vaginapagina | Period pain and self-image? (Reply)

This is more of a discussion question than anything... I was reading Inga Muscio's "Cunt" (which I heard of through the community info!) at the bookstore yesterday and got through most of the section on periods. I had to tear myself away to pick my mom up from work and I was too broke to buy it and the tons of other feminist books that looked so interesting! :( Haha, but anyway.. I thought it was really interesting that she talked about and criticized the male medical view that the pain caused by periods is "all in women's heads" (which we all know isn't true anyway), but then she turned around and said something that I thought was a similar concept, that loving your period will make the pain go away. Huh?? She also says that PMS often happens because women are taught to hate their periods, and draws an analogy- if guys were taught their entire lives to hate the fact that they got erections, they'd be pissy whenever that happened too. Again- huh??

Looking back on my own personal experiences, I've never had debilitating cramps- in fact, I never even had cramps, I usually get back pain instead- but the pain was much worse when I was 14 or so, when I was still getting used to having my period. I remember sitting in my freshman history class hunched over the desk, too miserable to listen to what the teacher was saying. And now that I think about it, that was a time in my life when I was really unhappy with myself and my body. I never hated my period, but I didn't really care much about it either way. Now, at age 19, I barely have any period pain at all except a tendency to get sore much more quickly if walking or standing for a long time, and I'm wondering if my earlier pain was somehow related to my self-image, or if it was just that I was so young and my body was still adjusting. It was something I'd wondered about before I read the book, but I thought perhaps it was just in my case that the pain was somewhat psychological, because like I said, my pain has never been that bad and I'm sure there are many many cases where it's very real and unavoidable.

Anyway, I guess I'm just wondering what you guys think of Muscio's statements, or if you have any experiences that match up (or don't match up). I do like the book as a whole and I think it's totally important to love your body and yourself, but I'm not sure if the correlation between that and actual physical pain is really so strong.