Blog of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research

Redbook Gets It Right

May 8th, 2012 by David Linton

Our recent Weekend Links post referred to a cheesy piece in Cosmopolitan magazine about stupid and offensive remarks that have been said to women by their ob/gyn.  At about the same time, Redbook‘s May 2012, issue had an article by another ob/gyn, Dr. Hilda Hutcherson, titled, “Have a healthy, happy vagina,” which used a q & a format to address “the five issues women stress about most” concerning their “lady parts.”

Image from Redbook, May 2012, p. 183

  1. Will childbearing “ruin” my vagina?
  2. Is the smell okay?
  3. Do I look weird down there compared to other women?
  4. Why don’t I have vaginal orgasms?  Can I change that?
  5. Why does my vagina sometimes hurt when I have sex?

The responses to the questions were basically thoughtful and supportive, though a bit coy sometimes, with the talk about “lady parts.” In other words, they gave the kinds of information that’s found all the time in the posts on re:Cycling.

It also included four dumb/insensitive things doctors have said while their patient was “in the stirrups.”  The heading was, “Your OB/GYN said WHAT!?”

Post to Twitter Post to Plurk Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to Reddit Post to StumbleUpon

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Communication, magazines, Media, Menstruation | 1 Comment »

KOTEX IS IN THE HOUSE! (or, Is the House?)

April 27th, 2012 by David Linton

Despite occasional efforts by manufacturers of menstrual pads and tampons (the giants of the menstrual-industrial complex – thanks, President Eisenhower) to present period-positive images, they still seem unable to resist representing menstruation as an undesirable, embarrassing phenomenon. Women, particularly teens, are expected to grin and bear it as best they can while enduring their monthly misery.  Consider a recent example.

A few weeks ago, the small college where I work received 12 large cartons from a firm called Brand Connections, which apparently specializes in managing promotional campaigns that involve providing free samples of products.  Each carton contained 72 box-like items made up to look like thick text books but with a cover that closely resembled a copy of Teen or Seventeen magazine.  In large letters on the spine and front are the words, “GET REAL.”  The instruction sheet in each carton included warnings that the contents “may not be suitable for children” and that selling the items rather than giving them away “may result in civil and/or criminal prosecution.”  And, in bold type, the page states, “This box contains FREE House of Kotex samples!”  The college authorities were directed to, “Please hand out the House of Kotex samples to your Universities [sic] female students for their enjoyment.”

 

However, the contents of the package itself were a bit more ambivalent about any connection between menstrual products and enjoyment.

The box opens to disclose, on the right side, two plastic pouches, one white containing a pad and a panty liner, and one black containing a pad, a wipe and a tampon.  On the left, emulating a feature popular in teen girl magazines, is a six item quiz in which girls are asked to choose favorite shoes, lip gloss colors, eye shade, date wear and weekend entertainment.  The sixth item, “Being on your period is. . .” provides the following choices:

  1. the worst
  2. not so bad
  3. part of life
  4. super annoying

If one picks 1. or 4., one is directed to the black pouch; if one chooses 2. or 3., the white pouch is for you.

The cartons were placed around the campus at strategic locations for young women (or curious young men) to pick up the packets.  One enterprising student rifled a few dozen of the tampon packs to store up a stash of her preferred product for the next few months.

Though the cover photo of two smiling young women and the slangy headline references to bonding, fun, and sharing, as well as the playful references to popular items inside created a sense of happy girlhood, the non-so-subtle way the period was described unfortunately reinforced the nuisance trope that is so deeply engraved in young women already.

Readers are invited to propose alternative options to the last question in the menstrual quiz.

Post to Twitter Post to Plurk Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to Reddit Post to StumbleUpon

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Communication, Disposable menstrual products, FemCare, Girls, Menstruation | 2 Comments »

Shit I Say

April 10th, 2012 by David Linton

Guest Post by Alexandra Epstein

A series of videos on YouTube have taken stereotypes to a whole new level.  Not only is ‘Shit Girls Say’ sexist, but it has created an empire of homemade ‘Shit (insert proper noun here) Say’ videos stereotyping hundreds of categories. To name just a few, “hung over girls,” “Asian moms,” “boyfriends,” “hot girls,” “fat girls,” “single girls,” and of course we cant forget about “girls who are on their periods.”

In this two-minute video, this girl seems to suffer from every social construction created pertaining to menstruation. From her constant longing for chocolate, to her feeling as if she is dying, to her mood swings, this girl over exaggerates all of the symptoms she claims to have.

The point of this video is to get a laugh, I know. So why be so harsh? It’s funny, right? The typical menstruating female is supposed to watch this and say “oh my God, I do that too! Haha!” However, not all women experience menstruation in the same ways. This generalization of how women act while they are on their periods is only reinforcing the stereotypes that men gain their information from and that so many women are trying to fight every day.

I have a proposition for someone. I want to see a new “Shit Girls Say on Their Periods” video. Only I want this video to portray a woman who embraces menstruation. I want to see a woman feeling extra creative, or extra in touch with herself, or even extra sexual. Why does this video have over a million hits? As a society we need to start changing the way people think about menstruation.

Post to Twitter Post to Plurk Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to Reddit Post to StumbleUpon

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Communication, Humor, Internet, Media, Menstruation | 1 Comment »

SHE’S BACK! – AND SHE’S SINGING!!! CARRIE, THE MUSICAL

March 27th, 2012 by David Linton

At a social gathering, if you were to causally ask, “Can you think of a film or novel that includes any mention of menstruation,” it’s likely that the first (and often only) reply would be “Carrie.”  In both movie versions (Brian DePalma’s 1976  classic and the made-for-TV treatment in 2002 by David Carson) as well as Stephen King’s 1974 novel upon which all subsequent versions are based, the opening scene features the menstrually ignorant Carrie getting her first period in the shower of her high school locker room.  The response by the other girls is a quintessential “mean girls” moment: they pelt her with tampons and pads as they chant in evil glee, “Plug it up!  Plug it up!”

Now, as they like to say in horror movie tradition, “She’s back!”  This time the story is given a Broadway musical treatment.  The new production, which just concluded a well attended run at the off-Broadway Lucille Lortel Theater on Christopher Street, was a remounted version of an earlier staging attempt in 1988 that was a colossal failure.  It had only five performances and became a cautionary tale of everything to avoid with producing a Broadway show.

The new and improved “Carrie” employs most of the songs and book of the earlier version but cuts back on the gore and Gothic elements, shifting the emphasis to relationships and character.  In doing so menstruation takes on greater significance than in any of the earlier iterations, including Stephen King’s original novel.  The play evokes Eve’s Curse in all its primordial essence.



Actually, there are two themes and plot lines at work in the play, and one is far more affecting that the other.  One involves Carrie’s plight amidst her adolescent peers who are crudely stereotyped as either slut, air head, dumb jock, nice jock, naïf or the solitary good girl with a conscience.  Scenes involving Carrie and this crew are predictable and unmemorable.  However, the scenes where Carrie’s relationship with her mother is developed are riveting.  And it is in these scenes where the deep significance of menstruation in a girl’s life, in her relationship with her mother, and in her sense of her place in the world are explored.  The staging, costuming, lighting, and especially the operatic delivery of the aria “When There’s No One,” by Carrie’s mother (Marin Mazzie) lay bare the social and psychological meaning of Carrie’s menarche

In part, the elevation of the mother-daughter relationship may be due to the powerful performances of Marin Mazzie and Molly Ransom who plays Carrie.  Both have riveting presence, and their duets churn with love, conflict, and torment.  Carrie’s confrontation with her mother over her failure to provide her daughter with any preparation for the onset of her period, her plaintive cry, “Why didn’t you tell me?” and her mother’s fanatical response are movingly captured in their duet, “And Eve Was Weak.”

A common criticism of King’s novel is that it associates menstruation with fury, danger and destruction, a macabre extension of discredited Freudian notions of menstrual hysteria.  While not completely eschewing these bleak associations, the musical at least softens and complicates them by focusing on Carrie’s desperate striving to become a fully realized young woman which, tragically, requires her to reject and, ultimately, to kill her oppressive, dominating mother.

Some might find he final confrontation between mother and daughter over the top for its pumped up Grand Guignol evocation of blood and horror, but I found it deeply moving.  Continue reading...

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in books, Media, Menarche, Menstruation, Theater | Comments Off

Margaret Atwood’s Menstrual Dystopia

February 27th, 2012 by David Linton

The menstrual cycle has been of interest to novelists from time to time and some of their work has received critical attention by scholars, most notably in Dana Medoro’s Bleeding in America, a seminal study that assesses the menstrual elements in the novels of Faulkner, Pynchon, and Morrison (previously reviewed here).  But perhaps the novel that is devoted most completely to the social, political, religious, cultural and economic impact of disruptions in the healthy functioning of the menstrual cycle is Margaret Atwood’s 1985 depiction of a menstrual dystopia, The Handmaid’s Tale.

Now, 27 years after its publication, the novel resonates with relevance to the current circumstances of our lives.  As such, it deserves recognition along with those other prescient novels of a dysfunctional future, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, and 1984.

Atwood envisions a world in which, due to a combination of environmental disasters, most women have become incapable of conceiving, leading to the creation of a cadre of “handmaids” who still have normal menstrual cycles and who are assigned to the leaders (“Commanders”) of the nation to bear them children who are immediately turned over to their infertile wives.  They enact a weird form of surrogacy patterned after the story in Genesis of Rachel’s handmaid having sex with Jacob so that Rachel can have a child.  The handmaids (who do not have names of their own but instead are referred to as possessions of their Commanders with the prefix “of,” as in OfFred) have sex by lying between the legs of the Commander’s wife so as to pretend that the congress is “normal.”  The fiction is continued when a birth occurs with the wife simulating labor surrounded by other wives while the handmaid delivers the child elsewhere.

The novel is prescient on many levels.  Our own concerns with the potential effects of environmental contamination on reproduction are strikingly anticipated:

“The air got too full, once, of chemicals, rays, radiation, the water swarmed with toxic molecules, all of that takes years to clean up, and meanwhile they creep into your body, camp out in your fatty cells. . . . Women took medicines, pills, men sprayed trees, cows ate grass, all that souped-up piss flowed into the rivers.  Not to mention the exploding atomic power plants. . . and the mutant strain of syphilis no mold could touch.” (143-144)

As a result, the birth rate plummets far below replacement level, schools are closed for lack of children and fertility becomes a rare commodity that is carefully controlled as women still capable of conceiving are doled out as special benefits to the rulers of the state.  All of this occurs in the context of a culture of religious fanaticism with a full complement of hypocrisy and brutality common to extremes of any stripe.

Key scenes are built around gynecological exams, menstrual anxiety, failed attempts at impregnation: all aspects of cycle management.  Every moment of the narrator’s life centers on her identity as a potential producer: “Each month I watch for blood, fearfully, for when it comes it means failure. I have failed once again to fulfill the expectations of others, which have become my own.” (95)

As we experience today’s resurgence of efforts to control or limit women’s reproductive options and the tangled skein of regulations, insurance restrictions, religious assertions, and political posturing, The Handmaid’s Tale makes for timely reading.

Post to Twitter Post to Plurk Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to Reddit Post to StumbleUpon

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Literature, Men, Menstruation | 5 Comments »

Tina Fey’s Menstrual Musings

January 31st, 2012 by David Linton

Tina Fey, true to her reputation for being feisty and transgressive, tells two amusing menstrual tales in her recent bestselling book, Bossypants.

 

The first is, appropriately for a “tell all” memoire, about her menarche.  The story, familiar to thousands of other women, relates how her mother gave her a “first period” kit from the Modess company that contained two pamphlets, “Growing Up and Liking it” and “How Shall I Tell My Daughter,” and pretty much left her on her own.  Fey’s humor derives largely from exaggeration and in this case she compares the Modess box stashed in her closet to a Freddy Krueger nightmare figure lurking in the dark: “Modessssss is coming for you.”

 

She goes on to describe the moment of the period’s arrival when she was ten years old and performing in a choral concert.  She claims that her surprise was not so much that she got her period but that the fluid wasn’t blue as she’d been lead to expect from TV ads.

 

The second, and more interesting, story is about how as a writer for the long-running TV series, Saturday Night Live, she managed to get the Kotex Classic sketch on the air.  Fey refers to it as “my proudest moment as one of the head writers of SNL.”  (The anecdote was also published in the March 14, 2011 New Yorker.)  The ad parody has become an SNL classic in itself and an indispensible inclusion in any discussion of the history of menstrual references on television.

 

The Kotex sketch is a send-up of the trend at the time for nostalgia sales pitches such as the Coke Classis campaign.  Written by Paula Pell, it features women proudly flaunting their Kotex belts and bulging sanitary napkins, even in a swimming pool and while wearing low cut, tight evening wear.  A man in the ad comments approvingly, “Them  girls are Old School!”

 

Fey describes how the men at the studio who had to approve the scripts balked at selecting it.  Their resistance was eventually overcome once the women explained the exact nature of the unfamiliar menstrual technology and how it was worn.  As Fey puts it, “They didn’t know what a maxi pad belt was.  It was the moment I realized that there was no ‘institutional sexism’ at that place.  Sometimes they just literally didn’t know what we were talking about.”

 

Beyond the fascinating behind-the –scenes access that Tina Fey’s book provides to the working of an influential TV show – and lots of other settings as well – she has also offered a glimpse of the menstrual social gap, the chasm of ignorance that separates women and men when it comes to understanding even the most rudimentary details of menstrual management.  In this case she was able to educate the men and succeed in producing a memorable – and perhaps even liberating! – piece of TV comedy.

Post to Twitter Post to Plurk Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to Reddit Post to StumbleUpon

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in books, Celebrities, Humor, Menstruation, Television | 2 Comments »

Figure Girl Fertility

January 18th, 2012 by David Linton

Guest Post by Lianne McTavish — University of Alberta

(aka Feminist Figure Girl)

While working out at the gym yesterday—something I do on a daily basis—I felt a strangely familiar pressure in my lower abdomen and noticed that it was protruding, despite the strong elastic of my Lululemon pants. ‘Oh I know what is going on,’ I said to my fit workout partner. ‘I am getting my period!’ She too was bloated and crampy, and we wondered if our cycles had synchronized during strenuous sets of wide grip chin ups and heavy dead lifts. Deciding that we were probably romanticizing our ovarian activity, we stopped talking and returned to our tabata-inspired drills, grunting out 50 burpees. Life was good.

Feminist Figure Girl poses in competition (Used with permission)

I was pleased with my body and its potential fertility, which made me feel younger than my 44 years. Just a few months ago I thought I might have entered menopause, though without any accompanying symptoms, except for amenorrhea. I had stopped menstruating while training and dieting for a bodybuilding competition. After being promoted to full professor at the University of Alberta, writing a couple of books, and publishing numerous articles, I needed a new challenge. Already a dedicated gym rat, I decided to enter a bodybuilding competition, doing so as a form of research. I began reading feminist theories of embodiment and cultural accounts of weight lifting, hired an established diet coach, took posing lessons, and learned how to walk in high heels. I entered a local contest in the category called ‘Figure,’ which favours muscular physiques with wide, capped shoulders, broad upper backs, and well defined quads, but requires a softer appearance than traditional forms of bodybuilding. Adopting a beauty pageant aesthetic, the exclusively female participants in Figure—known colloquially as ‘Figure girls’—wear blinged out bikinis and four-inch high plastic shoes while performing mandatory four-quarter turns to display every angle of their bodies to a panel of judges. I wanted to know why women found such contests empowering, even though these events might initially seem both oppressive and sexist. I also wanted to experience what it felt like to compete.

One physical result was the loss of my period. Six months before my show I had weighed 145 pounds and had my body fat carefully measured at 17%, but when I hit the stage at the Northern Alberta Bodybuilding Championships on June 4, 2011, I was 118 pounds and had only about 6% body fat. During that diet-down phase I had ceased taking birth control pills because the estrogen could soften my body, at odds with my goals. Although I used alternative forms of contraception, I feared that they would be less effective and began taking monthly pregnancy tests. The single blue line on the plastic stick was a relief to me, replacing the role of menstrual blood by providing visual evidence of my non-pregnant state.

My period had not returned three months after my competition, though I had gained about 15 pounds by eating larger amounts of healthy, high protein food. I was training just as hard at the gym; indeed I was lifting much heavier weights. During a routine physical in September, I reluctantly told my sensible-shoes doctor that I had not had a period in quite some time. ‘If I have already gone through menopause,’ I exclaimed, ‘it’s the bomb and I say bring it!’ ‘Oh no,’ she chuckled, ‘most of my athletic female patients no longer menstruate. Plus, you are only 44 and can probably squeeze out a few more eggs.’  Horrified by this news I cried out: ‘No, no more eggs!’ I had been hoping to wear the crown of sterility for the rest of my life.  Continue reading...

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Amenorrhea, Menstruation, Sports | 4 Comments »

Making Money from Menopause

January 3rd, 2012 by David Linton

 

No, I don’t mean all those drugs aimed at relieving the “symptoms” associated with the hormonal shifts that sometimes trigger a variety of physical or mood changes nor even the expenses that accompany joining a Red Hat Society (somebody’s making a little change on that flashy head wear!).

Rather, it’s the way Gennifer Flowers has packaged herself following her brief brush with fame as a participant in one of President Bill Clinton’s sex scandals.  A recent NY Times op-ed piece by Gail Collins (December 7, 2011) informs us that Flowers is now working as an entertainer and motivational speaker and that one of her favorite topics is “The ‘M’ Years . . . Surviving Menopause Mania!”  And, indeed, a visit to the Gennifer Flowers web site reveals that her talk “is a humorously-presented speech about the experiences of menopause while giving very current and important medically documented information to women on how to get through these ‘M’ years with the greatest of ease and dignity.”

Unfortunately, the site does not explain just what makes menopause (we presume she means perimenopause) worthy of being called “Mania!” – with an exclamation, no less – nor what makes it so daunting that one needs advice on how to “survive” nor why she feels it’s necessary to be coy with that use of “M” as some sort of code.  But perhaps it’s those unknowns that make one want to pay the fee and invite her to one’s event.

The site also includes a lot of glamorous photos and some teasing references to her other favorite topic, “Surviving Sex, Power and Propaganda.”  There’s that notion of surviving again.  But surviving sex?  There’s something touchingly sad about that.

Post to Twitter Post to Plurk Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to Reddit Post to StumbleUpon

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Celebrities, Internet, Menopause | 2 Comments »

Menstrual Sex: The Last Taboo in Advertising?

December 6th, 2011 by David Linton

Click to view full-size image in another window.

For nearly a century, ads and other promotional materials for menstrual products have been based on claims that the pad, tampon or, more recently, cup or pill, would make it possible for women to participate in activities that their periods would otherwise have interfered with.  Furthermore, one would be able to do so without anyone knowing that a period was underway.  References to freedom and secrecy, expressed in a myriad of overt or euphemistic terms and images, have been ubiquitous.  Yet, there has been one constraint marketers have hesitated to defy.  Until now.

Surely the taboos against intercourse during menstruation are among the oldest and most wide-spread of all cultural prohibitions.  And while previously ads have suggested that one’s romantic engagements – dancing, dating, going to parties, etc. – could be continued or even enhanced by using the right pad or tampon, no company ever stated that women could have an active, joyful sex life regardless of, or even despite, a regular menstrual flow.  The new series of ads for Instead Softcup boldly challenges that taboo.

But not only does it reject the taboo, in doing so it depicts women in a sexually assertive way that makes menstrual sex look like fun.  The ad on this page is one in a series that playfully mocks one of the claims usually made for feminine hygiene products: “12-hour leak protection so you can sleep.  Or not.”

The photograph is striking for many reasons.  There’s a voyeuristic quality as we gaze from a high angle at an intimate sexual encounter narrowly framed by dark walls and an open door.  Though we only see the couple’s naked legs, the image is made particularly titillating by the fact that the woman has kept on her somewhat spiky heeled shoes, suggesting urgency and spontaneity as well as a hint of kinkiness.  What’s more, the woman is on top, an image of assertiveness and power reflected in the text, “So now your period can’t stop you from indulging in all your favorite activities, whatever they may be.”  Furthermore the “woman superior” position (as it used to be called in sex manuals) also implies that the cup is so effective that there’s no danger of having your blood stream out onto your partner, even when you’re straddling him.

Another ad in the series uses a similar framing technique showing a young couple who are kissing.  They are glimpsed against a window through dark, heavy drapes in a dimly lit living room decorated in an old-fashioned style with flowered wall paper and a formal mantle upon which rests a delicate tea pot.  Here the image suggests the rejection of old (parental) ways that held that women could not enjoy sex while menstruating.

And then there’s the clever name of the product: Instead Softcup.  The first word is a little dig at the competition; the second aims to reassure the customer that the product is comfortable and easy to use.  The company’s web site also takes a little shot at the chief competitor with the slogan, “No Strings,” but otherwise it’s a fairly straight-forward, even sober, site with video interviews with reassuring doctors and the usual endorsements and images of happy, young women of widely varied ethnic origins.

The marketing campaign is multi-faceted including teams of women staffing tables outside colleges giving away free samples.

Time will tell if Softcup succeeds in dislodging pads and tampons from their market dominance.  Readers are invited to comment on the likely outcomes of the campaign.

Post to Twitter Post to Plurk Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to Reddit Post to StumbleUpon

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Advertising, Disposable menstrual products, FemCare, Menstruation, Sex | 4 Comments »

Getting Cozy with Tampon Cozies

November 21st, 2011 by David Linton

Guest post by Michael Yazujian — Marymount Manhattan College

Photo by Caitlin Weigel (used with permission)

Caitlin Weigel knits and sells tampon cozies on her Etsy site, a website where people can sell crafts that they make. These cozies are perfect for women who are trying to avoid humiliation who are also fans of squids (and probably other tampon users as well). They may reinforce the shame and embarrassment that some women associate with tampons by concealing them, but they do so in a playful way that suggests the taboo be taken less seriously. The squids seem to be mocking society’s belief in tampon awkwardness with their googly eyes and promote a sort of tampon pride that you could show off to your friends. The reduction of shame through humor is not a new concept, but I believe that Caitlin Weigel has knit a useful weapon against the uncomfortable and serious manner in which tampons are viewed.

 

Editor’s note: See also Vinnie’s Tampon Case

Post to Twitter Post to Plurk Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to Reddit Post to StumbleUpon

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Activism, DIY, FemCare, Humor | 2 Comments »

Menstruation Gets Blamed for Everything!

November 8th, 2011 by David Linton

© Bettman/CORBIS, Creative Commons 2.0

In Gore Vidal’s 2006 memoir, Point to Point Navigation, he name drops his way through more than four decades of a very interesting life with great stories about the famous and notorious folks who crossed his path. One tale is related by his stepmother, Kit, about her former husband and Gore Vidal’s father, Gene Vidal, and his relationship with the pioneering woman pilot, Amelia Earhart, with whom he apparently had a long-running affair. Gene Vidal was also a pilot as well as an innovative businessman involved in many aspects of what was then called air commerce.

According to Kit, her husband had a theory about the accident over the Pacific that killed Earhart. He believed that she had deliberately crashed the plane: “’She was going through a bad time with G.P. [George Palmer Putnam, her publisher husband]; she was also undergoing some sort of premature menopause.’”

Whew! It seems that no matter where you turn, if a woman is having a bad day, the menstrual explanation will be trotted out. But suicide by plane crash as a response to perimenopause?!?! Now, there’s a flight of fancy.

Post to Twitter Post to Plurk Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to Reddit Post to StumbleUpon

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Celebrities, Menopause, Menstruation | Comments Off

Cosmopolitan, the Sex Magazine That Won’t Talk About (Period) Sex

October 21st, 2011 by David Linton

Guest Post by Saniya Ghanoui

Cosmopolitan is open about its coverage of sex. It is curious then that the coverage of period sex is limited and not as open or adventurous as other sex ideas found in the magazine. The message regarding period sex is simple: men must be protected from menstrual blood.

The idea that a male will touch blood stirs the ideas of castration, a battle, or even death and thus must be avoided. This is ironic, given that many women actually have a heightened sexual arousal while on their periods. And since Cosmopolitan is directed towards women it is odd that it does not put women’s issues on the forefront but rather still caters to the taboo, despite hiding behind its catchphrase of “Fun Fearless Female.”

In the Cosmo Sex Challenge, one Cosmopolitan writer and her boyfriend attempt to try 77 sex positions in 77 days. Typically the writer’s period should come up approximately twice in 77 days, yet is only mentioned once. She mentions that her boyfriend isn’t “into it,” in reference to period sex, but convinces him to do it. After one hot and heavy night, in the boyfriend’s bed, she notices red handprints on the sheets so she throws a pillow over them and makes a “mental note to change his sheets tomorrow morning.” This is a physical act of apologizing.

The changing, and it can be assumed the subsequent washing of the sheets, not only works as an implicit apology but also reemphasizes the stereotype that women must perform this idea of a proper feminine role in a relationship. Also, she is changing the sheets so her boyfriend does not find out about the handprint, meaning she does not want him to see the blood. For what reason? Is she ashamed that she bleeds? Embarrassed?

In addition, when she first sees the handprint her reaction is “Oh. My. God.” Obviously this is an expression of shock that is emphasized by the separation of each word with a period. So after doing these complex sex positions (and many more to come), this is what makes her express shock? Yet, she doesn’t seem to be shocked that her period only came once in 77 days.

Post to Twitter Post to Plurk Post to Yahoo Buzz Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to MySpace Post to Reddit Post to StumbleUpon

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in magazines, Menstruation, Sex | 4 Comments »

« Older Entries
Readers should note that statements published in re: Cycling are those of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Society as a whole.