Blog of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research
When I talk with young women who’ve never heard about alternative menstrual products, they often have a hard time imagining inserting something the size of a menstrual cup. For some reason, asking them to picture a silicone (or rubber) cone-shaped shot glass doesn’t ease their anxiety. Thanks to the Magical Menstruation Tumblr, I now have the perfect visual aids:
And there’s even a video to demonstrate how to do that tricky-looking fold!
[ Original source: Femme Fleur ]
Sarah Konner and Toni Craigie Bicycle Down the West Coast, Live on $4 a Day, and Talk to People about Sustainable Menstrual Products.
Hear, in their own words, what they did and why it matters.
These gals are our menstrual sheroes!
Over a lifetime, the average woman spends about 2,000 dollars on single-use pads and tampons, creating an enormous truckload of trash. There are more affordable and sustainable options that very few people seem to know about. We left Seattle on bikes on August 18th and arrived in LA on October 10th, and we will be continuing this work off-bicycle in the coming months. Along the way, we are meeting women, community organizers, health professionals, business owners, and people of all stripes, and having conversations about the benefits of reusable menstrual products.
For this project, we have been focusing on reusable menstrual cups—made of natural gum rubber latex or medical-grade silicon; they catch, rather than absorb menstrual flow. One cup costs $35 and can last up to 10 years—quite a deal. There are three companies that sell menstrual cups in the US, all approved as safe by the FDA. Each company has donated cups, totaling over 200, for us to give as gifts along the way. We also have a small number of reusable pads to give away.
There are powerful environmental impacts from this lifestyle switch and also important health benefits. For every woman who leaves behind single-use disposable pads and tampons, you can imagine a truckload of trash not going into the landfills, the decreased carbon footprint from production and shipping of these products, the trees saved, and all of the environmental toxins not going into our air, water, and bodies.
Conventional pads and tampons are made of chlorine-bleached wood pulp, with some cotton (generally grown with tons of pesticides), rayon, plastic, and glue mixed in. They also contain bleach and dioxins, carcinogenic chemicals that are harmful to your body and to the environment. The vagina – wet, warm, and porous – seems like the last place you’d want those chemicals. Tampons, especially the super absorbent kinds, can create a perfect breeding ground for Toxic Shock Syndrome, caused by the deadly bacteria known as Staph (Staphylococcus aureus). These disposable products are not easily biodegradable, which is why they often clog septic systems and long outstay their welcome in our oceans and landfills.
The most immediate concern for many women is the cost of single-use products, every month, until menopause. Pads and tampons are an economic burden on all women BUT prove especially difficult for low-income women since they are not covered by food stamps.
Using a menstrual cup puts a woman in more intimate contact with her body: she needs to figure out the mechanics of inserting and removing the cup and sees the color and consistency of her menstrual fluid each time she empties the cup. Once you get over the learning curve, cups seems easier, more hygienic, and believe it or not, less gross than pads and tampons. Many users come to value the increased knowledge of their body and cycle that they get from their cup.
Contact lenses make a great analogy: at first people are worried about touching their eye or may experience some irritation as they figure out the best way to put the lenses in. Quickly, however, most people develop an easy routine around their contacts, and it’s no big deal.
Mooncup, the British reusable menstrual cup makers, just launched their Love Your Beach? Love Your Vagina campaign—a compelling attempt to connect the care for your body/care for your planet messages at the root of the push for alternative menstrual care.
My first reaction: that deliciously sensual vulva has HAIR! ‘Atta girls!’ This body-positive, earth-loving feminist is on board.
Then I read British journalist/commentator (and self described “broad-minded broad”) Julie Burchill’s piece in The Independent about the Mooncup ad and was brought back to reality, that is, the reality that is colored by menstrual taboos and woman-body-hating. Oh geez, really, Julie? Et tu?
In short, Burchill rails against not only the soft cup, but also the sponge and reusable pads, and by extension “breastfeeding, small shopping, slow eating”—other movements, she concludes that “conspire to straight up KEEP WOMEN AT HOME FOR AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE” (yes, her words, her emphasis). Words like gory, inappropriate, and vile pepper her indictment against options she rejects before she tried them. Her basis? Her “best ex-hippie friend, happily brought back to the land of the living.”
If you strip away her regrettable squeamishness at trying something new (single use pads and tampons FTW!), we find a rather clumsy critique of eco-feminism. Though I can’t be sure since I keep tripping over Burchill’s ignorance and the REAL public enemy.
I, too, shudder, when a product is sold to women (or anyone) because THEY MUST or THEY SHOULD. When this US national breastfeeding awareness campaign heavy-handedly warned women that NOT breastfeeding effectively meant selfish mothering, lots of feminists protested.
Give me info, support, and compassion, not a big finger wagging in my face.
So I hear Burchill’s frustration with ‘Go green, you bitch’ messages, but here, it doesn’t stick. She is mad at a cup maker for promoting a product she thinks sets women back. But for me, the scoundrel is not MORE options, but rather our old nemesis the menstrual taboo which grows out of a long standing discomfort with women’s bodies ON THEIR OWN TERMS. We are cursed with an egregious inconsistency bred out of sexism: Women’s bodies on display? Cool. Women’s bodies as commodities? Score! Women’s bodies lactating, menstruating, doing what bodies do. Eeewww!
Exposed breasts and reusable cups and a expanding field of options—these aren’t the problems limiting women’s potential. No, deep-seated discomfort with women’s bodies in their natural state–that’s one that really keeps us back.
Rhoune Ochako, a research officer at APHRC, explains how the cup works in this photo from the APHRC web site.
At re:Cycling, we’re interested in all kinds of menstruation and women’s health issues, all over the world. We have written several times about the need for menstrual pads for girls and women in developing nations, like the Kasissi Project Girls Program producing M.A.K.A. pads in Uganda and Sustainable Health Enterprises making pads from banana trees for women in Rwanda, and LunaPads’ Pads4Girls program, which collects and donates reusable pads to girls in several African nations as well as Mexico and South America. We’ve also suggested that cramps and menstrual pain may cause girls to miss school as much as lack of menstrual supplies.
So it was with great interest that we read about a new pilot program of the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) that will distribute menstrual cups to girls in Nairobi.
Women and girls in Korogocho slums have been identified who will use the cup for up to four months, after which they will be interviewed about their experiences,” explained Rhoune Ochako, a research officer at APHRC.
The study will also assess acceptability of the cup, as many girls were intimidated to use the cup. A teacher at Our Lady of Fatima Secondary school initially queried 400 students, of whom only three were willing to participate in the study.
Celestine Awino [age 17] is among girls who agreed to participate in the project that started about a year and a half ago and has been using the cup since then. “At first I was afraid. I waited until a friend used it, then I tried. I have now been using it for over ten months,” she says.
Awino says she is able to engage in school activities during her periods while wearing the cup. “I take part in sports, cleaning and learning activities without any problem. It is better than missing school because one lacks sanitary pads,” she says.
Given the economic and environmental advantages of menstrual cups (not to mention their reliability), this experiment has great potential to make a big difference.
The lovely ladies of LunaPads have made a sweet little video that explains why you should make the switch from paper products to cloth pads – in less than 90 seconds!
If you’ve already made the switch, this is an easy way to persuade your friends. You can email it, Tweet, share it on Facebook, heck, cue it up on your smartphone and show it to ‘em!
Sarah Thomasin at Bluestockings
Last Sunday evening, at the Lower East Side bookstore (and feminist Mecca) Bluestockings, Chella Quint attempted to begin her 5th installment of a performance built from her zine Adventures in Menstruating. However this piece, Here’s The Science Bit, was quite rudely interrupted by Mother Nature, in tweed, presenting a pink and red wrapped box. Mother Nature who typically appears in Tampax adverts, exclaimed “It’s your monthly gift!” Chella seemed pleased to accept it. This confused the woman. “But…but, she stammered. It’s your monthly gift?!” Chella reminded her that she was quite happy taking it, thank you very much, and proceeded to open up the box (wondering why boxes are a running theme in fem care advertising.) For the next hour, as the paper flew and big red bows zoomed around the room, the gifts kept coming from Chella and co-performer, Sarah Thomasin, now donning lab coats.
Chella (a contributor to this blog) and Sarah’s writing on the fem care industry is spot on. Since 2005, they have produced the zine and now a blog which attempt to poke and prod the hawkers of pads and tampons out of their shameful marketing strategies. This evening they re-examined ads from the 1950′s for Zonite, a douche so powerful yet “safe to tissues” (??!) and Modess, a menstrual product pre-wrapped (i.e. disguised) in plain brown packaging. Of course, as Quint pointed out, the only other product to be wrapped in this manner were bombs.
Chella Quint and Sarah Thomasin
In another hilarious bit, Quint played a Mooncup while Sarah proclaimed “I’m a tampon!” They argued back and forth of their varying abilities to collect and discard menstrual blood. However, The Tampon had to leave the conversation mid-sentence, only to be replaced by another Tampon who had not been part of the initial conversation with Mooncup. This happened thrice over (though of course, this would happen thousands of times over in a 10 year period, the typical lifetime of a menstrual cup, wherein the average woman would cycle through approximately 2,750 tampons.)
Adventures in Menstruating on S.H.A.M.E., photos by Chris Bobel
To combat the side effect of pop culture’s representations of menstruation, S.H.A.M.E. (Shame, Horror, Ads/Media, Erasure) Quint presented a takeaway for the evening – The Stain. The latest in fashion, Stains are red felt blobs akin to blood stains which you adhere to the front of your clothing (at your crotch) or at the back side. As Chella and Sarah presented their gift they praised the product “The best defense against stains is a healthy dose of shamelessness!” Several attendees wore their stains out the door, proudly walking down the street impervious to shame-induced fear and carried forth the overall feeling of Adventures in Menstruating – high brow and low brow at the same time.
Mooncup, shown actual size.
A small study published this month in the Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology tested effectiveness of the mooncup. The results won’t surprise anyone who has used one: “The Mooncup leaked 0.5 times less frequently and required to be changed 2.8 times less frequently, on average, during one menstrual period than regular sanitary protection.”
Or coochie, or bajingo, or vajayjay, or any other term for female genitalia. The big news in U.S. femcare this week is the launch of Kotex’s new “Break the Cycle” campaign, and the refusal of American television to air commercials that use the word vagina. As Amanda Hess put it, “you know, the place where the fucking tampon goes.” Meanwhile, Mooncup has launched new ads for their menstrual cups with a “Love Your Vagina” campaign in the UK. The campaign includes posters all over the place with different names women have for their vaginas – fru-fru, bajingo, coochie, lady garden and vajayjay – and the domain name LoveYourVagina.com.
According to this article in Marie-Claire,
Mooncup intend[s] to stimulate debate and encourage women to care about their vaginal health as much as they care for their hair, nails and make up. Kath Clements, Campaigns Manager for Mooncup, says: ‘We hope the ads will get women thinking, smiling and talking about their vaginas.’
No word yet on whether British media are permitting television ads.
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:
Yesterday, the NYTimes reported on a new study of Ghanian girls that found: ” Many schoolgirls from poor families stay home up to five days each month when they have their period.” (but could cramps be the culprit as they were in the study released in December 2009?)
The same piece described another cloth- pads- for- girls outreach effort, this one organized by a group called Huru International and supported by this eclectic list of backers: President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the Elton John AIDS Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, Sunflag Steel, Warner Brothers. Huru International developed washable cloth pads and packaged them together with a few pairs of panties, laundry soap and HIV/AIDS info into kits for school girls in Kenya. Cloth pads–though admittedly not every menstruator’s preferred menstrual care option, does make sense especially for girls who lack the resources to buy single use products (one Kenyan girls reports that a box of pads costs is equivalent to the cost of a bag of corn flour).
It seems that the good ole’ time-tested cloth pad is emerging as a viable option for girls throughout Africa.
We think that’s encouraging news, for the planet AND for girls.
Because the endometrium, the lining of the uterus, regenerates each month, some researchers believe menstrual blood may be a viable source of stem cells. Stem cells have been found in the uterine lining, although it is uncertain whether healthy, viable stem cells are shed with other menstrual fluids. The research is ongoing. So Chelsea Briganti, senior at Parsons School of Design, may be ahead of her time.
Her senior thesis involves the design of a storage container to preserve menstrual fluid for later use. Her idea is to develop a design for a successful consumer product. If you’d like to help her out, click here to complete a short survey (only five questions) and contribute to her data set.
Confidential to Chelsea: Please let us know when you no longer need survey respondents.
We at re: Cycling have been tracking the African-girls-miss-school-because-they-menstruate equation for a while now.