I

n ninth grade I admitted to my mom that I wasn’t 
getting my period. I was sitting at the head of my 
dining room table, my sister was to my right and my 

mom sat at the other head, directly across from me. Phoebe 
had asked my mom a question about puberty and my mom, 
a very frank veterinarian, gave a complete and detailed 
medical response.

I stared at my breakfast, a bowl of cereal, and blushed. 

I was secretly ashamed that my 11-year-old, stick-thin 
sister was normal and how aware I was that I was not. 
At school my friends all talked about tampons or pads 
and how bad their cramps were and so on. I always felt 
excluded. I had nothing to add to the conversation.

My mom, the smartest and most efficient woman I 

know, sprung into early-preventative action, recognizing 
the signs for a very common Ashkenazi Jewish hormonal 
deficiency. Just a month after I told my mom that not 
only was my period irregular but I hadn’t had it in over 
a year, I wound up in the office of a gynecologist, crying. 
My mom was right, I had polycystic ovarian syndrome.

Essentially, my body produces too much androgen, or 

male hormones. The hormonal imbalance causes weight 
gain, irregular periods, acne, excess hair growth and a 
deeper voice. The best part about PCOS is that controlling 
your weight is the most effective preventative method 
for all the negative symptoms, but that no matter how 
hard you work out or how well you eat, losing weight is 
roughly a million times harder for someone with PCOS 
than someone who doesn’t have PCOS.

But the fun doesn’t stop there! Because of the weight 

gain, women with PCOS have a tendency to be at-risk 
for developing diabetes and, even worse, issues with 
infertility because of the lack of a “regular” hormonal 
cycle. 

I was in ninth grade when I found out that I had to 

start worrying about my fertility as an adult. That I had 
to deal with the reality that I might never be able to even 
have kids, or might have extreme difficulty conceiving. 
That’s an awful feeling, not just because of the crushing 
weight of dealing with the far-off future, but because 
I was different. Let’s be clear, though, I enjoy being 
different in things that I can control. But it’s hard to come 

to terms with being “proud” of a hormonal imbalance.

I used, initially, two magic pills to prevent the common 

side effects of PCOS; birth control and metformin. The 
birth control was used to regulate my periods, and the 
metformin was used to help regulate my weight. The 
catch-22 is that birth control causes weight gain in a lot 
of women. So I was taking birth control to get a period, 
gaining weight because of it and using another pill to 
suppress the effects of the birth control. 

There’s a lot of issues I could cover between ninth 

grade and now, such as the disgusting amount of blood 
draws (needles are not my friend), the shame in not 
feeling as “womanly,” my off-the-chart cortisol levels 
and the decision to stop using birth control. But the main 
issue I had to struggle with was my body image.

I still struggle, as most women do. I love the “body 

positive” movements that have cropped up in the 
progressive world like wildfire, but I don’t identify with 
them. I have a dichotomic conscious, where a part of me 
is so happy with the way I look and the other side just 
sees a body that is deficient. I shouldn’t be overweight, 
I eat well (enough) and I exercise (during the summer 
when school doesn’t consume my life). I make jokes about 
my lifestyle but I completely understand the mechanics 
of personal metabolism after extensive meetings with 
nutritionists and doctors. My body just can’t without a 
complete motivated dedication to changing physically 
through extensive dieting and excessive exercising that 
I don’t have energy for at this point in life.

And I hate that.
I hate the word can’t and I hate that I’m 

“procrastinating” my own health. The reality is that I’m 
heavier than I should be and it scares me. I want children 
one day and I want my own biological children and I 
know I want to be physically pregnant and not depend 
on surrogacy.

Here’s the most important thing, though: I do not use 

PCOS as an excuse for anything I have mentioned in 
this article, I use it as an explanation. That distinction 
between excuse and explanation is very important to 
me. I recognize that to other people struggling with 
life-threatening or altering diagnoses, my “frustrations” 
with PCOS are minimal, and I respect that.

And to answer your question, yes. Yes I did just spend 

an entire article complaining about not getting a regular 
period. But I’m not sorry that I did. I really wish I did 
cramp and bleed and got acne and was moody and it gross 
once a month. But I’m cool with my (sex) hormones. I 
never had a major turning point from hating to accepting 
the diagnosis and ultimately being OK with it, but the 
point is that today, I am.

How to: Be OK with your hormones
1. You just have to.

3B
Wednesday, December 7, 2016 / The Statement 

How To: Being Cool With Your (Sex) Hormones

B Y S Y LVA N N A G R O S S

“We demand that sex speak the truth. And we 
demand that it tell us our truth, or rather, the 
deeply buried truth of that truth about ourselves 
which we think we possess in our immediate 
consciousness.”

— French philosopher and literary theorist MICHEL FOUCAULT.

on the record: the greatest human minds on sex

“The body is the instrument of our hold on the 
world.” 

— French existentialist and philosopher SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR.

“If you’re going to have sex, use a condom.”

— Retired NBA player DENNIS RODMAN.

ILLUSTRATION BY EMILIE FARRUGIA

COVER BY SHANE ACHENBACH