No Periods Period - Television Tropes & Idioms

Al: You know who is a good woman? Veronica. You know, from Archies comics? She never had a period.
Steve: That's true. But she still had an attitude problem.
Al: You're right, there are no good ones.
—Married With Children

Modess ... because.
—Carefully unspecific advertising copy

Surfing the Crimson Tide. On the Rag. Riding the Cotton Pony. Receiving a Visit from Auntie Flo. Falling To The Communists. Liverpool Playing At Home. Walking Through a Field of Wildflowers in Soft Focus. Winning A Starring Role In A Period Costume Drama. That Time Of The Month... When I'm Not At My Best... Because Blood is Seeping Out of My Vagina.

This does not happen to TV and movie characters. It is rarely even indirectly alluded to. The only time this biological process is alluded to is under the following circumstances:

When a woman misses a period, as an indication that she's about to be tied to a pregnancy plotline.
As part of a Very Special Episode exploring a young girl's entrance into puberty. (Said girl may be horribly shocked when her period happens, thinking she's dying from some horrible disease. The likelihood of such a thing happening increases if the story is set pre-1960s, before sex-ed and frank public discussion of sexuality became the norm. Alternatively, she may shock the adult characters by having read all the available books on menstruation and talked to the school nurse).
At the other end, the onset of menopause halts menstruation, making it comically ambiguous with pregnancy.
A setting with werewolves contains a brief reference to "times of the month". This connection is never explored in detail.
A Girl is disguised as a boy and as a plot point suddenly has to conceal (or is outed by) her menstruation.
The woman is a main character trying to get pregnant.

Sometimes periods are played for comedy, as when one or both members of a Sit Com couple work themselves into a frenzy of anticipation for a planned sexual encounter, but the woman goes "on the rag" just before it happens. Or when a woman's Time of the Month turns her into a rampaging PMS monster, inflicting pain and woe on any hapless man unlucky enough to fall within her line of vision. A less common gag, typically seen in parodies of Very Special Episode-type stories, is that any discussion of the topic will cause all males in the room to flee in horror - which also gives the writers an excuse to shift attention away from the conversation. This is sometimes invoked by having two women bring up the topic intentionally to make the men leave. Males always seem to find menstruation a Squicky subject ...

Outside of mainstream television, this restriction is somewhat relaxed, but even so the topic only mentioned in passing, if at all. Naturally, Dead Baby Comedies are happy to make jokes about menstruation, but usually only allude to the topic. With novels, it depends on the target audience; while adventure and romance stories usually avoid the topic like the plague, some 'serious' women's fiction treats the matter thoughtfully and in detail. In Science Fiction, it generally only comes up as a contrast to someone else's Bizarre Alien Biology. Transformation Comics often involve at least one throwaway gag on the subject, where a male-to-female Gender Bender either has a period and doesn't know how to deal with it, or panics over the possibility of not getting switched back in time to avoid it. Other than that, the topic is usually avoided in favor of the more... entertaining changes.

An Action Girl will never get a menstrual period. Period. Nor does any other woman in an action-adventure story, unless she happens to be a sorceress, and her powers are somehow tied to her monthly cycle. It's not hard to see why - Sci-Fi and fantasy heroines probably couldn't even fit a maxi-pad into their skin-tight latex catsuits and stripperiffic bikinis. When Auntie Flo comes calling on Alice the Barbarian, out on the field slaughtering Scythians in her Breast Plate and leather thong, what's she going to do? Most writers don't care, since they're male, but female viewers are going to have their sense of immersion dinged at least a little upon seeing such a character, especially if it's obvious that she has no change of clothing on her. Ah well. Bellisarios Maxim, folks. However, there may be some truth in this, since serious female athletes will often experience irregular and/or fewer periods; the jury's still out on exactly why (body fat composition? stress? hormonal changes?).

Also, due to American television broadcast standards, animated women in family-oriented shows are never allowed to get periods or even talk about them. Any mentions of menstruation in a Japanese anime are fully excised before it is allowed to be shown on American TV. This can sometimes cause unexpected plot holes and long missing scenes, because in Japan a girl's first period is traditionally celebrated by her family with a special meal of red beans and rice.

This troper who is an ESOL teacher was amazed to discover her Asian students are quite happy to answer "Oh, you don't look well, have you a headache?" with "Oh, no, it's my period, I am having a difficult time"... and yet to be very reticent about other things. On at least one occasion, it was definitely Too Much Information.

A Sweet Polly Oliver, however, stands a fair chance of subverting this.

Occasionally a writer will mention periods in order to point out the effect they can have on animals, since predators may be drawn by the scent of blood.

Compare to Nobody Poops. Completely unrelated to No Punctuation Period. Also see Clingy Costume.