"In societies where women might have their period only every two years or so because of frequent pregnancies and long breastfeeding, there might be fewer negative associations with menstruation, says Alma Gottlieb, professor of anthropology and gender and women's studies at the University of Illinois and author of Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruation. "Yurok, a native tribe from the northwest coast of the United States stratified by class, had a group of aristocratic women who saw their periods as a time for purifying themselves," she says. As many women living in close proximity do, this group had their periods at the same time each month. "They were on a shared menstrual cycle and did a series of rituals during the cycle that they said was a period of their most heightened spiritual experience." The Rungus women from Borneo, she says, are pretty blasé about their periods. "They don't say it's pure, they don't say it's polluting," says Gottlieb. "It's just a bodily fluid that needs to be evacuated. They don't make a big deal of it." Among the Ulithi women of the South Pacific, she says, breastfeeding women join menstruating women in huts, along with their children. "It's kind of a party atmosphere." The huts can be a torturous experience for women in some places, but "there are many other variations on the theme," she says. In some parts of Ghana, West Africa, young girls sit under beautiful, ceremonial umbrellas when they begin menstruating. "The family would give her gifts and pay her homage," says Gottlieb. "She is celebrated like a queen." For the Beng women of Ivory Coast, Gottlieb found that male-imposed restrictions on menstruating women come with a more positive twist. "An older man, a religious leader in the local religion, told me menstruation is like the flower of a tree. You need the flower before the tree can fruit," she says. "That's a very different ideology than the ideology of sin, dirt, pollution.""