the Female Body GOVERNING

Regulation through Postfeminist Pharmacy 123
to appear on grocery and drug store shelves, and numerous PMS-related
greeting cards, buttons, bumper stickers, self-help books, and clothing
appeared at the same time. Figert refers to the appearance of such items
as the constitution of the “PMS industry” and notes that it was a cash
cow, composed of the “3 Ps (products, pills, and prescriptions)” (p. 18).
In a section entitled, “What’s at Stake in the Construction of PMS?”
Figert argues that:
for some women, the publicity and legitimization of PMS and its
symptoms as real, a natural part of their body and its processes, have
led to a positive sense of control over this phenomenon. However, a
more negative image of PMS as something that controls women once
a month, that makes them “crazy” and subject to their hormones, is
much more pervasive in our contemporary Western culture. This image
has allowed women to use PMS as an excuse to express their emotions
or to account for their otherwise “strange” behaviors. Other people
(husbands, children, doctors, lawyers, judges, juries, co-workers) have
also used PMS to explain women’s behaviors—often within a scientifi c
or medical framework that then gives physicians and scientists “expert”
legitimacy over women’s bodies and minds. (p. 21)
Following Figert (1996), we suggest that Sarafem’s emergence is one
P in the 3 Ps Figert points to earlier, and one that was marketed both
to attend to Eli Lilly’s exigencies and to recognize (however unknowingly)
the regulatory potential of postfeminist discourse along with its
importance as a commercial vehicle. Sarafem was marketed to the public
using both television and print advertisements. One of the two television
advertisements (Eli Lilly had produced three, but the fi rst was deemed
by the Food and Drug Administration to be too aggressive) included
two brief but dramatic and silent vignettes, each of which conveyed
the frustration of experiencing PMDD. In the fi rst, a woman storms
around her house, fi nally violently throwing a pillow against a couch.
As her male lover or husband follows her into this room, she looks at
him and then appears to yell; his face shows his bewilderment and his
stance—arms crossed in front of his chest—signifi es his hostility toward
her. The second vignette occurs in the dressing room of a clothing store
where a woman is trying on clothes and fi nding everything too tight,
apparently because of premenstrual bloating. Her expression reveals
her exasperation about the experience, and she thrusts the clothing
into the arms of the friendly-looking salesperson (also a woman). The
voiceover suggests that these instances of irritability and mood swings
could be even more severe than a simple case of PMS: “Think again. It