Lifting the curse

So the health implications of Seasonale may be no different from those of the existing pill - which means that all women are stuck between the Scylla of ovarian cancer and endometriosis (if they're au naturel) and the Charybdis of blood clots and breast cancer (if they're popping pills).

What are the social implications?
We may think our generation is totally liberated - but periods? They're the last taboo of modern life. It's even enshrined in our language: it's the 'time of the month' or 'the curse'; if we're off work, it's 'a tummy bug'.

Periods are a fact of female life but something we quickly learn to be ashamed of. The first period is a sign that you're normal, but, after that, you're skulking to the loo, hoping that nobody sees the sanitary towel stuffed up your sleeve. Even as adults, we cheerfully share stories of anything from childbirth to drunken sexual antics, but still harbour the shame of the sanitary towel. Would you like your boss to see you buying a box of them?

While a period-free life may sound appealing, it might also conspire only to make women even more ashamed of their own bodily functions. Beyond the health issues, it seems we believe periods to be some kind of embarrassing handicap that we have to overcome if we want to become Real People. One social benefit of fewer periods is, apparently, that women's careers will prosper as they become more productive at work once their hormones are functioning 'normally'.

But a general pathologising of periods could equally increase discrimination against women, who could find themselves being stigmatised as inferior, ailing, unstable creatures at the mercy of their hormones. Hardly progressive.

So will we be rushing out for Seasonale prescriptions, come 2003? The sanitary produce manufacturers will presumably hope not: if the three million British women currently on the Pill chose to banish their periods, the industry would lose around £3 billion a year. Many women will love the idea; countless others will find the idea of further 'interference with nature' intolerable. But it is another choice - and for that we should probably bethankful.