No Periods, Period

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Sorry, never heard about that thing.

Al: You know who was a good woman? Veronica. You know, from Archie Comics? Veronica never had a period.
Steve: That's true. But she still had an attitude problem.
Al: You're right. There are no good ones.

— Married... with Children

It is common in fantasy that female elves do not have periods. Fairies and youkai are also often unaffected. This often applies to Cute Monster Girls, to make it clear that they are not human or only half human. Female vampires do not have it any more, which makes sense, considering that they are no longer living things, but walking corpses.

After all, most authors are also male, which is why they are much less likely to deal that a woman getting her period at some point.

Compare to Nobody Poops, No Such Thing as Dehydration, Exposed to the Elements, Frigid Water Is Harmless, and No Dead Body Poops. Common aversions usually have First Period Panic, All Periods Are PMS, Menstrual Menace or Pregnancy Scare.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

The first page of After School Nightmare has the intersex protagonist getting his first period.
During one sequence in Berserk, Action Girl Casca insists on fighting during her period and nearly gets killed by a particularly misogynistic enemy general because her cramps are taking her edge off. She gets her own back during the Battle of Doldrey and kills him.
One of the chapters of Bokura no Hentai has Akane begin to menstruate. She's less than happy at her changing body.
One chapter of Family Compo has Sora getting his period. He's obviously upset and shares pads with his daughter.
Triela's periods pop up a few times in Gunslinger Girl. In one scene she's complaining about them but the slightly younger Henrietta notes she herself can't get them due to having her ovaries removed due to her Conditioning, though it's implied to be related to having been gang-raped repeatedly prior to the story.
IS: Otoko demo Onna demo Nai Sei is a manga about intersex people. At least one of the characters has been shown to menstruate.
Inside Mari deals with what happens when a man switched with a girl starts menstruating. Isao is overcome by the pain and freaked out by the blood. He starts bawling and has an awkward time buying menstrual pads.
The two twin sisters, Kagami and Tsukasa, from Lucky Star at one point chat (with polite ambiguity) about periods; Kagami was concerned that it would happen at the beach and she couldn't go into the water. Not too surprising, since the show tends to involve the girls chatting about anything and everything. Konata takes delight in overhearing such an intimate conversation, and Kagami in her embarrassment finds herself wondering if her diminutive, flat-chested friend has even had a period.
Shion no Ou: Shion suffers from haemophobia, fear of blood, due to her parents' murder. When she wakes up in Episode 3 with bloody sheets from her first period, the shock and trauma puts her in the hospital for several days.
Shishunki Bitter Change: Averted, as Yuuta (While in Yui's body) experiences his first period.
Episode 8 of Tenchi Muyo! has Sasami pretty much taken out of the episode because she got her first period. In fact, you wouldn't even realize this unless you knew the items Tenchi's aunt gives the others are old remedies to help her weather that little problem.
Toradora! famously averts this when Ami declares to Minori: "Talking to you is like having a period."
The one-shot Yuri Genre manga Trans Star is about a girl whose male crush transformed into a girl. The ending shot has her getting her first period.
A plot point in Wandering Son. Takatsuki is transgender and starting his period causes dysphoria. On a lesser note, menstruation is depicted several times from varying female characters.
In 7 Seeds, with some girls casually mentioning that they are on their period at the moment. Natsu's period actually becomes a plot point in the Minor Heat arc, where iron-eating bacteria starts to become active on an old, abandoned ship and starts chasing her, due to the iron in her blood.
In Fushigi Yuugi. Yui gets a bloodstain on her skirt as a result of being connected to Miaka (who is in the book) via her school uniform, and Miaka being injured. One of their friends awkwardly asks Yui if it's her time of the month. In the anime, it's downplayed. Yui sees the stain and groans before heading into the bathroom (probably assuming it's a menstrual mishap), but no one actually mentions it.
In Kodomo no Kodomo. The grade-schoolers talk about getting their first periods early on.
Casually averted in Michiko & Hatchin when a girl named Rita mentions she is wearing a tampon.
Oddly enough in Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal, the 1999 four-part OVA to Rurouni Kenshin. Episode three treats us to a series of quick cuts between Tomoe clutching her stomach and splashes of blood against a black background. She then heads outside before we cut to the next scene.
Mentioned once or twice in Slayers, as female spellcasters lose power "that time of the month". Given the length of the series, it's surprising it only comes up once or twice with Lina, the first time as a minor plot point. Presumably, she is little affected most of the time, or maybe it only affects her and a small number of mages.
Neon Genesis Evangelion: While the show averts it for Asuka, Rei implies that she doesn't have periods in episode 14 with the cryptic piece of dialogue about "the woman that never bleeds", possibly referring to herself and a literal example of this trope due to being a Half-Human Hybrid vessel for the soul of Lilith.
Averted in Shadow Star, at least thrice:
- Naozumi discovers that it's Satomi's time of the month after she passes out and wets herself when her dragon is cut up by an attack chopper's rotor blades.
- Akira is taunted by some girls at school because of her period and she mentions that she did just have it.
- The 13-year-old Shiina Tamai gets her first one right after she dies and is subsequently reborn in the island where her grandparents live.
Teasing Master Takagi-san: one of Takagi's pranks is to sit out of swimming class with Nishikata (who has an injury), and dares him to guess why she's sitting out. Seeing no obvious injuries on her, Nishikata's only guess is she must be on her period, but he's far too embarrassed to actually say that to her. The answer is she just wanted to sit with him.
In Yona of the Dawn, the titular character unexpectedly gets hers in a dinner with her male companions. It leaves her unexpectedly weak, and prompts her to smack Hak in the face when he gets too close. Fortunately, the girl acting as their host helps Yona cover-up and gets her away from the menfolk. She even comments that her period isn't usually this bad.
In A Lazy Guy Woke Up As A Girl One Day, an extra chapter features Yasuda, the eponymous guy-turned-girl, going through a period one day. It's so painful that Yasuda briefly wants to go back to being a guy, something he'd dismissed as too much trouble earlier.
Torn to shreds by Little Miss P, a manga about the Anthropomorphic Personification of periods visiting various girls and women during that time of the month. Despite the "Aunt Flo"-esque premise, she is in no way treated as a Menstrual Menace.

Comic Books

ElfQuest: Elven females don't menstruate, so it's justified with them. However, as a human woman, Shuna does, and this distracts the wolves to the point that they have her living apart from them while she's menstruating.
One issue of Runaways has Nico using the Staff of One despite not being injured at all. The gang is a little confused and figure it out after Nico glares at them when they question it — The Staff of One can only be summoned when the user's blood is spilled. Nothing in the rules said anything about being actual wounds.
Carol Danvers was a dick to Jessica Jones in Alias #3. She apologized later and clarified that she was having her period.
Averted in Reborn where Bonnie Black brings up the fact she had her first period in 30 years. It Makes Sense in Context since she used to be nearly 80 years old, but after being rejuvenated to her 25-year old form, she is able to do it again.
Averted in Hope Larson's graphic novel Chiggers, which takes place at an all-girls summer camp. In one section, a girl named Shasta is grousing about having her period while there, to which her friend Abby sympathizes, saying she's glad hers finished prior to arriving at the camp.

Fan Works

Lothíriel by JunoMagic, in chapter 12 "Preparations for the Journey", puts the idea that the elves of The Lord of the Rings never bleed during their periods. "They reabsorbed whatever they had done to get ready once a month to conceive a child." Lothíriel, the woman from Germany, does not have periods because her birth-control implant suppresses them.
Discussed in First Try Series for how a massively unprepared Sakura is going to go through a two-month training mission without feminine products.
With Origin Story, at first it seemed as if the story was going to follow this trope (to the point that some reviewers commented on how unrealistic it was that Alex Harris, who at the time was still thinking she was a man turned into a woman, wouldn't have had a complete freak out over getting her period. Turns out that the writer was instead using her period as evidence that while Alex looks human, she's actually a Kryptonian, and the two species are not identical even if they are similar. In the story, female Kryptonians are only fertile (and thus only menstruate) four times a year. Alex eventually did get her period, on the normal Kryptonian time-scale.
This is Played for Laughs and averted in this Kill la Kill Fankoma. Apparently, the series never covered that before.
Averted by this The Hobbit fanfic, which is a short story that's all about a female version of Bilbo getting her period on the journey.
Averted in The Second Try. Asuka's monthly cycle is brought up once or twice in the story. Her lack of periods is how she figured out she was pregnant.
A Brighter Dark: Subverted and Played for Laughs. No blood actually appears, but when Beruka comes to Selena saying she has a problem, Selena (in an annoyed and sleep-deprived state) assumes that she started 'bleeding' and gives advice on how to deal with it. Beruka's response indicates that she already knows all about the subject; "I am an adult, Selena."
In the How to Train Your Dragon fic "Upon the North", Astrid having her period plays an important part later in the plot, as it leads to her being absent when the main group is ambushed and taken prisoner by the Grimborns, allowing her to rally the dragons for a rescue.
Averted in Doing It Right This Time, where it turns out that Rei does in fact have perfectly normal human reproductive organs contrary to what she'd been told. It leads to a minor bonding moment for her and Asuka.
Walking in Circles. Evelyn's friend, Keldra, once complains about having to deal with her stained clothes and her period being irregular and asks if Signy if she also needs to delivery her clothing for laundry too which the latter declines. Sometimes later, it's revealed that Signy uses her period blood to practice blood magic instead of cutting herself as regular blood mages do.
Home with the Fairies: Averted for Maddie, who had to improvise a tampon.
In this Steven Universe fanfiction where the Gems also get periods, Connie outright lampshades this trope when she says that she's "read hundreds of books with young heroines, and not a single one has mentioned periods. Even when the characters are older than [her]."
"That's strange." Garnet said.
"I think it might be a human cultural thing?" Pearl pondered.
This is discussed in a flashback three years before the main story of At the End of Days when Satsuki asks Ryuuko when her next cycle begins. The conversation is awkward, really.
This is used in-universe in the oneshot How To Tame A Dragon's Fire: Blood Sisters. In Elsa's culture, it's taboo to discuss menstruation. She's embarrassed about discussing "it" with Astrid, who doesn't have the same taboo.
In Make A Man Out Of You, Ping is a trans man, though he doesn't realize it early on. He gets his period while in disguise as a male soldier. He goes to a village to get a medicine that will stop his menstruation, at the risk of becoming infertile.
Played for Drama in Hella Potter and the Reincarnated OC: Hella's first period was so painful she was laid up in the hospital wing for a whole day, and the nurse told her she would have to endure the same ordeal monthly. It terrified the poor girl so much, she unconsciously used her magic to stop the entire cycle for three years. Her new nurse actually freaks out when she hears about it, pointing Hella could have become entirely barren if it had dragged much longer.

Averted in Jupiter Ascending; Jupiter uses a maxi pad (for lack of anything else) as a bandage for Caine's wound, telling him to be thankful that the car they’ve stolen is owned by a woman - although she applies it sticky side down.
Played with in Summer School: When Pam ditches class and blames it on a "woman thing," Chainsaw complains that the "woman thing" is a scam. Denise goes into a rant about how much the "woman thing" sucks.
The Dreamers: Averted. Isabelle gets her period while taking a bath with Theo and Matthew. Theo notes it's "good news" since she'd already had unprotected sex with Matthew multiple times.
Averted in Sam. Sam, now transformed into Samantha, gets her period and, never having experienced on before, thinks she is hemorrhaging.
Averted in Sixteen Candles, where Sam's older sister Ginny gets her period right before her wedding, resulting in her taking four muscle relaxants that day, leaving her completely blotto for the ceremony, with predictable results.
Averted in Jack the Ripper (1976). One of the prostitutes says that she refused to go for a stroll with the killer because it was her time of the month: a statement which shocks the elderly spinster in the room.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire: Averted. Marianne gets cramps as her's starts up, and Sophie makes a remedy for her. It also leads to the reveal of Sophie's pregnancy, as she's missed three in a row, as comes up in the pair's conversation.
Closet Land: The Interrogator demands to know if the Author is menstruating at one point, as there's blood on her clothes. She refuses to say, so he grabs and checks her, revealing that she's not.
In The Fade: Averted. Katja and Samia discuss their menstruation, with the latter saying hers has come back after she stopped breastfeeding. However, Katja has not menstruated since her family were killed. Later though her period comes back unexpectedly.
The Craft: Legacy: Averted when Lily gets her period in class and is roundly mocked for it by other students.

Literature

Averted in A Brother's Price when the corpse of a male rape victim is found, the protagonists conclude from the blood on his private parts that one of the rapists must have been on her period. Qualifies, as this conclusion is of no use in the plot.
The Baby-Sitters Club: It's entirely plausible for a thirteen-year-old girl not to have begun menstruating yet, which makes a reasonable justification for the trope. However, it is decidedly less plausible that none of the Baby-Sitters would have started their periods by that age, especially given how Stacy, for one, is mentioned to be fairly well-developed (her bikini top is "filled out nicely"), suggesting she's been in puberty for a few years already. Presumably, it's not mentioned because the target age range for the books was a bit younger than thirteen, and Martin didn't want to freak out the kids (or their parents). Averted in the Netflix series, where Kristy gets her first period at her mother's wedding (no wonder she was so cranky right before!) and the other girls (who have all already had theirs) walk her through it (with Mary Anne even supplying her with a pad).
An identical scenario is seen in The Fabulous Five series, which also focuses on a group of 13-year old girls, yet never has the topic come up. Again, it's highly unlikely that none of them would have reached menarche.
Zig-zagged in the Sweet Valley Twins series, in which the girls and their friends are in sixth grade (roughly age 10—12), thus making it more believable than the previous series that none of them would have started as yet—a secondary character is quite shocked when she does, having thought she was too young, and the twins themselves don't until one of the final books, implying that they've gotten old enough to begin.
The Saddle Club: Played straight. The three main characters are all girls age 12-13, but periods are never mentioned save once offhand, rather jarringly, when the 13-year-old talks about a Southern Belle etiquette teacher she had who always called it "that time of the month".
Twilight: Word of God says that that blood is "dead blood" and not nearly as interesting to vampires such as Edward, but it's still kind of awkward. It also still gets the Fridge Logic going.
The Hunger Games: There is never any mention of what the female tributes do when or if they get their period in the arena. Do sponsors send them tampons, or do the contestants receive treatment to stop their cycle? The latter would be unsurprising, given that male tributes do receive some kind of treatment to stop them from growing beards, so there's every chance female tributes receive something similar — perhaps ratings have shown that female tributes menstruating wasn't very entertaining. This becomes fortunate in the second book when Katniss is pretending to be pregnant — if she had suddenly gotten her period, it would have been noticeable, given the amount of time the tributes spend in little clothing, and the entire plan would have been scuppered.
- It is also true that when a woman is under a high amount of stress she can be late or even skip a period. Having to keep yourself alive with people actively out to kill you would be stressful enough to warrant this idea.
- At one point in the first book, Katniss wonders whether it has been a month since a certain event. This implies she hasn't been having her period in the arena, since it would provide a point of reference, at least.
- Women such as female athletes and others who exercise regularly will often stop menstruating. This could well apply to female tributes too.
Petals on the Wind: Zig-zagged. The protagonist, Cathy, is malnourished after years of being kept in the attic. Understandably, her periods have stopped, although her brother Chris raped her during their imprisonment, so she may also be pregnant. During a dance audition (and a very memorable scene), the floodgates open.
Periods are used as a form of Establishing Character Moment in The Kingdom of Little Wounds as all the women in the nursery cycle at the same time but for the stubborn and contrary Midi.
Averted in the Outlander series; there's everything from Lizzie's menarche (first period) to Claire's menopause (last). Several times during the books, it's shown that Jamie has a habit of unconsciously keeping track of Claire's cycle, which she finds odd as it isn't something a man from her time would usually do. There's also little of any man being shown as uncomfortable with these events; Jamie, as noted, and Ian, who after all had several older sisters.
Averted, however delicately and obliquely, in Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright. The narrator tells the boy she is talking to that she was in a place for a month — and refuses to explain how she knew that in the absence of all external indicators of passing time, citing his youth. When he's old enough to marry, his wife will explain it.
A noteworthy aversion is the short story "Even the Queen" by Connie Willis in which most women have opted for a safe, effective method of avoiding menstruation unless they are attempting to conceive. The story mentions that getting FDA approval for this was the first issue that managed to unite women across every demographic.
Averted in John Wyndham's The Trouble with Lichen in which a scientist develops a technique that will triple the human life expectancy and tests it on his grown-up children. His son realises that his body clock has been slowed down because he only has to shave every third day, but - until she drops a broad hint - doesn't understand how his sister has figured it out too.
This is averted at the beginning of the first Darkest Powers book. Chloe is a bit late to get her first period, but when she does she begins to see ghosts.
In Time Past, the main character comes from a time period in which medical treatments are available to completely suppress menstruation. When she gets stuck in a slum in the past, she starts getting periods, and notes that she has tremendous newfound respect for her female ancestors, who had to deal with this every single month for most of their lives.
Played straight in The Belgariad and the Mallorean, but eventually subverted in the prequel Polgara the Sorceress, when the eponymous narrator describes in her memoirs the brief horror of her and her twin sister being woken up by their first periods.
Averted for the lulz in the soccer-meets-crime novel "False Nine" by Philip Kerr. The amateur detective hero is a soccer manager. He's the bigmouth type, and current unemployment doesn't make it better. So when Rafinha gets exchanged in a game, he twitters that the player probably was on his period. (His. Ahem.) Not everyone is amused and the FA slaps him a 25000 quid fine. At the end of the book, it even turns into a Brick Period when a female CEO offers him a new job and dryly tells him that it's that time of the month and he better should decide quickly because she's very irritable now.
The Diary of a Young Girl. Anne Frank eagerly anticipates the onset of her periods. A year later, having experienced them for real, she goes back through her diary and is embarrassed over how candid she was about the subject.
In Drinker Of Blood, a period^noteReally? mystery set in Ancient Egypt, Lord Meren's daughter is put under house arrest when Meren goes on the run, framed for attacking the pharaoh. Knowing her (male) guards' willingness to search outgoing parcels has its limits, she sends him a letter via her laundress, concealed in a basket of feminine blood-cloths.
Averted in The Collapsing Empire, where Cardenia is being crowned Emperox Grayland II of the Interdependency. With all the uncomfortable ceremonial clothes she has to wear, that day also happens to be that time of the month for her, so she's even more inconvenienced. That's right, even in the distant future, periods are still a nuisance.
Averted in Between Shades of Grey. It is mentioned that Lina has stopped menstruating due to the harsh conditions in the labor camps. It is not mentioned that she and Andrius had children- so it is possible that they may have never returned, or may not have been able to get pregnant even if she menstruated again.
Averted in Sorcerer To The Crown, the female protagonist is able to do a kind of magic that requires blood. When a male character asks her about it, she replies that he will now understand why she had to do it in his absence. It takes him a moment to understand.
Oathbringer (third book of The Stormlight Archive): Played with; Shallan briefly lets Adolin think she's on her period because she doesn't want to tell him about her night drinking in the markets. He figures it out, though, and they have a brief discussion on how men assume any strange behavior is the result of periods, and women let them. Adolin once again demonstrates he's smarter than he looks when he says he once noticed that one of his girlfriends was having "woman troubles" four times a month. Shallan also notes that her Stormlight Healing Factor doesn't help with cramps.
Shallan: Yeah. Mother Cultivation can be hateful. I'm an all-powerful, Shardblade-wielding pseudo-immortal, but nature still sends a friendly reminder every now and then to tell me I should be getting around to having children.
Pattern: No mating.
Discussed and played with in The Hearts We Sold. Part of Dee's Deal with the Devil involves the Daemon ripping her heart out and keeping it for two years. While her heart is out, her body doesn't physically change — for instance, she won't age for the entirety of the two years. After a couple of months, Dee realizes she also hasn't gotten her period since she made the deal. Her friend wryly comments that that particular side effect is almost enough to make a deal seem worth it.
In Everworld, the few items that April had on her when she and the others were Trapped in Another World include tampons and Advil. She winds up sharing some of the Advil with some Viking women who were apparently also having their periods. Even Senna momentarily expresses excitement upon learning what April has, as she's apparently a few days away from needing it herself.
Averted in The Color Purple. The characters use euphemisms, however, menstruation is discussed several times. After Olivia gets her period, it's mentioned that the Olinka people shy away from discussing menstruation.
For the most part, it's played straight in The Royal Diaries. Granted, it's entirely plausible that some of the royals featured haven't even started having periods yet, but it gets a little odd to think about when you consider Anacaona gets pregnant in her book, and in real life, the Generale Krottendorf (as it was euphemistically called) was a regular topic of conversation between Marie Antoinette and her mother Maria Theresa (and Antoinette left for France pretty much as soon as she achieves menarche, making it extra weird). However, there are a couple of exceptions:
- Elizabeth says that she and Robin can no longer soothe Catherine Howard's ghost because she'd no longer recognize them as children, noting that she's already started having her period.
- The Lady of Palenque finds out that women — including her, once she starts her period — make blood sacrifices by burning the cloths they use during their period.
The poem Progesterone averts this, as due to hormone problems (which makes her cycles "hit or miss"), the subject has to take the titular hormone to kick-start hers.
The Winnie Years: Averted: Winnie gets her period in Twelve.
Schooled in Magic: In the first book, female students at Whitehall are instructed to turn over any of their clothing with blood on it to be destroyed at once so this won't get used against them. While not explicit, this clearly means from menstruation. Otherwise though, it isn't mentioned. Female students are also provided with potions to minimize both bleeding and discomfort related to their menstrual cycle. Menstruation is also repeatedly mentioned in relation to female fertility, both regarding Alassa's possible infertility and the fact that imprecise and wasteful magic use in Past Tense causes infertility among magicians of the far past. No one is ever mentioned actually experiencing a period though.
Carrie: Averted in that Carrie has her first period in the gym shower, but the weird part is that she was already SIXTEEN YEARS OLD. She thought tampons were for blotting lipstick and due to her religious fanatic mother warping her mind, she was never properly educated about puberty.
Indirectly averted in Mind Games. When Anthony questions Danielle's sudden confidence that she smells blood at the scene of a disappearance once she changes to her Cat Girl form (which has superior senses,) she gives him a Look and says, “I know what blood smells like. I’m a girl, remember?” He has the grace, or perhaps just the youth, to be embarrassed about it.
Black Dogs: Averted. Jacyl specifically asks Lyra if she's gotten anything for feminine hygiene. Lyra is deeply embarrassed, but admits she hasn't, and Jacyl buys her some sponges.

Live-Action TV

One wonders exactly how the Doctor's female companions broach the subject whilst traveling with him. It must be pretty awkward for a young human woman to ask a centuries-old male Time Lord about pads or tampons. As it has never come up in the show, we still don't know how they handle that. Time works differently inside the TARDIS, though at least one companion has gestated inside of it.
Growing Pains. One adult woman and a teenage girl (youngest sister Chrissy was too young to have started), but aside from one snarky comment that implied that the mother was suffering from PMS, the subject never came up.
Played ridiculously straight on Full House, considering that there were three girls living in the house (as well as an adult woman at one point, along with a fourth girl who frequently visited), at least two of whom (DJ and Kimmy) undoubtedly reached the age of menarche at some point in the show's tenure and Stephanie likely reached this age too.
Somewhat downplayed on Fuller House, so far. Kimmy's daughter's friend tells her that she has cramps. Said daughter congratulates her friend. However, said friend clarifies her statement: she has leg cramps.
Same thing on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which featured two adult women and a girl who undoubtedly reached the age of menarche at some point.
And The Cosby Show, with three adult women (four if you count Pam, even though she joined the show quite late) and two girls who got to this point (in fact, at age 12 when the show started, Vanessa could very well have been there already), there was only one Very Special Episode regarding Rudy starting hers and another when Claire began menopause.
And on Just the Ten of Us. Four teenage girls and an adult woman (fifth sister Sherry was too young to have started), yet the topic never came up.
Lost has several women of childbearing age on an island with no feminine supplies, and yet it's never brought up how they deal with it. One character mentions being late, and another suddenly knows she's not pregnant, but the implications are never explored.
The Ministry of Time averts this in the first episode: one of the main characters, a 19th-century woman, is given a tampon by a veteran Ministry agent, who tells her that traveling in time always messes with her period. The other woman was too embarrassed to ask, being from a more reserved era.
The100 usually plays this straight. A hundred juvenile delinquents (at least half of whom are female) are marooned on a post-apocalyptic Earth with next to zero supplies, and wear basically the same clothes through Season 1, with no mention of pads or even the cleaning of clothes. It's later somewhat justified as all of the women have "contraceptive implants" that apparently prevent, or at least regulate, their cycles, along with the very short time frame of Season 1-2 and Season 3-4. However, the justification is later subverted when the implants are specifically removed to help with population growth, and there are still no periods.
Game of Thrones:
- Averted in "Winter is Coming". The second thing Queen Cersei ever says to young Sansa Stark is the question, "Have you bled yet?" This is after her Arranged Marriage to Joffrey gets discussed, which makes it somewhat relevant; as Sansa herself notes later in the episode where she actually experiences menarche, it means she can bear Joffrey's children. By that point, the idea terrifies her because she's gotten to know him.
- Also implied in conversation between Jon Snow and the Wildling woman Ygritte. He makes a remark about girls being unable to stand the sight of blood, and she asks him why he would think that, adding that "Girls see more blood than boys."
Averted in a few episodes of Designing Women. When Allison is introduced to Charlene's sister Carlene, Carlene is lying on the sofa barely able to move because her cramps are so bad; she refers to the condition as "fixin' to start."
Averted on New Girl; Jessica notes in one episode that her plans got "sabotaged by my baby box." She also comments on her mood swings and cravings by saying that she wants to commit murder and eat soft pretzels.
Averted in the Best Friends Whenever episode "A Time To Jump and Jam", which has one of the protagonists recall getting her first period in middle school. This is probably the first time the subject has been mentioned on a Disney Channel series.
Played straight in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the seventh season, there were twenty-ish females of the right age living in the Summers house, but there was never any mention of supplies, moodiness, or even ice cream.
Should we even think about what the poor women of Gilligan's Island must do? Lovey Howell is probably past menopause, but, unless the limited diet of the island is interfering with Ginger and Mary Ann's cycles, they would have to handle it somehow. Coconut husks, probably. Hey, they made everything else with the blasted things, why not pads?
- Or, much like the Howells' money, Ginger's dresses, the Professor's books, etc., perhaps the girls just happened to take several cases of the things on a "three-hour" tour.
Played for laughs in The IT Crowd episode "Aunt Irma Visits," when Jen is feeling quite hormonal thanks to her time of the month, and it soon starts affecting Roy and Moss with hilarious results, despite them being men.
Played with in Tenko. Mostly the women don't mention their menstrual cycles, but occasionally one of the younger characters would bring up how worried they were that their periods had stopped due to malnutrition.
The Handmaid's Tale: Averted. Rita and Serena take an uncomfortably keen interest when Offred's late since she's there to have a baby. We later see the blood on Offred's panties when she finally gets her period.
Averted in the third episode of I May Destroy You. Arabella is remembering a night three months earlier when she visited her friend in Italy and the two hooked up with different guys at a local bar. She was having her period, and before they go out we see her changing her maxipad. Then, just before having sex with her hookup, she remembers it's that time of the month and tells him. He's OK with period sex, despite her warning that she has a heavy flow, and after he puts a towel on the bed we actually see her remove her used tampon. But only what happens next kills the mood: she passes a blood clot onto the towel, and we see that on screen, too.
Generally played straight in the Russian medical sitcom Interny, but averted in one episode, where Varya gets sick of the male interns making her uncomfortable with talk of sexual conquests and generally non-female-friendly conversations in the common room. She decides to strike back by turning up the male squick factor by doing things women typically keep private from men, including loudly talking to a friend of hers on the phone about periods. Their boss finally puts an end to the situation by pointing out that, first and foremost, a doctor is an educated person, who should, thus, behave like one.
Played for laughs in Babylon 5. Delenn becomes a Half-Human Hybrid at the start of season 2 (long story) and comes to Ivanova for help on dealing with confusing aspects of her new physiology, such as how to wash her hair (since Minbari don't have any). Fast-forward to the end of the episode, and she asks Ivanova about these "odd cramps."
Averted in Anne with an E. Anne is shown getting her first period. She and her friends discuss when they started. Marilla even discusses the time she had hers.
In Orphan Black, at one point Donnie asks Allison about her menstrual flow as part of the questionnaire the Dyad Institute has given them to keep track of the clones. She tells him it's normal in a casual way, although later she admits to another clone that she wasn't that comfortable discussing it with her husband. Cosima at one point starts bleeding in a bathtub, presumably down there, although it's explained as her sickness rather than a normal period. Later on, Sarah is wounded and runs away into the wilderness. She ends up bandaging the wound up with a tampon she keeps in her pocket.
The Big Bang Theory:
- Averted with Sheldon, who talks far more candidly about menstruation than any of the female cast would like. This exchange is just one example:
  Sheldon: There are a lot of advantages to buying in bulk. For example, I noticed that you purchase your tampons one month's supply at a time.
  Penny: WHAT?!
  Sheldon: Well, think about it: it's a product that doesn't spoil, and you're going to be needing them for at least the next thirty years.
  Penny: You want me to buy thirty years worth of tampons?
  Sheldon: Thirty, thirty-five. When did your mother go into menopause?
  Penny: Okay, I'm not talking about this with you!
  Sheldon: Oh Penny, this is a natural human process, and we're talking about statistically significant savings. Now, if you assume fifteen tampons per cycle and a twenty-eight-day cycle... are you fairly regular?
  [Penny slams the door in his face]
- Being Sheldon's girlfriend, it's perhaps not surprising that Amy is also very forthright about the subject. In one of her first episodes, she casually mentions in mixed company that she wears menstrual pads all the time "to avoid surprises." As part of her quasi-lesbian crush on Penny, Amy is particularly obsessed with the idea of their menstrual cycles syncing up.
Averted by 3rd Rock from the Sun, in which Sally regularly cited periods as a downside of being an Earth female:
Sally: Sorry Dick, but you know nothing about Earth pain until you've been a woman, okay? One week every month, I feel like I got a pair of pliers in my pants. You got a boo-boo? I'm in the national guard of pain.
Flesh and Bone: Averted, as right before Claire's first practice another ballerina complains she just got her period, and Claire hands over a tampon.
The Magicians: Averted. When a magical book needs blood to work, Margo uses her... well, you know. Penny is unhappy at this. Margo notes they're lucky it was her time of the month.
Orange Is the New Black:
- Averted. Tampons are precious, and one of the main complaints in Season 4 is the lack of tampons, as Medical's issue stock ran out because Corporate wouldn't pay for more.
- More free tampons end up on the list of demands during the riot.
Victorious: Averted. Being a kids' show, it isn't explicitly stated, but the girls do allude to it from time to time. For instance, in one episode Cat blames Tori's grumpiness on cramps.
Implied in "Sorry to Father You" from Raven's Home. Nia's dad gets embarrassed when she wants to get something from her mom's closet and Tess uses the excuse that it's "a girl thing".
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
- Cited in the episode "Pixies", where a teenage girl clearly wishes for this, as she's upset that she got her period because she thinks it means she has too much body fat.
- Averted in "Bedtime", when a suspect in a woman's murder explains that her blood was on the mattress the victim was killed on because she had been having sex with the victim's husband on the bed and got her period. The detectives initially find this iffy but it turns out to be true.
In The Dark: Averted. Jess goes out to get tampons on the road because she's starting her period.
The Baby-Sitters Club (2020): Averted as Kristy's comes during the wedding, causing her to rush off into the bathroom. All her friends had theirs already, it turns out, with Mary Anne handing over a pad and telling her how to use it. This is in stark contrast to the books, which play this trope straight and don't mention menstruation even once.
Lovecraft Country: Leti says her "monthly" came early when she's bleeding slightly after having sex with Atticus. However, it was actually because she'd lost her virginity to him.
We Are Who We Are: Averted. Caitlin gets hers the first time while at the beach in the second episode. She's quite happy at this, due to it being a sign of her growing up.
CSI: NY:
- Averted in "Crime and Misdemeanor." At the scene of a woman's murder in a hotel room, blood is found in the mattress coils. The man to whom the room is registered, who is obviously the first suspect, tells investigators, "Menstrual blood never bothered me," and that the woman left after they had sex.
- Mildly averted in "Nine Thirteen," when Lindsay is seen counting on her fingers upon leaving the ladies' room. She tells Danny at the end of the episode that she's pregnant with their second child.
Dickinson: Averted. Emily gets hers while at the party, which she isn't happy about in the least.

Video Games

Averted in BioShock Infinite. When Booker arrives at Monument Island, there are three objects linked to the Siphon that he can activate. One of them is a tissue with red spilled on it, being Elizabeth's menarche. The fact that it disappears whenever Booker activates it foreshadows Elizabeth's Reality Warper powers.
In The Walking Dead Season 3, Clementine has her first period in the fourth episode and asks Javi for advice. The player can find maxi pads for her in a medical center.
Averted in SOMA, where searching the personal quarters of Catherine and other female Theta site personnel turns up a few boxes of menstrual pads. Given that the game is set After the End, they are hidden in inconspicuous places befitting a dwindling and precious resource.

Visual Novels

Averted in Butterfly Soup in an unexpectedly disgusting way. Min almost strangles Akarsha upon first meeting her. Thinking quickly, Akarsha gets Min off of her by reaching down her own pants, covering her hand in period blood, and smearing it across Min's face. Not even minutes later do they decide to become friends.
Averted in Corpse Party when Ayumi gets her period without realizing it (you begin seeing a bloodstain on the back of her skirt partway through the game). She's very embarrassed when Yoshiki notices and asks when she got hurt, but she can't think of any way to change or cover it up. No one else comments on it though (either they think it's from one of the numerous dead bodies, or they just have bigger problems).
Averted in Katawa Shoujo. During the school festival at the end of Act 1, Rin (who has no arms) is getting antsy and wants to find her friend Emi. She's being evasive as to why, but Hisao keeps pushing her for an answer. She finally replies that she's on her period and needs some help dealing with it and that while she likes Hisao, she doesn't feel comfortable asking for his help with that particular problem. Hisao promptly shuts up.

Web Comics

Averted in Cobweb and Stripes. When Lydia is deeply upset about being lonely and has a Cry into Chest moment with him, Betelgeuse's first reaction is to wonder whether menstruation is the reason. The idea doesn't seem to bother him, though; he's more uneasy about the whole 'emotions' thing.
The elven and drow races of Drowtales are somewhat biologically different from humans and don't get periods, leading to a rather funny moment when a human character goes on her period, confusing a drow character who thinks she's bleeding and injured and leading another to use her own confused ideas of what a period is to explain it, not doing a very good job of it.
The trope is present in full force in the Ménage à 3/Sandra on the Rocks/Sticky Dilly Buns universe, as the often sexually hyperactive twentysomething cast are never inconvenienced by the issue. It's been established that menstruation exists because in one strip, Amber asks Dillon to fetch her some tampons from the store — but he gets his brain scrambled, and the subject is never mentioned again.
Averted in Pacificators, as the author wants his female characters to be more realistic.
Heather Coven in RAIN plays the trope straight, leading to a very awkward situation when her younger sibling Ky got her first period while their mother wasn't home and Heather didn't know what was going on (with the result that she initially thought that Ky was dying). Justified, as Heather is intersex, having been born with CAIS, and, thus, has no uterus or ovaries.
Averted in Sunstone. When Lisa wants to go on her next date with Ally in the second chapter after five days of waiting, it turns out her stomach cramps are not the result of chicken going bad... The print version illustrates this with a troll-faced uterus. A few weeks later, Ally gets her period, and a later comment by the narrating Future Lisa informs the reader that they haven't been together long enough for their cycles to synchronize; since neither of them wants to "run the red light" as Lisa puts it (have sex during their period), they can only mess around two weeks out of each month.
Sarah's Scribbles averts this, as we see in one comic, where we see Uterus musing about Jackson Pollock paintings and a cut to Sarah leaving a bathroom, thinking, "Aaand there goes another pair of cute underwear."
In General Protection Fault, when Nicole tries to tell Dwayne about her pregnancy, she mentions "We're late," and when he doesn't get it, she mentions "monthly occurrences."
Played with in The Order of the Stick: both times a woman has mentioned their period, they've been lying to deflect suspicion about something else: Haley claims an obvious bag of ill-gotten loot is actually feminine supplies; Sabine sneaks off to report the Snarl's existence to her superiors under the pretense that "it's that time of the century".

Web Original

Averted in Carmilla the Series, which makes sense — their primary sponsor is Kotex, a line of menstrual products.
- In the prequel season, it's revealed that there were a few months where no one on campus was getting their period anymore, due to supernatural-related shenanigans, and Mel and Perry both comment on how weird it is. At the end of the season, the problem is fixed, and all the periods come back... all at once. The cramps are so bad Perry can hardly walk.
- Season Three's supplementary material specifically notes how the aversion of this has become an issue since the villains have taken a bunch of students hostage in the Pit... but didn't account for how, if you keep a bunch of menstrual people in the same place for months on end, not only will they continue to menstruate, their cycles will sync up.
  Mel: And on that note, please bring tampons when you come rescue us.
Averted in CollegeHumor sketch "Periods Aren’t That Gross", in which women from the cast talk about menstruation. It starts fairly normal but gets increasingly weirder and they wonderfully troll all boys and men with horror concepts of Menstrual Menace calibre.
- In another sketch titled "Realistic Hollywood Sex Scene", this is one of the many ways Reality Ensues during an otherwise generic movie sex scene, when the woman tells the man to put down a towel because she's "spotting".
The video “friendship braclet” from the series Daisy Brown has the titular character describe blood as looking like “pomegranate juice with jelloy chunks in it,” implying she’s never seen it before. Judging by her age, there’s no way she hasn’t menstruated yet, and should have been able to recognize blood just from that.
Despite the titular group consisting of a Four-Girl Ensemble, and having a high female to male character ratio, none of the girls in RWBY have ever had a period, onscreen or otherwise. Possibly Justified by the series being primarily targeted to a male audience, and not being very heavy on blood to begin with.
Camp Camp: Averted. Neil develops a tonic to make his voice super-deep, by instantly invoking puberty, but when his female friend Nikki drinks it instead, she starts getting weird stomach cramps that are far worse than any stomachache she previously got, then starts bleeding and a band-aid doesn't help. She also experiences several odd food cravings and undergoes mood swings. She comes to the conclusion that she is dying and tries to hide it from the camp counselors. Eventually, Gwen figures out what's up and gives Nikki "the talk".
Monster High: Lagoona the sea monster is affected by the ocean’s magnetic pull, causing her to become moody and aggressive. When you remember that Lagoona is 15 years old, the “monster-morphosis” symptoms sound a LOT like period symptoms. Also, the ending scene cuts out when Gil interrupts Lagoona’s quiet time, implying that she may have blown up at him.
Justified in this story from Not Always Friendly; the submitter's roommate has no experience with tampons because she was male at birth.

Western Animation

Katie Kaboom from Animaniacs is a teenage girl who gets so much stress from her family that she literally turns into a monster in each segment implies something like this, especially with the "I'm not overreacting! I'm a teenager!" line.
As Told by Ginger never really makes note of menstruation despite it being a very girl-geared Slice of Life series about girls going through middle school, and eventually high school, probably due to restrictions at Nickelodeon. There is, however, an episode in which the girls watch a film about puberty, where a passing euphemism is used ("a certain monthly visitor will arrive"). In regards to that euphemism, Macie says in one scene that she will be "forever haunted by the sounds of cramping".
Ask Lara, a little-known series of Catalonian origin which was co-produced by the BBC in 2012 ^note has an episode that deals with the main character having her first period. Lara is not as flustered about having her period as she is about that it had to happen on the day of an important exam. Lara has two best friends: Akira, who already started her period and offers her advice about it, and Monica, who is anxious to get hers and even says she feels envious when Lara tells her about the physical discomforts caused by it. Meanwhile, her two male friends, Tony and Gabriel, are worried that after getting her period, she will stop hanging out with them to only focus on older boys, but at the end that does not happen.
Given the whole show is about puberty humor, it's inevitable periods would be featured in Big Mouth, right in the second episode "Everybody Bleeds".
Oddly enough, Grossology doesn't mention periods in any of its episodes, despite one of the Grossologists being a female in junior high school. This is most likely so the show can keep its Y-7 rating.
In an episode of King of the Hill, Connie gets her first period while staying with the Hill family.
Averted in one episode of 6teen, where pretty much all the jokes come from Jen, Nikki, and Caitlin being, ahem, hormonal and having harsh mood swings at the expense of Jonesy, Wyatt, and Jude. When Jen realizes that her, Nikki's, and Caitlin's cycles have synced up, Caitlin gets excited and goes into an in-depth explanation that period cycles syncing up is the first sign of close female friendship.

Real Life

Of course, this trope isn't in effect for the majority of real-world women, but for a few this is Truth in Television. Primary amenorrhea — the failure to begin menstruating by age 16 — is usually the result of genetic or glandular defects (indeed there are some phenotypically-female women out there who actually have XY chromosomes), but sometimes occurs when the necessary organs only partially develop or don't at all.

No Periods, Period

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