Part I: While we might not ritualize them in a spiritual or religious way, there are many milestones in the lives of Americans that I can think of as being important transitional phases. One that comes to mind is learning how to drive and getting a license, this could be very American because not everyone around the world uses cars but it is like a rite of passage for us. Others include things like marriage or pregnancy where one becomes attached to someone else for the rest of their life or decides to bring a child into this world to and incorporates into a parent after transitioning through pregnancy. For women, things like our first period can be embarrassing and confusing but is typically looked at as a coming of age moment. Another ritual of transition for women, many it is not a pleasant experience, is menopause. We often hear of women going through months of hot flashes, irritation, and high emotions.

Part II: While this may be a bit personal, I don’t mind sharing. A transitional phase I have been through is puberty and as someone with a uterus, that means having my first period. I remember having a lot of issues when I was going through puberty with hormonal imbalances and inconsistencies in my menstruation. Typically, menstruation happens about once a month when the egg that was released for ovulation is not fertilized by sperm and the egg along with uterine lining meant to help a fertilized egg are released in the form of blood. When I was 11, I got my first “period”. I bled for about a day. My grandmother made a big deal out of it, telling my family and writing me a check for “feminine hygiene products”! I felt weird but excited to be growing up. Then came about two years of complete inconsistency. From the time I was 11 to 13 I probably had like 3 instances where I would only menstruate for about a day. This was tolerable but not normal. Once I hit high school, puberty became a real pain. I didn’t know what was going on with my body and why I wasn’t “normal” because my period was so irregular. When I was about 14 I started having heavier periods. It got to the point where I would go 3 months without a period then have a period for a whole month with heavy bleeding and intense cramps. I remember feeling compelled to use tampons because my friends made fun of girls who wore pads because they were “gross” but I had trouble using them. I would have to sit out of gym class during the swimming segment because of my periods. They got to be so heavy I was bleeding through everything. I remember one day in gym class while my peers were getting ready, I noticed I bled through my clothes. Panicked, I didn’t know what to do and started crying and hid in the locker room. Eventually,I decided I needed to go home or else I was going to have to walk around with bloodstained underwear all day so I had to walk out to tell my gym teachers I needed to leave but the way the indoor pool area was set up I had to walk across the side of the pool to get to to the teachers. I stood above all my peers in the water with bloodstained pants and tears in my eyes, I was petrified. After that incident, my mom came to the rescue by taking me to her OBGYN. The doctor prescribed me birth control and it absolutely changed my life. No longer was I have to sit out of gym or sit on the bench during sports (it got so bad I would have to sit out from my team playing softball because if I ran or slid or anything there was a mess on my hands) because my period was being regulated by the hormones in birth control. Puberty is not an easy transition for anyone, but women face an uphill battle when it comes to menstruation and the stigma around it. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so petrified if the subject hadn’t been taboo most of my life to talk about.

Part III: College is an interesting experience in that it is a major transition period with little supervision by anyone not going through a period of finding themselves and freedom like they never had before. One of the most blatant yet implicit rules we find out in college that separates genders is how to act at a party or in social situations. Even before college, we are taught through movies and media about college partying where men go wild and women are supposed to behind closed doors. Party culture in college has always been interesting to me, we are implicitly told how to act based on our gender and those who don’t perform that way are outcasts or othered. A girl who does a keg stand or goes wild at a party is seen as a “slut” or “crazy” whereas men who do this are “cool” or “womanizers”. This is implicit because no one sits you down when you get to college and says this is how you have to act when you get to a party but if you break these rules you aren’t following the status quo. Greek life has explicit rules on gender rules for partying. Sororities are not allowed to have parties, while frats do all the time. While I am not a part of Greek life, I have heard that there are many rules like this when it comes to the differentiation between frats and sororities as an example of an explicit message sent about how we should perform our gender in college.