Member-only story
The Insidiousness of Period-Related Body Dysmorphia
Not just an expectation of the female experience
I’m standing in the squat rack, my skin prickling from the pre-workout supplement I took. I squat close to my body weight, pumping out the weight like nothing. I catch my breath when I rerack and I want to cry. I hate my body.
Why?
Later I’m scrolling through something, I can’t even remember what, but the symptoms of PMS catch my eye: body dysmorphia.
As a long time menstruating woman, I’m very familiar with many of the symptoms of PMS. Cramps. Every time. Breast tenderness. Yep. Tiredness. I’m nodding off now. Mood swings. Pretty sure I just yelled at my husband because the oven wasn’t cooking dinner fast enough. Depression. A fact of life at this point. But body dysmorphia — an obsessive focus on a perceived flaw in appearance — this I wasn’t so familiar with.
Now in my thirties, I’m the most comfortable I have ever been in my body. I admire the things it has allowed me to do: carry a child, birth and feed that child, do pull-ups and pushups and deadlift the average weight of a man, run wooded trails and chase after a busy toddler.
Then once a month, there’s this slow feeling, insidious really, as I turn into someone else.
