Blog of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research
Monday morning: A friend tips me off that Joan Rivers’s on-TV use of the word PERIOD was bleeped! Yes, dear reader, somewhere, a censor deems even the innocuous euphemism for MENSTRUATION unsuitable for television.
Uh…speechless.
[You can view the clip at Jezebel.com, my friend's source for this sad information.]
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“Controversy Rages Over Female Genital Cosmetic Surgery”. You can read the full article by Betsy Bates in Ob.Gyn. News. Bates interviews doctors as to whether performing these procedures meets a need or exploits a lack of body-knowledge among women. Both sides claim to be taking care of, and empowering, women.
One of the doctors who performs genital cosmetic surgery is not only sure that women are well-educated on the range of diversity of normal-looking vulva, he also feels it would be insulting to our intelligence and confidence to raise the question.
From where I sit, he is mistaken about this – we do need to be educated! – and, on another note: why is it disrespectful to offer information?
Admittedly, Ob.Gyn. is not my field, nevertheless, I’d like to say a few words. No – wait, it IS my field, or rather I’m its field – as I am a woman. One who didn’t give her body a lot of thought – until I started photographing vulvas.
The photography project began as a response to a friend who told me that she “didn’t like the way her vagina looked”. I wanted her to know that there was no one right way to look, that we were all unique.
Today, there’s a front page story in the New York Times about Astra-Zeneca’s move to market their cholesterol pills (known as statins, and as the NYT reports, already the most prescribed drugs in the US) at healthy people in spite of unresolved concerns about risks, namely an elevated risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.
Gee. This sure sounds familiar: a product aimed at healthy people, approved by the FDA, even before there’s ample evidence of safety.
I am imagining the new ad campaign…”Why let cholesterol worries slow you down? Choosing healthy foods and getting adequate exercise is sooooooo 20th century.Take a pill. Done.”
Of course, the comparison I am hinting at here is flawed. High levels of cholesterol ARE a genuine hazard. Heart disease is deadly. Conversely, menstruation is NOT a disease and under most conditions, need not be treated.
But my point here is to call attention to Big Pharma’s too-quick impulse to sell drugs of questionable safety to healthy people and FDA collusion in this. Marketing cycle-stopping contraception (a.k.a. menstrual suppressive contraception a la brands Lybrel and Seasonique, for example) to healthy women is not an isolated incidence of the premature and high-risk mainstreaming of prescription medications. See recent critiques here and here (and the official Society for Menstrual Cycle Research position statement on cycle-stopping contraception here).
In the eyes of Big Pharma, if we aren’t sick, we will be soon. If we aren’t dosing The. Next. New. Drug, we aren’t taking charge of our health.
Sick? I think THAT’S sick.
Tina Turner didn’t sing THOSE lyrics, but what if?
Those that follow re:Cycling may recall-with a grin and a cringe–how Ingrid Berthon-Moine’s portraits of women wearing their menstrual blood as lipstick sent many Guardian and Salon Broadsheet readers to the “icky” place, where unexamined assumptions run amok.
Plenty of folks readily expressed their disgust at the idea of menstrual blood on display (ack!!!on the mouth??) but few were willing to dig into WHY this disgusted them and how that disgust hurts women and girls…..if they dared to really look first, at those blood-smeared lips, and then, at themselves.
Moine’s models, silent and unblinking, issue a challenge. When we meet their gaze and contemplate their deep red mouths, we are forced to look back at ourselves, and at each other.
Why is there a menstrual taboo, anyway? And who and what does it serve? There must be an awful lot at stake when people work so hard to keep it alive.
This week Moine is exhibiting her work in London. Placing her portraits in the context of a V-Day show makes explicit the connections between the denigration of women’s bodies and violence against women and girls.
If you watched the Super Bowl this year, you likely saw the new Dodge Charger ad “Man’s Last Stand.” If not, drop what you are doing and watch it right this minute and sound the gender panic alarm!
There’s a crisis!
Masculinity is endangered! The women are taking over!
Men are-day in and day out–emasculated by the nagging, demanding, self-centered women in their lives and their trivial concerns (vampire lust! hairless sinks! fruit for breakfast! civility toward family members!)
It is so bad out there, apparently, that men need to recapture their manliness by “driving the car (they) want to drive.” (I don’t know what’s more offensive here, women-as-problem or car-as-solution)
The blogosphere and its environs is a-buzz with the work of MacKenzie Fegan who found, in her words, the commercial uh….“oft-putting”. She posted this response. Not sure I would have chosen the same complaints to highlight, but I did cheer with this dig:
“I will get angry and you will ask if it’s that time of the month.”
Crisis? If only there were one and that tired old excuse for not taking women seriously was on the way out!
Specifically, we’ve questioned the assumption that menstrual FLOW management is girls’ biggest menstrual problem (it is not, says at least one recent study–cramps are!). And we’ve been MORE critical of so-called altruistic solutions that are, underneath the (silent?) disposable wrapper, little-more than consumer socialization. Menstrual shame, sexism and poverty are not ameliorated though the cultivation of brand loyalty. Girls need information, support and the tools to develop awareness of their bodies while learning to live sustainably–this does not come in the shape of a box of single-use products that ends up clogging landfills.
Making green products available to girls while supporting economic growth and self-sufficiency in the Global South seems a more enduring and girl-centered initiative and there are number of projects that are doing just that. There Elizabeth Scharpf’s SHE initaitive in Rwanda and Lunapads donation program in collaboration with a number of related initiatives:
As of Feb 8th, freelance writer, re:Cycling guest blogger, and oral contraception watchdog Holly Grigg-Spall (check out her blog “Sweetening the Pill”) will join the Bitch magazine blog team. She will opine on women’s reproductive health—news stories, developments, research, and more.
I have been a long time fan of Bitch and expect to love it that much more with Grigg-Spall burning up the blogscape with her take on things.
More eyes and ears and voices! Hurrah!
Interior of Red Tent, Belly & Womb Conference, Baldwinville, MA, 2005
The act of reframing the menstrual cycle–as a source of deep awareness and even, power–is hardly news, and yet, it seems that way to most of us.
Liz Kissling sent me this link to a 2002 essay written by Gina Cloud. Here is a classic passionate call for a new (or very old, perhaps) way of responding to menstruation. While I bristle at the essentialism at the root of this reframing, I certainly appreciate any effort to reclaim the menstrural cycle and render it as more than a nasty nuisance that depends on consumerism to make it go away. Cloud renames the menstrual cycle, the “sacred cycle” and PMS as “powerful monthly insight.” For her, the week before a menstruator’s period is a time to “get clear” and unblock what she calls the “repression of expression” most women are socialized to practice every day.
Cloud numbers among a steady stream of women–health educators, midwives, at least one physician, and lay women dedicated to empowering women through resisting more conventional attitudes about menstruation. They have written books, led workshops and generally promoted the idea that menstruation can and should be seen as a not a curse, but a gift.
The definitive women’s health sourcebook, Our Bodies, Ourselves written by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective is undergoing revisions for its 40th anniversary (and 9th) edition. Lots of folks in the women’s health community are involved in the revision and that’s a good thing—multiple voices, multiple perspectives.
I am among those reviewing the chapter on Sexual Anatomy, Reproduction, and the Menstrual Cycle in collaboration with others, such as health educator and activist, Esther Morris Leidolf, founder of the MRKH organization (MRKH=Mayer Rokitansky Kuster Hauser Syndrome, a.k.a. congential absence of the vagina) For years, Esther has been nudging me to be more inclusive in my research, writing and teaching of people with variant sexual anatomy. And she did it again.
While reviewing the content on MENOPAUSE in this chapter, she questioned the definition of this biosocial transtion used (that is, the cessation of menstruation, specifically, 12 months after the last menstrual period (LMP)).
She asked: What about women who don’t menstruate?
What about women who may not have vaginas or others with variant sexual anatomy that prevents menstuation. Many of these women still experience other menopausal symptoms, such as hot flashes and mood swings.
My friend, the poet and writer Andrea Scarpino, posted this brief essay on a blog she regularly contributes to–Steven Kuuisto’s “Planet of the Blind.”
It is not a coincidence that a blog centering on disability (specifically the consequences of living with blindness) hosts a narrative like this, one that makes strikingly clear the importance of challenging the denigration of SOME bodies.
We at re:Cycling are heartened whenever we hear that we are not alone speaking up in the aisles of grocery stores (and everywhere else women’s (and their bodies) serve as the punchline).
By Andrea Scarpino
Los Angeles
I love shopping at Trader Joe’s late in the evening right before it closes. The crowds thin out, restocking of shelves begins, and the employees start pumping some raucous dance music. They also start gossiping, about their shifts and managers, about which area is the most boring assignment, about budding employee romances and new products.
The land of euphemisms is a fantasy land. It is awash in pink. It never rains. The houses are made of gingerbread and the clouds of cotton candy. Look! There goes My Little Pony!
It is a safe and happy place that keeps us innocent and pure. Wait? Was that Strawberry Shortcake?
That MUST be the reason the cultural mandate of using euphemisms to describe body parts and bodily functions persists, right?
Don’t forget to wash your private parts, honey!
But I DON’T think we are safer when we refuse to use REAL words to describe our REAL bodies.
Rather, as a big believer of the language-constructs-reality school of thought, I think that refusing to call a vulva a vulva contributes to the dissociation at best, and neglect and even hatred, at worst, of our bodies.
Name it. Own it. Understand it. Respect it.
The Vagina Monologues leads with a hysterical list of expressions for the vulva (NOT the vagina, as we know).
We at re: Cycling have been tracking the African-girls-miss-school-because-they-menstruate equation for a while now.
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