“But don’t you feel you have to bleed to know who you are?” I am having lunch (eggs, obviously) with a millennial colleague who — lest you missed the memo — is having her period. Boy, is she having her period. Jess is sporting an “Anything you can do I can do bleeding” T-shirt, arrived bearing a hormonally calibrated smoothie, and is en route to do period pain-easing yoga. She tells me that she is wearing Thinx period-proof pants, but has her monthly delivery of eco tampons with her just in case, and has been bemoaning her inability to get hold of Amareta, America’s cycle-based skincare.

When I was her age, my social life was structured around my work commitments. Jess plots her days according