Periodic Bitch (Emma Hardy, A&U)

In Periodic Bitch, Emma Hardy delivers a memoir that is both intellectually rigorous and literary in style, interrogating the cultural construction of the “female monster” alongside her lived experience of premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Set against Melbourne’s Covid lockdowns – a pressure cooker that intensifies her symptoms and brings years of confusion to a head – her debut book operates as both personal reckoning and cultural critique. Hardy explores the ideas of transformation and excess, drawing on horror tropes and folklore to explore the longstanding conflation of menstruation with monstrosity, tracing how cyclical bodily change has been framed as threatening or unruly. References to texts such as Stephen King’s Carrie support her argument that female coming-of-age is often coded as a slide into danger or evil, as the memoir moves fluidly between historical analysis and intimate confession. Hardy reflects on “hysteria”, medical misogyny and the expectation that women should endure pain in silence. She demonstrates a clear flair for synthesising research with personal narrative, such as when discussions of her IUD expand into meditations on hybridity, female cyborgs and Frankenstein’s monster. Instead of presenting PMDD as inherently terrifying, Hardy shows that the real problem is the long history of stigma and misunderstanding surrounding women’s health. Periodic Bitch is a thoughtful, layered memoir in the vein of Ariane Beeston’s Because I’m Not Myself, You See that challenges readers to reconsider how female anger, pain and transformation have been mythologised. 

Books+Publishing reviewer: Jess Lomas is the reviews editor at Books+Publishing. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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