the Female Body GOVERNING

Regulation through Postfeminist Pharmacy 127
and anything suggesting the female grotesque (in this case, symptoms
that accompany the menstrual cycle as well as menstruation itself).
Worth mentioning, however, is that Sarafem and Seasonale represent
the potential fi nancial gain of their manufacturers and, in the case
of Seasonale, their discoverers, too. Sarafem not only represents an
appropriation of postfeminism by a pharmaceutical company, but also
another trend as well. That is, like several other successful drugs whose
patents were running out, Sarafem is a renamed and repackaged version
of a soon-to-be-generic drug—Eli Lilly’s wildly successful antidepressant
Prozac. And although the disease it was targeted to cure—PMDD—can
be found in the DSM-IV, medical experts are far from unanimous
about whether it can be considered a legitimate disease or should ever
have been included in any edition of the DSM at all (Figert, 1996).
Seasonale, on the other hand, is just one of several possible repackaged
birth control hormones—pills, implants (Norplant), and injectables
(Depo-Provera). The latter, Norplant and Depo-Provera, were developed
by Sheldon Segal and Elsimar Coutinho, respectively, the two doctors
whose work has been most publicly associated with the argument that
menstruation suppression is a good thing (Warren, 2002). If Sarafem
or the cessation of menstruation (the latter would obviously negate a
need for the former) were to become an acceptable means of dealing
with the inconveniences of menstruation, then Eli Lilly, Coutinho, and
Segal stand to make a great deal of money.
The last remedy we examine, Remifemin, arguably poses no threat
of overdosing on synthetic hormones: Its active ingredient is black
cohosh root, an herb that has been used to treat menopause (and
other problems) since the nineteenth century (NIH, 2003, p. 2). 10 And
although the National Institute of Health’s offi ce of dietary supplements
does not endorse its use (on the basis of too few studies documenting
its effi cacy or long-term effects), its Web site provides a fairly detailed
explanation of what is known about black cohosh. 11
Remifemin treats symptoms, and, unlike hormone replacement
therapy (HRT), does not go further to eliminate osteoporosis or cardiovascular
disease, for example. But, like HRT, Remifemin is marketed
in such a way as to become one more treatment in what Bunton (1997)
calls “health-related consumer culture.” Bunton elaborates on such a
culture by adding that it is based on a “more general privileging of
bodily appearance, youthfulness, vitality, health and beauty and the
‘aestheticization’ of everyday life associated with consumer culture”
(p. 232). The Remifemin television ad described in the introduction
to this chapter features physically fi t women who, through their gym
workouts, appear to be aiming at least to sustain their fi tness, if not to