The Menarche Journey: Embodied Connections and Disconnections

Abstract

In this chapter, Piran engages with girls at puberty through their narrated experiences of embodied connections to the physical and social world during menarche. Utilizing the theoretical frame of the Developmental Theory of Embodiment (Piran in Journeys of Embodiment at the Intersection of Body and Culture: The Developmental Theory of Embodiment, 2017), Piran focuses on experiences in three domains. First, she shows that girls’ temporary freedom of engagement in the physical territory alongside boys ends at menarche, compromising embodied joy, agency, and positive connection to the physical environment. Second, she examines how strongly enforced ‘femininity’-related discourses at menarche, which are further imposed by menstruation-related discourses, corset the way girls can inhabit their bodies. Third, Piran argues that menarche is a biological event that is associated with embodied demotion in social power and with disrupting relational networks. She concludes that positive embodiment at menarche depends on the availability of relational connections and norms that can counteract these adverse social experiences.