Have you got the “luteal uglies”? I’m not trying to insult you, merely deploying the latest hormonal buzz phrase on social media, which refers to the phase in a woman’s cycle, two or so weeks between ovulation and menstruation, when she apparently feels at her lowest and most unattractive due to a drop in oestrogen levels.

Women’s hormones have become trending topics and, as someone who only found out what a “luteal phase” is when she Googled it, mid-fertility panic, in her late 20s, I am somewhat in awe of the expertise with which younger women discuss their menstrual cycles now. They’re just so incredibly literate.

Beyond being taught at school about periods and my mum explaining PMT, the impact of hormones on our emotional lives wasn’t discussed much when I was younger. In the “post-feminist” 1990s and early 2000s, female biology was seen as something to be suppressed and overcome, and the emphasis of most sex education was preventing teenage pregnancy. Being on the pill from 14 didn’t exactly put you in touch with the natural rhythms of your cycle, either, though of course it had other benefits (such as preventing the aforementioned teenage pregnancy).

You can understand the rationale, which was that female biology should never hold you back. Yet sometimes that felt like pretending your reproductive system didn’t really exist, or that you should simply push through the more difficult,........

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