The significance of menarche for girls' body image and sexual identification was investigated by assessing human figure drawings produced by adolescent girls on two occasions, 6 months apart. Three groups of subjects were studied: girls who were premenarcheal on both test occasions, girls who were postmenarchealon both test occasions, and girls who changed menarcheal status between the two test administrations. Parallel results were obtained from both longitudinal and crosssectional comparisons of pre-versus postmenarcheal girls. Postmenarcheal girls produced more sexually differentiated human figure drawings and more frequently drew their own sex first when asked to draw a person. Postmenarcheal, as compared to premenarcheal, girls also indicated greater satisfaction with "female" body parts on a modified body-cathexis scale. These data confirm clinical speculations that menarche is a pivotal event for reorganization of the adolescent girl's body image and sexual identity.Puberty has long been recognized as an important developmental landmark (Bios, 1962;Fenichel, 1945;Freud, 1958). Menarche, on the other hand, while probably experienced by girls as the single most important event of puberty, has received scant attention. A treatment of menarche as a normative crisis in girls' development is conspicuously absent from the literature (Whisnant&Zegans, 1975). Further, empirical observations of the impact of menarche are rare. Although Offer (1969) has written extensively on the development of normal adolescent boys, no comparable body of data exists for girls. Indeed, the report of Offer and Offer (1968), based on clinical interviews with six normal adolescent girls, is notable for the absence of any mention of menarche.Recently, however, a number of authorsThis article is based on data collected for a senior honors thesis by the third author. Appreciation is expressed to Kathy Weingarten for constructive criticism and advice.Requests for reprints should be sent to