“Get ready for PMS,” warns the movie Frozen.

Before I get into it, a quick rundown of assumptions made about where you’re coming from:

• It’s OK to toss around high-level Frozen plot points because the movie’s now wormed its way into your deep brain (whether you invited it there or not).
• You have a basic understanding of the monthly female cycle, something universal that 50% of the human species experiences for over 50% of their lifetime, even though we still don’t understand it very well (how is it possible that it’s lunar? That is some primal shit.)

Now that we’ve got that out of the way…

Your first period can be very disorienting.

Elsa’s a carefree young girl (on the edge of puberty) until her first “incident.” She acts out, her emotions/powers get away from her, and she’s confused by the mayhem that results.

Kid sis is intrigued.

So where does she go? The red hut, of course. For a long, long time. The problem is that the red hut is usually a place where you learn from other women how to deal with the entire hormonal cycle. By being shut away by herself, the world is creating an emotional powder keg out of poor Elsa.

“It’s cool, Anna, I’m fine. Yeah, I totally have this under control. I’ve been locked up for over half my life, but my emotions are manageable.”

I’m about to get a little technical here. Please forgive me and roll with it. Elsa emerges in the follicular, or estrogen portion of her cycle. This is why she’s so cool and calm and collected at the beginning of the ball.

“Yeah, um, sorry about that. Just didn’t see it coming.”

Every woman is different, but ovulation can be a good time to get a little space. Elsa figured that out the hard way at the end of the ball.

The ice castle scene is PMS. The more I see and feel the impact of Frozen, and the song “Let It Go” on girls of all ages, the more I’m convinced that it’s not just because the lyrics are laced with some kind of earwig candy crack.

“Let the storm rage on / Here I stand, and here I’ll stay.”

PMS is a time of increased sensitivity (claro), but it’s also a time of insight and creation.

Elsa is returning to the feelings she had the first time she faced having a period, but this time she owns it. She gained a sense of herself in the process, along with perspective about the ups and downs of the entire cycle.

It’s shocking that I’m writing any of this. I strongly fought the notion that emotions were influenced by menstrual cycles my entire life. It felt like personality scapegoating, or owning up to some scary deep dark secret. But there is no secret. The only secret is that women don’t talk about this stuff enough, even with each other. You know something’s wrong when we have to turn to Disney for allegories to make us feel empowered about our own bodies and emotional selves.

I’m always looking for more information and insight about how hormones affect us. Please send on book and article recs: https://twitter.com/mudaba