This Is How Horrible It Was to Get Your Period Back in the Day

Can you even imagine a time before modern tampons?

Mar 21, 2018
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Look, no one ​loves​ getting their period. But if you have to menstruate, it's probably best to do it in the year 2016. There are a million different ways to deal with bleeding: tampons with plastic applicators and tampons with cardboard applicators, maxi pads for heavy days and thin panty-liners for light days, underwear that absorbs your menstrual blood, and period-tracking apps so you're never surprised by Aunt Flo.

But girls didn't always have it so easy. Period Piece is a hilarious new web series that shines a spotlight on how women in different periods of history dealt with their, well, ​periods​. 

"While an important goal of the show is to make you laugh, it will hopefully empower and encourage young women to take ownership of their bodies, and to feel proud of what their bodies can do," ​Period Piece​ creator Liliana Tandon told Seventeen.com. "And because the episodes are based on historical research, they're informative too!​"

There are seven episodes so far, but here are our favorites:

In Colonial America, ​Cherokee women believed they gained inner strength from their periods.

In Victorian England, women were supposed to be on their most modest, proper behavior at all times — but that didn't stop them from commiserating about cramps. 

In the 1920s, drugstores put out boxes for women to deposit payment for pads to save customers the potential awkwardness of interacting with cashiers. 

Amazing — period.​

Credit: Cosmopolitan

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