Body Literacy

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Body Literacy is a health concept that uses the menstrual cycle as a self-knowledge tool, a vital sign, and a way to measure hormonal health autonomously. Body literacy means to "learn to read and understand the language of the body.".. It is a practice mainly involving the observation, charting, and interpretation of menstrual cycles based on fertility awareness principles. The discipline uses the inclusive terms women, girls, and PWM or people who menstruate.

Body literacy is part of the broader movement toward health literacy, which is the “knowledge and competencies of persons to meet the complex demands of health in modern society.” Other scholars use the alternative term "menstrual literacy" as recently as 2019 to describe "a baseline of knowledge and skills for understanding anatomical and biological facts of menstruation, caring for the menstruating body, and completing menstrual care tasks"

In the 2022 publication "Experiences of menstrual inequity and menstrual health among women and people who menstruate in the Barcelona area (Spain): a qualitative study", the authors define body literacy as a more precise term than health literacy for discussing the relationship one has with their menstrual body. “Body literacy” may be a more appropriate concept when discussing menstrual health. We define it as: (1) the ability to understand and observe how health and wellbeing are connected to the body’s natural functions and their environment, (2) the knowledge to engage in meaningful discussions with health professionals and (3) the confidence to participate in decisions regarding one’s health. If women and PWM can understand and make decisions regarding their menstrual cycle and menstruation, they can better monitor and self-manage their health." [1]

Body literacy is a tool to enhance reproductive freedom and informed choice which falls under the frameworks of reproductive justice and birth justice. Body literacy uses information from the menstrual cycle as a key component to making fully participatory, informed decisions about one’s health.

In 2009, Rachel Walden, representing ourbodiesourselves.org, interviewed author Chris Bobel about the future of menstrual activism. Bobel mentioned body literacy as a successor to earlier activism that had erupted from the original text Our Bodies, Ourselves. She connected the need for the expansion of body literacy frameworks to refute menstrual taboos as a response to the rise in the availability and social acceptance of menstrual suppression techniques.

History

The organization Tathapi, an Indian women’s health resource organization, began using and developing the concept of body literacy as a “medium to scientifically explain the processes of the body, its parts and functions to men, women and children of different age groups” as early as the year 2000.

In North America, the term was first used by Laura Wershler at the Society for Menstrual Research Conference in June 2005 in Boulder Colorado. The concept of body literacy was then defined by menstrual health activists Laura Wershler, Geraldine Matus, and Megan Lalonde in Femme Fertile magazine later that same year.

Laura Wershler, now an author at Society for Menstrual Cycle Research, wrote that body literacy occurred to her after reading a novel about illiteracy. She made the connection that the education of women and girls about their bodies is essential to understanding their health and wellness. This empowers them to make more informed choices and become an active participant in their own health decisions.

Since the early 2000's many women's health and menstrual health activists have begun using the term to describe concepts related to menstrual health awareness. Other collections of Laura's early writings that mention body literacy include personal stories such as Stuck in a Body Literacy Gap (Winter 2006) and professional experiences in Body Literacy at Work in the Community.  Laura went on to give a presentation at the 2007 SMCR conference that was titled Menstrual Cycle Charting: A Path to Body Literacy.

Geraldine Matus titled an update to her book Justisse Method Fertility Awareness and Body Literacy: A User’s Guide, which was first published in 1989. Chris Bobel, associate professor of women’s studies and editor of the Palgrave Handbook of Critical Menstruation Studies, mentioned body literacy in her book ‘New Blood: Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation‘ (2010)

Body literacy is a term now used by menstrual health educators, researchers, and scholars such as Geraldine Matus, Laura Wershler, Chris Bobel, Jerilynn Prior, Sarah Hill, Holly Grigg-Spall, Aviva Romm, Alisa Vitti, Lara Briden, Lisa Hendrickson Jack, and many others.

The PUKAR Youth Fellowship Program in India has used body literacy in its work with teenage girls, while the Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University has a youth initiative focusing on fertility awareness and body literacy

Today, several Body Literacy organizations and collectives are forming, including The Body Literacy Collective, who is the originator of the Read Your Body app, a recently created community-driven, privacy-focused, non-profit menstrual cycle charting app that was created with knowledge and experience of various fertility awareness methods as well as user data privacy in mind.

The Menstrual Life Cycle

The foundation of body literacy education is the concept of the menstrual life cycle. This is the series of hormonal changes that shift during different stages in life in the context of the changing ovarian hormones. Awareness of how hormones change through the lifespan is essential to understanding body literacy, which is dynamic and ever-changing. The menstrual life cycle begins with menarche, the first menstruation of one’s life. The four stages of the menstrual life cycle are puberty, menstrual/reproductive years, perimenopause, and menopause.

Before first menstruation, adrenarche occurs, and estrogen begins to fluctuate. Fluctuating estrogen causes changes to the body such as changes to the nipples, the chest, and the growth of pubic hair. 1-3 years after this, first menstruation, or menarche will arrive and the body will make progesterone.

Menstrual cycles take about 10 years to mature. During the menstrual/reproductive years, the hormonal pattern becomes more rhythmic, with a reciprocal relationship between estrogen and progesterone in the pre and post ovulatory phases respectively. Pregnancy and exclusive breastfeeding pause the menstrual cycle until ovulation returns some time after birth.

Perimenopause represents the transition between the menstrual years into menopause. It is sometimes referred to as "second puberty" because it similarly has high fluctuating estrogen levels with declining progesterone levels.

Menopause is the phase of life that begins one year after your final menstruation. Hormone levels are more akin to stable child-like levels, and the body continues to make estrogen through aromatization.

Each phase of the menstrual life cycle represents a different infradian rhythm pattern and thus, requires different hormonally aware treatment and care. One of the goals of body literacy is to increase knowledge and awareness of the menstrual life cycle and how it intersects with other aspects of healthcare.

Knowledge Gap With Developing Fem-Tech

Body literacy is developing through many different groups of innovators, researchers, and educators who are addressing the menstrual knowledge gap. These different groups have varying priorities within the larger body literacy and menstrual health movements.

In 2022, Angie Eriko Fleming wrote Body Literacy: Our Vital Knowledge, Our Vital Power An Embodied Research Journey into Developing Body Literacy As A Systems Thinker where she states "The menstrual cycle has been recognized as the fifth vital sign: a holistic health indicator that enables people who menstruate (PWM) to understand the state of their general health through physiological biomarkers. Understanding the menstrual cycle as a vital sign empowers PWM to develop their body literacy which requires a capacity for systems thinking. While this fact was acknowledged in the early 2000’s, it is not common knowledge among PWM, healthcare, education, menstrual health product makers, or FemTech innovators. This knowledge gap has significant implications for the holistic health, confidence, and agency of PWM to make informed health decisions...This study investigates the systemic factors that have created a society with this knowledge gap. It then identifies the community of actors working to close this knowledge gap. It concludes with a systems-based approach to exploring the opportunity spaces revealed through the research to promote social change to scale and emerge a new system."

Sharing a similar perspective, the 2019 paper Defining Menstrual Literacy With the Aim of Evaluating Mobile Menstrual Tracking Applications concluded that "These applications had insufficient support for facilitating menstrual literacy, especially for teen and perimenopausal users. The article discusses these disconnects and subsequent design opportunities for menstrual tracking applications to facilitate more robust support of menstrual literacy and overall health of people who menstruate." Another goal of body literacy is to close this existing knowledge gap, and empowering people who menstruate to make their own autonomous and informed healthcare decisions.

References

This article "Body Literacy" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Body Literacy. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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