Women have always had their own secret words for the most secret of female activities - menstruation. However viewed through culture and history, menstruation has been accorded different meanings and powers.

According to the New Testament, it was considered a definite sign of filth and impurity. Aristotle believed it to be a clear indication of the female's natural inferiority. Pliny the Elder wrote that menstruation "turns dogs mad, sours wine and rots meat." By contrast, the Navajo Indian saw the menstruating woman as a blessing at harvest time.

Through culture and time..it always begins with the blood. The French speak of periods as "cardinals" or "tomatoes". Or, "la femme fraise des bois" - literally the strawberry woman. More commonly, menstruation was called "mes regles" or "my rules". In 1940's street slang, menstruating women in America might be referred to as "the chick is Communist, "dirty red" or "her cherry is in the sherry". More commonly we've heard the word, "period", and of course, "the curse'. The Chinese wince at this. They call menstruation "heavenly waters" - believing it to be a powerful sign of the "female body in harmony". Much maligned and misunderstood, often hated by the powers-that-be and sometimes by women themselves, menstruation remains the most dramatic biological marker of woman-hood. An initiation of sorts. In her diary, Anne Frank described it as a "sweet secret".

This poignant excerpt from the Diary of Anne Frank was originally banned. It was considered offensive. The first censor was Anne Frank's father who kept mention of the menses out of the first publication. But the menstrual taboo doesn't begin and end with Otto Frank. Through culture, time and religion, the menstrual taboo became almost universal in nature. The church barred menstruating women from coming to the altar to receive communion in the Middle Ages. Some scholars believe that this Christian edict fueled the prohibition of women as priests in the Catholic Church. Hindu women in south India were told to sleep outside the home for three nights during that "time of the month". From the beginning of time, menstruation has provoked powerful practices and beliefs - often laced with hatred, disgust, magic and mystery.