+
Sign up for
The Upworthiest
Our top stories of the day delivered straight to your inbox.
upworthy

women s issues

Health

Women don't know whether to laugh or cry over this 'Perry Menopause' comedy sketch

No one fully prepares you for "Perry" moving in, but she's the worst roommate ever.

The Holderness Family/Facebook

Kim Holderness meets her unwelcome new roommate, Perry Menopause.

Whether you are female yourself or you love someone who is, there's someone you need to be introduced to. Perry Menopause—or perimenopause in the real world—is a witch with a b who suddenly moves into your life sometime in your 40s, bringing with her all kinds of baggage and annoyances.

For some reason, no one fully prepares women for her arrival. Sure, we all hear about menopause itself all the time. You know about hot flashes. You know the hormonal changes and end of your menstruating years are coming sometime down the road, but that's it. Nobody informs you ahead of time that for years and yearsbefore menopause your body is going to go through drastic changes that will leave you constantly saying WTF?! and wondering if you have some horrible, hidden disease or if it's "just hormones" from perimenopause.

Let me tell you right now, there's no such thing as "just hormones." Hormones are potent and powerful, and they affect basically every single function in your body, as this Holderness Family skit about Perry Menopause illustrates.

Let’s run down a partial list of unwanted luggage this uninvited roommate brings with her, shall we? Perimenopause can cause upwards of 100 different symptoms, which include:

- heart palpitations

- hair loss

- joint pain

- forgetfulness

- foot cramps

- itching

- weight gain

- hot flashes

- cold flashes

- poor night vision

The really fun thing about this list is that a whole lot of these things can be indicators of something much more serious, so for years you get to play games like “Is it lymphoma/arthritis/a heart attack/dementia or is it perimenopause?"

And a lot of times your doctor is no help because they either have no idea that perimenopause is a thing or they pull the "just hormones" line as if the upheaval of your entire body is "just" something you're supposed to live with.

Watch Kim Holderness meeting Perry Menopause officially for the first time:

Women in the comments were thrilled to see what they've experienced being validated in such a funny way.

"This is all spot on," wrote one commenter. "I'm so glad that menopause and especially perimenopause is being highlighted more to help make us ladies not feel so crazy and gives men (and doctors) an idea that it actually exists!"

"I was just going to say that Perry is a B*$ch but you beat me to it," shared another commenter. "The itching, weight is the same but have shift to different places, acne, mood swings, lack of sleep…yup, the pleasures that we go through. My poor husband and son have to deal with Perry as well."

"So f-ing true. Perry’s been around me about 8 years. Getting pretty tired of her! Also, what about brain fog!!!" wrote another.

"I don’t know if I should laugh or cry because you guys NAILED it!!! (But that’s just Perry confusing my emotions again)," shared another. "The only thing I would add is the back and forth between hot & cold all night! 🥴 kicking covers off, then to get cold, then to get warm, so you just let the one leg out of the covers. 😳 Finally finding a way to push covers away onto my husband and just end up with the top sheet! Go away Perry!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣"

Kim explained that her husband Penn was actually the one who wrote the skit, which is admirable because it means he's been paying attention. Perry Menopause may be a fictitious person, but perimenopause is real, she's the worst and we definitely need to talk about her more.

You can follow The Holderness Family on Facebook for more hilariously relatable skits like this.

From Your Site Articles
women's health
Culture

Twitter thread about body autonomy is a reminder of the ‘fear’ and ‘shame’ women confront

via Dustin Askins / Flickr

Body autonomy means a person has the right to do whatever they want with their own body.

We live in a world where people are constantly telling women what they can or can't do with their bodies. Women get it form all sides — Washington, their churches, family members, and even doctors.

A woman on Twitter who goes by the name Salome Strangelove recently went viral for discussing the importance of female body autonomy.

Here's how it started.


She continued talking about how her mother had a difficult pregnancy.



Her mother asked her doctor about the possibility of sterilization.





As was typical of the times, she was chastised by her male, Catholic doctor.



Her mother was made to feel guilty about simply exploring the medical options about her own body. But later on, a new doctor made her feel more comfortable about her situation.







Once her mother had the courage to speak up, her own family members supported her.




Amen.

From Your Site Articles
Related Articles Around the Web
women's issues
Badge
Ancestry
Ancestry
Most Shared

How uncovering the history of her hometown helped this mom find her activist voice.

True
The Kresge Foundation

15 years ago, Hilda Villegas' family was counting on her: She needed to find both work and child care, and it couldn't wait.

Hilda was a single mom with two daughters — the oldest was 4 and the youngest only 3 months old. Their father wasn't providing the support they needed, so Hilda had to drop out of college to care for them. The problem was that she had very little work experience, so it wasn't easy to find a job. But her family was depending on her.

Thankfully, her daughter's teacher told her that a local organization called La Mujer Obrera provides great child care and could pick up her kids for day care. She jumped at the chance to sign up.

But La Mujer Obrera is a lot more than just a great child care service. The El Paso, Texas, organization is committed to looking out for members of the surrounding community and helping them in any way it can.

Children of La Mujer Obrera attend the spring festival at Tierra es Vida Community Farm. Image via La Mujer Obrera.

Despite having limited work experience, La Mujer Obrera gave Hilda the chance to work as a receptionist; and that, in turn, helped her learn new job skills.They even helped her secure an apartment that was a five-minute walk from the day care center and in the neighborhood where she'd lived her entire life.

"Being able to live in the barrio and having a job here was ... the best thing for me in terms of a safety net," Hilda says.

La Mujer Obrera took a creative approach to giving this single mom the support she needed, and it's a wonderful example of how it empowers working women.

Founded in 1981 by female garment workers and Chicana activists, La Mujer Obrera focuses on basic human rights for women of Mexican heritage. It hosts community organizing programs to help local residents stand up for their rights when it comes to economic and environmental issues.

La Mujer Obrera leaders also recognize that residents like Hilda can't show up for community organizing unless they have some of their basic needs taken care of. After all, juggling work and family responsibilities along with community involvement isn't easy.

So by providing things like child care, nutritious food, and job training, La Mujer Obrera is helping community members attend civic meetings and get their voices heard.

That's also why the nonprofit's programs include a community farm and farmers market that provide jobs and fresh, healthy food. It operates these programs thanks to a grant from The Kresge Foundation's Fresh, Local, and Equitable initiative, known as FreshLo.

The grant is especially important to La Mujer Obrera because the funding comes from an organization that also focuses on multiple aspects that revitalize a community — like arts and culture, health, and community development — rather than just one of those aspects.

An educational workshop on nutrition and fresh food preparation. Image via La Mujer Obrera.

At La Mujer Obrera, fresh food goes hand-in-hand with empowering the community. By maintaining the farm and market, the leaders help local immigrants stay connected to the food that helps them feel at home, such as nopales, a nutritious type of cacti that’s common in Mexico. This also gives residents a chance to connect with nature and green space, which is all too rare in the area.

For the garment workers who once helped establish the organization, being exploited in dehumanizing conditions like concrete factories was the norm. So now, La Mujer Obrera sees reconnecting with the land in nourishing ways as a form of resistance.

A children's march for education, led in part by Hilda's daughter, Katherine, on the left. Image via Hilda Villegas.

With the organization's support, Hilda didn't have to stress as much about providing for her family — which, in turn, helped her focus on the needs of her community.

"They gave me the opportunity to learn how to speak, how to define myself," she says. "A person can actually grow to their full potential, knowing that you have this organization that cares, not just about you, but about your kids … and they actually care about the community."

Hilda went on to participate in several of La Mujer Obrera's community organizing programs — including community outreach, educational workshops on local government, and environmental studies — to learn more about the effects of the area's poor air quality. In the process of learning community organizing strategies, she also uncovered the history of how immigrants built her community and how her ancestors survived.

For example, the La Mujer Obrera Community farm serves as an educational hub for workshops. While cooking workshops teach participants how to prepare healthy food like nopales,they also provide history lessons on how the ancestors used different types of cacti over the course of their lifetimes. In the process, participants get a chance to discover how cultivating fresh food plays a role in keeping families and communities united.

As she has learned and recruited more residents to participate, she has also developed leadership skills. In fact, she's now the community organizer for a project called Familias Unidas del Chamizal.

A display at La Mujer Obrera's 2017 Ancestral Health Fair. Image via La Mujer Obrera.

Hilda is helping Barrio Chamizal, the neighborhood where she grew up, keep its schools open, address environmental hazards, and secure vital resources such as fresh food for the underserved community. Her knowledge will help her neighbors continue to lift up their neighborhood for many years to come.

From being a struggling resident in need of opportunity to becoming a community leader, Hilda has come full circle.

It's a remarkable transformation, but Hilda points out she's far from the first to uncover her power and use it for good. La Mujer Obrera is simply building on the wisdom that's been present in her community for centuries.

Hilda with her daughter, Mary Ann. Image via Hilda Villegas.

Hilda tears up when she thinks about how her work will help the next generation. She has four children now, and the two daughters she first brought to La Mujer Obrera's day care center are now 16 and 19 years old. They've been empowered to make positive change too.

For example, through La Mujer Obrera, Hilda's 16-year-old daughter, Katherine, is learning about an environmentally sustainable practice called water harvesting that her ancestors actually used. She helps collect rainwater to grow the community farm produce, such as dark leafy greens, multi-colored peppers, and fragrant herbs.

Every day, Hilda and her family continue to learn more about the environment, their health, and the role that food plays in community wellness. Hilda still considers herself new to healthy eating, but she's so inspired by ancestral practices like water harvesting and cultivating edible plants that her attempts are turning into habits.

While these practices improve her quality of life, they just might help save the planet, too.

"[Our ancestors] respected the earth and what it represented. The earth is life for us," Hilda says. "The only ones that can defend the earth are the people — the people that live here."

More

This state just made a really important product free for prison inmates.

Imagine you're a young woman who, due to stress or a hormonal blip, or even just your personal biology, you have a longer-than-average menstruation cycle. Sounds annoying, right? Now think about what'd it be like to deal with that while in prison. Even if it's just for something minimal, like petty theft, disorderly conduct, or marijuana possession, you're allotted a dozen pads for the month — no matter what.

This is the reality for female prisoners all over America. But one state just made a move to change that.

Maryland has taken a landmark step towards making hygiene products more accessible for prison inmates.

On March 1, 2018, Maryland lawmakers unanimously approved bills that require correctional facilities to provide free feminine hygiene products to all inmates.

Photo via iStock.

The state mandate was a huge win for feminists and activists who've been pushing for inmate rights. Reproductive rights groups have long advocated for making hygiene products more accessible for inmates. Diana Philip, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland, has been particularly outspoken about fair treatment for all women, and the need for state policies that make hygiene products accessible for incarcerated women. Philip's pointed out that women who've been incarcerated by the state haven't been able to get the supplies that they need.        

Photo by John Moore/Getty Images.

Inside or outside of prison, it's expensive to be a woman, particularly if you menstruate.

The good news? Federal policies actually make a lot of sense on this issue. But due to a weird quirk in U.S. prison practices, many incarcerated women will never benefit.  

Although federal prisons made hygiene products free for inmates in August 2017, most incarcerated women are actually in state prisons or local jails. This means that fewer than 10% of female inmates benefited from the new federal measures. Thus, most female inmates rely on state legislation to see changes in their prison. But, the problem of expensive or inaccessible products isn't limited to prisoners, though.

Photo by Presley Ann/Getty Images.

Even for women who've never seen a jail cell, a box of pads or tampons is pricey, ranging anywhere from $6 to $10 at a typical drugstore. Over the course of a lifetime, at a box of tampons or pads per month, the average person can easily spend thousands of dollars on hygiene products, and nearly $20,000 on products related to menstrual cycles, such as panty liners, Midol, and birth control.

Due to what's been deemed the “pink tax”, women have increasingly criticized the costs of hygiene-related and other products that are largely used by women. Low income communities are particularly vulnerable to these expenses, and are often unable to afford all of the costs that come with having a period.  

People who have periods have very different experiences from one another. Some experience extreme pain, have very heavy flows, and experience periods for more than seven days. Still, many prisons historically allocate a certain number of pads per month.

This disenfranchises women inmates with heavier or elongated flows. Women make roughly 75 cents a day for a day's work, and a 24-pack of pads is just over $2.50 in some states. With other necessities like deodorant, toothpaste, and edible food, saving for pads can be a challenge. When inmates need more hygiene products, they’re forced to rely on whatever income they make through the prison system to buy additional products.        

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

In a system that’s largely — and rightfully — criticized for its dehumanizing treatment of inmates, making hygiene products more accessible is a good step towards progress.  

As activists continue to push for inmate rights through various movements, such as the #LetItFlow campaign, there’s hope that other states will continue to shift policies to make prisons less dehumanizing to women. Recently, Arizona increased the number of pads it offers to inmates from 12 to 36.

Humans, regardless of background, experience, or misdeeds deserve rights to health, safety, and livelihood. By providing basic — yet necessary — products, our society can continue to move towards a more equitable and humane world for all.      

Trending Stories