It's "Just Girl Things", Until It Costs You a Grand Slam

Roland Garros, 2022.

Zheng Qinwen, 19 years old at the time, just took a set from Iga Swiatek. The world number one.
One more set. But then her period came.

She called a medical timeout. Her trainer immediately wrapped her leg, but her leg was fine. It was her stomach. The cramps were so bad she could not play her own tennis anymore.

Yes, those very cramps. The menstrual cramps every woman recognizes too well.

She lost the match.
At her post match interview, she explained:

"The first day is always so tough. I have to do sport and I always have so much pain on the first day. I couldn't go against my nature. I wish I can be a man on court, but I cannot."

Then she added the three words,

"It's just girls' things, you know."

That was 2022. It has stuck with me since.

I have never played at Roland Garros, of course. My tennis is an amateur game. My biggest trophy is my father-in-law saying "Mantap, te! Finally, you hit the ball." over my clumsy backhand.

But I know Zheng’s words deeply.

Photo by Renith R on Unsplash

The day I killed my friendship

In college, I had a friend. I liked her very much because she was witty and smart. One day she invited me to a discussion about our field project. A friendly, before lunch discussion. Nothing offensive at all.

Small problem: I was PMS-ing.

So in the heat of a small argument, instead of being a civilized woman saying "can we revisit this tomorrow morning, over a coffee perhaps?", nope, I called her "anjing lu".

For my non Indonesian readers: it means "you dog". Sounds not-so-bad in English. But in my culture, when it comes from a girl's mouth, it is a big cultural disaster. Women here are raised to be soft spoken, and well mannered. We often find ourselves apologizing too many times for mistakes we did not even make.

And yep, we never really talked again. She cut me off before I could say sorry.
Honestly? I am not blaming her.
Painfully honest? I would be mad if she didn't cut me off. I know I was way out of line that day.

And here is the part that hurts the most. Even now, when I recall that memory, I have completely forgotten why I called her that. I forgot the whole conversation or even the project. What I remember vividly is the emotion. How badly I wanted to spit that curse word.

Is this real or am I making excuses?

I have PCOS, stands for Polycystic Ovary Syndrome.
If you have never heard of it, bless you, your hormones behave. Mine run a 24 hour circus.

Here is the fucked-up part. Science cannot tell me yet why I have it. It is not my diet nor simply my mother's genetics. A Dutch twin study found that PCOS is about 70% inherited, but the genes they have discovered so far only explain around 10% of it.
So, in simple words, researchers know the answer is written somewhere in my body, they are just stuck. At this point, I only hope they did not stop digging.

No, I am not saying every mood swinger woman has PCOS. But for sure, every woman has a hormone cycle. That part is undeniable.

But, mine is just… so freaking loud.

How loud? In one Danish study, 65% of women with PCOS reported mood swings, and two out of three had anxiety. And it is not in our heads. One likely reason is boring and very real: too much male hormones quietly mess with the brain chemicals that control mood.

So where a normal cycle makes a woman cry at a Thailand insurance advertisement, mine makes me end a dear friendship before lunch. Same old song that you have probably heard over and over, just at the loudest volume.

So, yeah. Flash news, it is not drama. It is what it is.

Now, Tennis

Yes, tennis. Trust me on this.

I watch Grand Slams from my sofa. One night it hit me.
Have you ever wondered why tennis-muggle can easily name Nadal, Federer, and Djokovic, but not a single women's player?
Serena Williams? Sure. But have you heard of Jabeur, Swiatek, Sakkari, Kostyuk, Raducanu, Osaka, or Sabalenka?

Men's tennis has the same champions for twenty years. Federer, Nadal, Djokovic. Now Alcaraz and Sinner, trading finals like two kids passing one trophy back and forth. They even joke about it. I am not making that up.

Women's tennis? From my sofa, it looks completely different.
Wimbledon just crowned its ninth first time champion in a row. Nine years, nine different names.
Osaka won big, then disappeared. Raducanu won once, never came back. Swiatek dominates, then loses to someone you have never heard of.

Experts and amateurs alike blame the depth of the field. The pressure. The coaching changes. The "why-women-have-slower-response-time" theory. Sure, sure. Name it all.

But there is one variable nobody even mentions: these athletes play a brutal sport while riding a hormone cycle that hits strength, sleep, and mood every single month.

Let me be clear about what I am not saying.
I am not saying women are too hormonal to win consistently. That is the lazy, sexist take I grew up hearing, and it is complete bullshit.
I am saying the opposite: they perform at the highest level on earth while carrying something the men's tour never has to think about, and nobody even counts it. It is not an excuse for losing. It is an invisible tax every woman pays, every month, quietly.

Aryna, I feel you

Aryna Sabalenka. Four Grand Slam titles. Even Serena Williams' coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, calls her tennis probably the best on tour. Have you watched how she plays? Her serve once hit 133 mph, or 214 km per hour. The second fastest serve ever recorded in women's tennis. Even my car can't go that fast.

And yet. All four titles on hard courts. Roland Garros and Wimbledon: zero. She keeps reaching Grand Slam finals and losing them, four runner up finishes in recent years. And this year at the French Open, in the quarterfinal against Diana Shnaider, she won the first set, went up 4-1, and was two points from winning while serving for the match at 5-4. Then she lost 12 of the last 13 games.

After that match, a reporter asked about her thoughts and emotions. She answered:

"No thoughts, no emotions. Just want to quit tennis right now."

And later:

"I just am so tired of me losing some matches not in the best way just because I was overemotional."

Drama? Don't think so. She has said it more than once.

And this is not new for her. Back in 2022, she cried on court because she suddenly could not serve. Hundreds of double faults in one season, over a serve motion she had done a million times.

Now, do I know if Sabalenka has PCOS? Definitely not. I am not her doctor. I am a random Indonesian woman watching her game from my sofa, snacking low calorie chips, watching my sugar intake, feeling personally attacked.

But she sure has a cycle. Every woman on that tour does. And mine, the loud version, gave me years of private lessons on what it looks like when your own body votes against you in the middle of something important.

So when I watch her cry on court over a failed serve in 2022, I do not think "weak", "shame", or "failure".

I think "oh, I feel you, girl. That's our thing. Girls' thing."

Photo by Keith Allison on Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0

Why I only play tennis with people who know me

I play tennis too. But with one strict rule: only with my husband and my in laws. People who have seen the worst tennis version of me and, for some reason, stayed. Or maybe they just choose not to judge me. Either way, that is why I respect them.

Frankly, my tennis spills my mood.
Good hormone day: in my head, I am Sabalenka. Once I've ruined my racket trying to imitate her serve. Bad hormone day: I can miss a ball that is not even moving.

Once I tested myself and joined a session on Reclub, an app for finding people to play sports with, basically Tinder but for active human beings. I sucked so badly, one guy taught me how to grip the racket. Forgodsake, I have played tennis for years. I know what continental grip is.

The only difference between me and Sabalenka is scale. When she cries and collapses, the whole world writes about her mental state.
When I miss lots of balls and get mad at my racket, only my husband knows. And after years of marriage, he has learned the most important skill in understanding a woman at her hormonal peak: saying nothing and passing the cold water.

The point

No. This is not a free pass to call your best friend anjing (Hell, no). There is no hormone level that makes that acceptable. I still owe her an apology. If she is reading this: I am sorry, and you were right about the project. Probably. I honestly do not remember the project.

The point is simpler. Women are hormonal. Yes. It is hormones, not character.

And painfully honest? We cannot fully control it. I have tried. The hormones won, no matter how hard I tried to reverse it. Most days, I end up trying to reduce my interaction with the world.

So please, do not define who a woman is based on who she was when her hormones were driving. She was still the driver. She just had something screaming in the passenger seat, so loud she went numb and could not think straight. Hormones explain the crash, but after the crash, we don't forget who was behind the wheel.

Zheng called it “just girls’ things”. 
She was being polite. It is that invisible tax I told you about. Paid every month, by half of this planet’s population. No medical timeout is long enough to cover it, and nobody gets a trophy for surviving it.

The least woman can do is admit it is on the court.
And not being judged by it.