Menstrual pain is a complex experience shaped as much by sociocultural norms as by biology. The products, language, and expectations surrounding it reveal deep cultural beliefs about pain.
While developing Dawn, a project focused on menstrual and endometriosis pain relief, I sought to understand these beliefs and their effects.
This essay explores how cultural attitudes manifest in products for menstrual pain and how that awareness shaped my own design process, revealing that no design is ever neutral.
Pain is often treated as a purely physical sensation, but it reaches far beyond the body. It is social, cultural, and emotional. Every culture creates its own rules for what pain should look like: when to hide it, when to share it, and when to keep going anyway.
Menstrual pain, in particular, carries its own set of cultural stigmas and expectations. Menstruation has long been framed as shameful and unclean, from language in the Bible to the way it’s spoken about today.1
Euphemisms like “on the rag,” “time of the month,” and “Aunt Flo” make periods feel embarrassing and demeaning, and advertising that uses blue liquid to stand in for blood reinforces a sense of shame around bleeding. These associations create an “imperative of concealment,” the feeling that menstruation, and by extension menstrual pain, should remain hidden.3
Though private conversations among friends may normalize it, menstruation remains largely unspoken in public life. This culture of concealment shapes not only how people talk about pain but also how products are designed to address it.
Most modern menstrual pain technologies reinforce this expectation of discretion and concealment.
Pain killers, one of the main modes of relief for menstrual pain, frame pain as a malfunction. They support “a generally skewed conception of menstrual pain [as] a pathological condition to be cured.”2 Relief becomes synonymous with returning to normal: pain-free, productive, and discreet.
In the FemTech market, TENS devices extend this narrative through design. Typically, these devices are designed for discretion, with low-profile forms that can be hidden under clothes and flesh-toned materials that blend into skin. This discretion reinforces the idea that the goal is to appear unaffected.
Heat is one of the few forms of pain relief that often resists concealment. Simple tools like hot water bottles or rice bags allow people to slow down and care for themselves without pretending the pain isn’t there. But commercialized versions of heat therapy return to concealment as the value system. Disposable heat patches make warmth single-use and invisible, treating pain as private and temporary, and wearable heat devices focus on appearance and productivity, with slogans about confidence and staying active.2
Across these forms of relief, products are designed to conceal pain. They treat pain as an inconvenience, promote discreet use, and encourage people to return to “normal”. This approach is not malicious; it simply reflects the culture of concealment that shaped it.
Alongside the culture of concealment sits another: one that moralizes endurance. Here, pain isn’t something to hide but something to withstand. It becomes proof of strength, authenticity, and womanhood. Within this framework, “natural” pain feels virtuous, while medical or technological intervention can seem weak or artificial.
This mindset stems from a long history of medical dismissal.5 For decades, women’s pain has been normalized or ignored, diagnosed as stress, overreaction, or simply “part of being a woman.”6
This framing extends into broader reproductive health. The language of “clean,” “chemical-free,” or “hormone-free” positions naturalness as virtue:
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Birth control: The copper IUD is often praised as the “natural” feminist option because it doesn’t alter hormones, even though it can cause heavier, more painful periods.7
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Painkillers: Taking pain medication can feel like “giving in,” as if wanting to feel better is denying nature.
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Childbirth: Epidurals are often framed as weakness: a departure from a “real” or “authentic” birth experience.
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Menopause: Hormone treatments like estrogen can ease symptoms, yet they’re sometimes viewed as disrupting the body’s natural rhythm.
In each case, how someone responds to pain becomes a moral statement rather than a personal one.
Design participates in this narrative, too. Wellness and lifestyle products capitalize on women’s frustration with medical neglect by offering self-sufficient alternatives, with calls-to-action like “take your health into your own hands.” Teas, supplements, and mindfulness tools promise balance and empowerment, framing pain management as a form of personal discipline.8 These designs aestheticize pain into something to manage gracefully rather than something to question or express.
Doing a deep dive into the cultural attitudes around menstrual pain and how they influence design reinforced one of my core beliefs: design is never neutral. Every choice carries values, even when they go unspoken. Often, design upholds and perpetuates what a society already believes. This research made me more conscious of what ideas my own work might reinforce, and more deliberate about what I wanted Dawn to say.
If accepting that design is never neutral is the first step, then choosing the stance a design will take is the next. As I moved into the design phase of Dawn, I needed clarity about what values the product would support.
I knew I didn't want Dawn to align with either the culture of concealment or the culture of endurance. I wanted to understand what other values were already present in people’s lived experiences of pain, and if design could support those values. To explore this, I created a cultural probe kit focused on personal acts of care and day-to-day relationships with pain.
The responses reflected both value systems I had identified: some people resist pain medication as long as possible, others only change their routines if the pain is unbearable, most felt best when they could stay home.
I also saw people place significant value on emotional comfort and being checked on, beyond simply alleviating the physical sensation.
This value system, one grounded in comfort and care, is what guided the design of Dawn. Through decisions rooted in these values, I aimed to create a product that encourages rest and offers emotional grounding through sensory cues.
Starting this project by examining cultural expectations around menstrual pain made my design decisions more deliberate.
Every choice, from material to language, carries a perspective about how people should live. Recognizing those underlying values is a design responsibility, because design shapes culture just as culture shapes design. The stories we tell through products and systems reinforce what’s seen as normal, acceptable, or worth attention.
My hope with Dawn was to make something people would want to return to, an experience that offers warmth and recognition in moments that often feel isolating.
You can see how this goal manifested in the final design of Dawn here.