I was recently re-watching Peter Greenaway’s movie The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982). Set at the end of the seventeenth century, it opens with a series of landed gentry types gossiping, often aiming to shock. After telling them a story from her childhood, one of the beautifully-dressed women states confidently “I used to pee like a horse.… Continue reading Peeing like a horse?
Tag: virginity
Period pains – have women always suffered from menstrual cramps?
A recent YouGov survey of 1000 British women showed that the majority had period pain, and 52% had found it affected their ability to work. John Guillebaud, a professor of reproductive health at University College London, suggested that the level of pain is almost as bad as a heart attack. Have women always suffered pain? Early twentieth-century advertisements for ‘Hall’s… Continue reading Period pains – have women always suffered from menstrual cramps?
Mistaking histories 