Period parties are a controversial new trend with old roots

My grandmother was paraded around her village in India on an elephant when she got her first period -- not a very subtle approach to letting friends and neighbors know that she would soon be marriage material. That was in 1915.

When I got mine at 14 in the late 1980s, it was a much more subdued affair -- at least by my grandmother’s standards.

Sweet treats were distributed throughout my apartment building in Bombay and on the fourth day, my mom bought me a long yellow silk skirt and invited a bunch of family and friends to a luncheon.

Column:Men, please don't mock period parties -- it's really none of your business

30-second read:Period parties are a controversial new trend

In the intervening 70-plus years since my grandmother’s elephant ride, the focus had changed. My parents did not intend a teenage marriage for me; it was just a celebration to mark the transition.

Until recently, marking the occasion of a girl's journey into womanhood was a dying centuries-old tradition celebrated by some cultures.

Fueled by social media, the old tradition is now going mainstream.

The period party is having a cultural moment.

Instagram, Pinterest and Google images turn up hundreds of images of invitation cards, party favors and cakes for the event also known as “red tent” and “first moon” parties. The Lammily doll, which boasts more realistic body proportions than Mattel’s Barbie, sells a period party accessories set.

As things go these days, the idea went viral with a tweet last year.

“Brooke started her period today & my family is super extra,” tweeted a woman called Autumn Jennings with a picture of her cousin Brooke Lee, 12, holding up a cake with red piped frosting that said: “Congrats on your Period.”

Brooke’s mother, Shelly Lee, of Florida, told Buzzfeed that she had decided to throw a party for her daughter after hearing she was “anxious” about starting her period. The tweet was reported by magazines and newspapers all over the world.

Bringing a topic that in popular culture often centers around mood disorders, pain and women behaving badly out into the open is a step in the right direction, said Dr. Deborah Gilboa, a family physician in Pittsburgh and a parenting and youth development expert.

“If you take something our society has made shameful or embarrassing and have a celebration that says your body is doing what it is supposed to do, it means you are healthy, you are changing, that makes young women stronger,” she said. “The period parties are a good place to discuss your period, the good parts, the bad parts and how to manage them.”

A 2015 survey of 90,000 women around the world on period perceptions conducted by the health app Clue and the New York-based International Women's Health Coalition found that 18 percent of U.S. women missed school, work or an event because they were afraid of someone finding out they were on their period.

Society also treats body development of boys and girls differently, said Gilboa.

“For boys, a lot of the marks of male puberty are marked by positive reinforcement, ‘you’re getting tall, you got some hair on your chin, you look so old, you are getting a beard etc.,” said Gilboa. “For girls, if she has breast development, she’s judged for wearing certain clothes. There’s a lot of shame, caution and judgment around girl body development. And period parties are a good way to flip that narrative.”

A word to the wise for moms: Before you run out to the store and stock up on red balloons and red frosting, check with your daughter.

“Period parties can be empowering, educational and fun if the daughter wants them,” said Gilboa. “But if the mom wants them and forces it on the daughter, it can be really scarring.”

I decided to take the pulse of the community by asking for people’s thoughts on the subject on a few Facebook pages.

The 500-plus comments came fast and furious. The comments got so raucous on a couple of groups that the administrators had to delete the thread.

On Chappaqua Moms, a Facebook group with more than 10,000 members from the New York hamlet and nearby towns, the comments ran the gamut: from outraged to enthusiastic. Many were humorous.

I reached out to a few of the commenters.

“I’ve never heard of it and I think it’s very odd,” said Nikki Fish Pakula, a mother of two girls, 21 and 15. “It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of. Honestly, my girls would have been mortified and they would have never spoken to me if I ever did anything like that. It’s weird.”

Pakula, who is Jewish, did pass on one tradition handed down to her by her mother when she first got her period.

“I got slapped by my mother and I slapped my daughters,” she said.

Pakula, who lives in Somers, New York, was not alone in that experience. Many Jewish women in the group recalled the custom of being slapped across the face by their mothers on their first period.

The reasons behind the tradition are unclear, and many articles, including one in the Jewish American newspaper The Forward, have attempted to parse the reasons behind “menstrual slap.” A scene in the movie “A Walk on the Moon” captures the confusion perfectly.

Georgia Hobaica Frasch, the administrator of Chappaqua Moms, who is of Maronite Catholic of Lebanese descent, said a cousin in her extended family who grew up in Utica had a ceremony where the older women in the family wore black and gathered around the girl, ululating (making a loud, high-pitched, rhythmical sound) in celebration.

As far as throwing a party for her 14-year-old daughter, Frasch said her daughter would have been “mortified” if she even brought up the topic.

“When I was my daughter‘s age, my friends and I could not wait to get a bra or our periods. It was discussed amongst us along with lip gloss shades and the latest pop stars,” said Frasch. “Perhaps because this generation has so much more awareness of boundaries and personal space that I find that they don’t discuss it as we did.”

Maureen Bamberger, a grandmother of three and mother of two girls, thought a party was a "ridiculous" idea and didn’t understand what the fuss was all about.

“Who wants to have a party to celebrate 40 years of bloating, cramps, blood and PMS? Completely ridiculous!” said the Yorktown resident. “My mom played “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar” by Helen Reddy and that was that!”

The idea of bringing back ceremony, initiation and rites of passage into people’s lives appeals to Lynn Trotta, a nature-based life coach in Mount Kisco.

"It is an important point of culture that has been lost over the generations," said Trotta, a mother of an 8-year-old daughter. “I love the idea that people are bringing this rite of passage for girls, of starting their cycle back to a place of celebration and not a place of shame. It makes stepping into that place a less scary or frightening thing and more what girls are looking forward to.”

Trotta said even if the modern period parties are not rooted in any cultural tradition but the intent was for the girl going through it to feel loved and acknowledged for becoming a “brand new person,” it would be a fair goal.

“If things are being updated to make celebrations and ceremonies more relevant for today’s culture, it’s a good thing,” said Trotta.

Speaking of non-cultural traditions, Jamie Idi, a mother of a 15-year-old daughter, decided to borrow one from her aunt.

“My aunt’s family made pancakes shaped like ovaries, so I did the same for my daughter. We laughed like crazy. It helped lighten the mood and she could ask me any questions, too,” said the Ossining, New York, resident. “But let me tell you, trying to make pancakes in the shape of ovaries isn’t as easy as it looks.”

The period party trend has been inspiring for Shantae Mahecha, whose daughter Kelly is 10.

 Mahecha, a Peekskill resident and a high school teacher, said she had recently asked her daughter to read two books on changing bodies published by the American Girl: “Is this normal?” and the “The Caring & Keeping of You-Part 1.”

“I didn’t want her to experience any embarrassment related to it. I wanted her to know that it’s something good and good things will come of it,” said Mahecha. “I didn’t want her to be afraid when it happened.”

Mahecha said she also brought up the prospect of a party with her daughter.

“She said, ‘thank you,’” Mahecha said. “She liked the idea.”

Some like Sarah Baldwin of Mahopac, New York, worry about the potential commercialization of the occasion and the pressure parents might feel.

“Instead of a celebration of a milestone, it could become about Keeping up with the Joneses, where everything is a competition," said Baldwin. “There will always be parents trying to step it up a notch. At that point, it’s not about the child, it’s about you.”

As the comments began piling up, there was one life-stage party that was greeted with great enthusiasm.

“How about a happy menopause party?,” wrote Charlene Wago Decker of Armonk. “It would have to be in a room full of fans with wine and chocolate.”

Frasch, of Chappaqua Moms, said the discussion around the period party had been interesting but not surprising.

“I would have been very shocked if many families celebrated their daughter's first period with more than a passing acknowledgement," said Frasch. “I was delighted to read all of the funny comments about a menopause party, hot flashes, errant facial hairs, etc. Obviously, women seem to come to better terms with their bodies as we age.”

For my daughter, I took her out to ice cream and bought her a long pink Indian skirt.