Beauty is Pain

At the age of 15, I was diagnosed with a chronic, incurable pain condition. Facing that kind of diagnosis at a young age was hard to contend with. High school was supposed to be spent worrying about the ACT or prom dates, but I found myself worrying what the next year, the next ten years, and the rest of my life would look like waking up in pain. 

Further, one of the most disheartening aspects of my diagnosis was a closer look at the medical industry. I spent months going to various doctors, only to be told my condition would be with me for the rest of my life. We go to doctors thinking they can fix our ailments, but for myself and other chronic pain sufferers, all we receive is bad news. When I was diagnosed, I was a kid, especially in the eye of the medical industry. I was going to pediatricians and children’s hospitals. It wasn’t until I got older that I saw the kind of treatment women facing chronic pain receive. Shortly after turning 18, I had a doctor tell me to stop taking the pain medication I had been prescribed, I had my chronic migraines blamed on my menstrual cycle, and, for the first time, when telling a doctor about my chronic pain, I was asked if perhaps I was “just depressed.” I know first-hand the frustration and belittlement women must deal with when seeking treatment for pain. I can personally attest to the increasing disregard for my pain I have received from doctors as I’ve gotten older, as they see me as less of a child and more of a woman. 

And I am not alone. According to the CDC, approximately 20 percent of US adults suffer from chronic pain, and women make up 70 percent of that 20. Chronic pain is ongoing pain that can last weeks to years, and for some, their entire lives. Despite these statistics, women’s pain is often disregarded and discredited by doctors, employers and even friends and family. According to a report published by The Institute of Medicine in 2011 called “Relieving Pain in America,” women not only suffer from pain more than men, but women’s reports of pain are more likely to be dismissed. 

Because pain is subjective and self-reported, it can only be diagnosed and treated if a patient's word is assumed to be true. For women suffering from pain, the medical industry has continued to disbelieve that women can accurately account for what they feel and what is happening with their bodies. We understand that these discrepancies are occurring, but the answer as to why is still filled with conjecture. From the archaic ideas of female piety to the female body’s treatment as an object of the male gaze, it isn’t hard to connect the dots between women's concerns for their bodies being ignored and the societal expectations placed on the female form. The ways that women and their pain are disregarded by the medical industry are a consequence of sexualization similar to harassment and catcalling. A woman’s body has been equated first and foremost to be an object of sexual desire, and it is this sexist ideology that causes women to be ignored when their bodies do not conform to this rhetoric. After all, beauty is pain.  

Because women are often stereotyped as frail, weak or hysterical, their pain is often not treated with the same care as men. For instance, women spend more time waiting in hospital waiting rooms than men. Before they are even given a chance to explain their medical concerns, they are assumed to be less serious than men’s. Once they’ve actually made it past the threshold to see a doctor, women face improper medical treatment due to the weak and sensitive stereotypes women receive. Women’s health concerns are more often met with mental health-related diagnoses and women are prescribed sedatives over pain medications, whereas men are often prescribed pain medications over sedatives. 

This is not just ineffective treatment, but blatantly wrong treatment.  Multiple studies, including “The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain '' by Diane E. Hoffmann and Anita J. Tarzian and “Women with Pain” by J. Crook and E. Tunks, have found that women with chronic pain conditions are often wrongly diagnosed with psychological conditions. This not only characterizes women in pain as solely emotional and their pain therefore not real, but also leads to the prescription of sedatives and antidepressants, or even physical therapy or ultrasounds, in the place of pain medication. The “gender pain gap” is real, and the women are left with their pain and the risk of serious conditions intensifying.

It’s clear that because women are often ignored by the medical industry, they are left to face some serious conditions without proper care or diagnosis. For instance, women are twice as likely to suffer from multiple sclerosis, two to three times more likely to have rheumatoid arthritis, three times more likely to have an autoimmune condition (which are more often than not associated with debilitating pain and fatigue) and are four times more likely to be diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. Yet the medical industry continues to ignore them. 

The sexist term “bikini medicine” is yet another way women are ignored. Used in the medical industry, it is the idea that the only difference in treating women medically has to do with their “bikini areas'', referring to reproductive and breast health. When women suffer from time-sensitive conditions such as appendicitis or gastrointestinal health problems, they often receive delayed and ineffective treatment that complicates their condition. This is due to their symptoms being written off as relating to their menstrual cycles. 

The inability of doctors to recognize that women’s bodies operate in ways distinct from men outside of sex also leads to ineffective medical treatment. An article in The Atlantic titled “How Doctors Take Women’s Pain Less Seriously” showed that women wait on average 65 minutes to receive an analgesic for acute abdominal pain. Men wait on average 49 minutes. Further, in the case of an appendix on the verge of rupturing, over an hour-long wait can mean the difference between a simple procedure and life-saving surgery. 

“Bikini medicine” and the rhetoric it’s tied to has also caused a majority of medical research to be performed on men. In 1977 the FDA warned against allowing women of childbearing age from participating in medical research because a woman could become pregnant and the fetus could be harmed by researchers.= And while women make up 70 percent of those suffering from chronic pain, 80 percent of pain-specific studies are conducted on male mice and humans according to an article by Harvard Health Publishings. Unreliable research like this affects the effectiveness of drugs on women because certain drugs affect women differently. If medical practitioners cannot escape harmful rhetoric and only rely on ineffective data to treat women, it is no wonder that women are suffering from pain while men receive treatment. 

The way women suffer at the hands of the medical industry is connected to the various ways women suffer due to objectification and sexist rhetoric. Sexual harassment, catcalling, unfair dress codes, ignoring female pain; all are a means of taking control of women’s bodies. Objectification theory is the idea that women live within a sociocultural context that sexually objectifies the female body and equates a woman’s worth with her physical appearance and sexual capacity. The lack of attention and care shown to women in the medical field is tied to this. When a woman's body becomes more than an object or acts in a way that is not for sexual pleasure, it goes directly against the construct in our society that confines women’s bodies. When a woman is given a sedative to treat her mind instead of an opiate to treat her pain, the body is not being treated, the mind that tried to cast the body as more than an object is being silenced. 

More often than not it has been on me, not the doctor, to be persistent and diligent with my condition, and I’ve had to learn the hard way to disregard doctors who try to convince me I am not feeling what I claim to be. Only you know your pain, and I encourage you to trust yourself over those who try to tell you it is not serious or that it is all in your head. Addressing this issue requires more than just expanding medical research or more extensive training for doctors. It requires everyone to confront the very real and dangerous consequence that the socio-cultural ideology that surrounds women and their bodies. 

The most immediate opportunity for improvement falls on the part of women patients to advocate for themselves, a situation that can be exceedingly frustrating and time-consuming. Teresa Woodruff, director of Northwestern University's Women's Health Research Institute stated, "What we're telling women is, every time you go to the doctor, ask, 'Has this treatment or drug been tested on women?’ Continue to advocate so physicians have to ask, they have to look it up." She continued, "I think the more people are a little bit outraged, the faster change will occur."