As I am writing this, I am reminded of that scene from the movie Carrie, where she is frightened because she just started her period and doesn’t know what’s happening. Instead of sympathy and help, she gets mockery, as the girls crowd her in the shower, throwing tampons and pads at her, shouting “plug it up”. She cowers in the corner. Her mother, when she hears, screams invectives about her being a bad girl. No one is willing to help her understand what is happening. Of course, the most famous scene follows…she is at the prom, elected prom queen through the scheming of her classmates, and while she stands there, flowers in her arms, tiara on her head, smiling perhaps for the first time in the movie, someone dumps a bucket of pig blood on her. We all know what happens next. No one lives through the movie except one girl…and it wasn’t Carrie.
Read More“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”