs over leaking on their office chairs.
‘I loved my job at the 911 call centre because I got to help people,’ Alisha, a mother of two, explained. ‘Every woman dreads getting period symptoms when they’re not expecting them, but I never thought I could be fired for it. Getting fired for an accidental period leak was humiliating. I don’t want any woman to have to go through what I did, so I’m fighting back.’
Quite.
But Alisha isn’t alone in struggling to conceal her period. One woman confessed to me, in the bespoke period confession booth built for my BBC 5 Live radio show, that she once had to call in sick because of severe period pain. She decided to the bite the bullet and be honest when she spoke to the HR director (who happened to be a man): ‘I could hear him on the phone being squeamish [when I told him the reason] and then he said, “Well let me know when you are fixed.”’ Fixed. As if she was a broken doll. I interviewed six other women that day, in their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties, and they all had their own coping mechanisms for making sure their period experiences remained as hush-hush as possible. You can understand why.
The very fact that my production team, who happened to be all women that day, had been delighted to build a beautiful confession booth (complete with a gold grill), spoke volumes about the need to have the conversation. The storytelling power of radio may be in its facelessness, which emboldens even the meekest guest, but we still felt the need to create a further physical divide to coax these successful and confident women (with the strict assurance of anonymity) into the box to talk about something as natural as their periods. Upon reflection, it was utterly ludicrous.
This censorship and secrecy that engulfs periods was highlighted by the global shock, teetering on outrage, when Kiran Gandhi decided to run the 2015 London Marathon free bleeding down her Lycra leggings. Kiran came on her period the night before and, deciding it would be uncomfortable to run 26 miles with a stick of cotton wool wedged up her genitals (you think?), chose to let it flow. Admirably, she also did it to raise awareness for poorer girls and women who don’t have access to period products.