Blog of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research

Event: “Zine Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon”

August 23rd, 2011 by Elizabeth Kissling

Cover of Adventures in Menstruating issue #5Friend of re:Cycling, Chella Quint, will be doing a reading with Jenna Freedman & James M. Parker at Bluestockings Bookstore, Café, & Activist Center (172 Allen St, New York, NY), Thursday night (August 25, 7:00 – 9:00 pm).

Join Chella Quint and friends for some comedy readings that attempt to explore the why’s and the how’s of having grown up writing zines — from her 4th grade construction-paper and paper-fastener-bound school report on Benjamin Franklin to the latest issue of “Adventures in Menstruating.” New titles since her last visit to Bluestockings are Adventures in Menstruating #6 (deconstructing feminine hygiene advertising with wit, irony and brute force), The Venns (introducing the world to the great British pub quiz in a spoof research paper using charts, graphs and diagrams) and It’s Not You. I Just Need Space. (interplanetary letters of love and rejection). She’s also reprinting issues 1-5 of Adventures in Menstruating for a trip down memory lane. Collect the set!

Chella Quint is a comedy writer and performer living in Sheffield, England, but she is originally from New York.  Fresh from performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, she’s looking forward to her annual trip home. Check out www.chellaquint.com

Joining Chella are

Jenna Freedman, Lower East Side Librarian author and Wrangler in Chief of the Barnard Library Zine Collection will be reading from her in-progress Orderly Disorder: Librarian Zinesters in Circulation tour zine, tentatively titled “Anything You Say on a Zine Tour Can & Will Be Quoted out of Context in a Zine-Tour Zine.”

and

James M. Parker, poet laureate of all the little people who live inside his head, is a NYC-based writer with delusions of grandeur. He’ll be reading prose and poetry from his chapbook, Spinning the Cube, including his contribution to Adventures in Menstruating #6.

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We’re back!

July 27th, 2011 by Elizabeth Kissling

Tap, tap.

Is this thing working? Is this thing on?

After some rest, reconnaissance, and re-organization, re:Cycling is back — bigger, bolder, and with more menstruation and women’s health news than ever. Most of our old team is back, along with a few new recruits and some exciting guest bloggers. There’ll be some new features here as well. More about all of that is coming soon. Our posting will be spotty and irregular throughout August, but expect to see a more consistent, regular flow after September 1. (Yeah, see what I did there? )

We’ve missed a lot of action in four months away. We can’t possibly summarize all of it, but here are some of my personal highlights:

 

July 19 – The Institute of Medicine (U.S.)  just released a report on preventive health services for women, and the consensus is that health plans under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 should cover contraception without demanding co-payments. You can read and/or download the full report here.

 

July 18 – Remember Summer’s Eve marketing disaster last summer? They still don’t get it. This year’s “Hail to the V” campaign may be saluting vaginas, but it’s still telling everyone vaginas are dirty.

As Maya put it over at Feministing.com,

That chatty hand claims to be my vagina but is clearly an impostor, because my vagina would never refer to herself as a “vertical smile,” knows better than to even mention vajazzaling to me, and is too busy complaining about how long it’s been since she’s gotten laid to give a damn about if my cleansing wash is PH-balanced. My vagina is not a whiny little pussy.

If you’re not offended enough, check out the stereotypes in the Black and Latina vaginas. For a satisfying satirical response, check out Stephen Colbert’s July 25 program.

 

July 13 – Bloggers at Ms. magazine have done yeoman work drawing attention to the sexism in the latest PSA from the milk industry, criticizing the sexism toward both women and men in the Milk Board’s stereotype-rich “Everything I Do Is Wrong” campaign about PMS. Ms. has also promoted Change.org’s petition protesting the campaign. Update: By July 24, the campaign had been pulled in response to protests.

2011 Ad for Always brand maxi padJuly 5 – As copyranter astutely notes, the use of a RED spot in the center of a maxi-pad to represent menstrual blood is an historic moment in advertising history. Are we finally done with the mysterious blue fluid? (By the way, copyranter is THE source for smart, snarky analysis of advertising;  he oughta know — his day job is writing the stuff.)

 

June 20 – Corporate and subsidized donations of disposable menstrual pads may be good for girls, but not so good for the environment.

 

June 2 – British artist Tracey Emin  art student at University of Wisconsin, follows in Judy Chicago’s inspirational footsteps and turns her tampons into art.

 

What else have we missed? Add your links in the comments, and don’t be shy about sending us suggestions!

 

 

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Posted in Advertising, Art, Menstruation, Meta, PMS | 7 Comments »

Marked for Life

February 9th, 2011 by Elizabeth Kissling

CarewNorwegian athlete John Carew just revealed his new tattoo, which features wings and the phrase ‘Ma Vie, Mes Régles’. Apparently Mr. Carew believed that reads “My Life, My Rules”, but with an acute accent (é) instead of a grave accent (è), the actual translation is either ‘My Life, My Period’ or ‘My Life, My Menstruation’.

That’s frankly awesome.


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Posted in anatomy, Art, Celebrities, Communication, Humor, Language, Menstruation | 5 Comments »

Call for Papers: Society for Menstrual Cycle Research 2011

October 11th, 2010 by Heather Dillaway

19th Biennial Meeting of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research

Chatham University

June 2, 2011 – June 4, 2011


The 19th Biennial Meeting of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research (SMCR) will be hosted in Pittsburgh’s East End at the Woodland Campus of Chatham University, June 2-4. 2011.

This year’s conference theme, Embodied Consciousness, Informed Choices: Critical Perspectives on the Menstrual Cycle, offers a stimulating opportunity to explore a variety of perspectives on the menstrual cycle.  Submissions addressing the conference theme, broadly interpreted, are encouraged.

We welcome submissions that involve research, theory, public policy, health care, clinical applications, media representations, educational materials, and art related to the physiological, sociocultural, psychological, or cross-cultural aspects of the menstrual cycle. For more details, visit the conference web site.

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The Menstruation Machine

June 30th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Hiromi Ozaki's Menstruation Machine

Hiromi Ozaki's Menstruation Machine

Researcher and artist Hiromi Ozaki has created the Menstruation Machine, an art installation featuring an appliance for men or boys (or other people who do not menstruate) to wear to simulate the menstrual experience. It features electrodes attached to the lower abdomen to simulate cramps and a blood-dispensing mechanism that deposits simulated menstrual fluid between the wearer’s legs.

The device is reminiscent of the Empathy Belly® pregnancy simulator, although it is being greeted with much more snark and misogyny. The blogger at Gizmodo is certain he’ll never try it (just skip the comments), and the DC Caller says, “This may appeal to the crowd of women who pull the ‘you don’t understand how I feel’ card once a month to their significant other.”

But the Menstruation Machine is an art project, and the Empathy Belly® is a real product, retailing for $649. It’s intended to be provocative, rather than profitable. Suddenly I’m reminded of the time my college boyfriend told me he wanted to dress as a woman for Halloween. I sneered and told him if he thought its was funny to dress like a woman, he should wear a tampon.

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Strawberries and Spinach: Menstrual Monday 2010

May 3rd, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling

Guest Post by Geneva Kachman, MOLT: The Museum of the Menovulatory Lifetime

Back in 2000, when my Menstrual Monday journey began, an ever-reasonable friend had pointed out it took 13 years for Julia Ward Howe to establish Mother’s Day. Being a holidaymaker, and more on the creative side than reasonable, I poo-poo’d my friend’s caution. Seriously – Julia Ward Howe didn’t have the Internet! Thirteen years is two centuries in Internet time!

Eleven Menstrual Mondays later, I humbly look forward to the year 2012, and raising a glass (of tomato juice) to Julia Ward Howe, unmoved by any doomsday scenarios erroneously attributed to the Mayan calendar. Holidaymaking is just not as easy as it looks!

Display of Uterine Flying Objects (UFOs)

Display of Uterine Flying Objects (UFOs)

On the other hand, Menstrual Monday parties are rather easy to throw. Here’s all you need to do:

  1. Check out the official mission statement for Menstrual Monday – of note, the first goal is to create “a sense of fun around menstruation.” One benefit of “silly” party favors and decorations, such as the U.F.O. (Uterine Flying Object), PMS Blowt-Out, and Tampose (tampon + rose = tampose), is that women from all walks of life are put at ease, wondering “what is that?” rather than being focused on menstrual negativity (taboo and shame are such heavy words, aren’t they?).
  2. Ask everyone to bring something from the Five Menstrual Monday Food Groups: Green stuff, red stuff, chocolate, poppy seed, egg. Or serve a spinach salad with tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs and poppy seed dressing, with chocolate for dessert. Before sitting down to eat, why not chant “green stuff, red stuff, chocolate, poppy seed, egg” a few times, just for fun?
  3. To get the discussion going, you can download A Cuppa Questions from MOLT – the questions are printed on drawings of human ova. Cut the ova out, drop them into a cup, and let each guest select a question. Make sure to download the answer sheet as well. You can also cut out extra circles, for guests to write their own questions on.
  4. If you haven’t tried reusable menstrual pads or menstrual cups before, a Menstrual Monday party is a good time to learn about them. Two such companies are LunaPads and Glad Rags. You and your friends can decide to try these products yourselves – as well as donate pads to young women, who would otherwise be kept out of school.
  5. Display of MOLTwheels and red packaging.

    Display of MOLTwheels and FloFlags

    If you like working with fabric, check out Have a Hester at MOLT, and learn about scarlet letters and flow-dyeing. Right now I’m enamored of red shop rags – I add glitter glue, and use them to package MOLTwheels – the mini-frisbees in the photo. See what ideas you and your guests can come up with.

  6. Individuals can purchase a DVD copy of the documentary Period: The End of Menstruation? for $29.95. For more film suggestions for your party, see the FloFilm Index at MOLT.

I notice I’ve mentioned a couple of things that require spending money – the most intriguing question to me this Menstrual Monday is: Where is the intersection of feminism, menstruation, and entrepreneurship? I’m wondering: How can there be a transformation in attitudes toward the red stuff, without a corresponding transformation in where women’s green stuff (money) is being spent?

Strawberries and spinach: Food for thought, indeed.

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What’s Menstruation Got to Do with It?

March 3rd, 2010 by Chris Bobel

vday in london

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.

Sexism and misogyny shape cultural attitudes about women’s bodies and women’s lives, rendering them deficient, at best, and repulsive, at worst. This sets the stage for abuse, for the “justification” of power and control over women and girls and all things feminine.

Let’s not let that connection go unnoticed while we look away from the  “icky,”   especially then.

The menstrual taboo is rooted in a negative and dysfunctional view of women’s bodies and experiences, an artifact of sexism, as old as sexism itself.   Challenging the taboo says NO to disrespecting women and moves us one step closer to ending violence against women.  That’s the power of work like Moine’s.

That’s what menstruation has to do with it. Sing it with me.

____________

If you are in London, check it out:

V Day London Presents an exhibition of work by female artists: Emli Bendixen, Ingrid Berthon-Moine, Alicia Clarke, Cordelia Donohoe, Maria Pia Jamie, Heather Joy Riggs and Vicky Scott.

Opening Friday the 5th of March 6.30 – 8.30 The show will run from the 5th to 20th of March   At : New Player Theatre 10 The Arches
Villiers St, London WC2N 6NG
020 7930 5868

The exhibition is a response to International Women’s Day 2010. V-Day London is part of the global V-Day movement to end violence against women and girls. For more information visit http://v-daylondon.blogspot.com/ Five percent of the sale prices from the artworks will be donated to V-Day women’s charities.


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Vagina Vérité

March 3rd, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling

Vagina Vérité logoArtist (and friend of re:Cycling) Alexandra Jacoby is working on a project for women called Vagina Vérité®. She’s making vulva portraits, proud and unabashed, straight-up documentary photographs-so that we can see ourselves for ourselves. The project began as a response to a friend who “didn’t like the way her vagina looked”. Alexandra wanted her friend to know that there was no one right way to look, and it became something of a mission for her to create a document of respect and appreciation for our vaginas, our vulvas, our bodies, ourselves… Alexandra’s been working on vagina vérité® since 2000, and is looking for our help toward completing photography. From there, she plans to publish a book of v-portraits & to exhibit widely. You can learn more about the project and how we can help here [pdf].

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Scenes from Vulvagraphics

February 9th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling


If you’ve been with us for a while, you may recall that last fall our friend and colleague Alexandra Jacoby participated in Vulvagraphics: An Intervention in Honor of Female Genital Diversity, sponsored by the New View Campaign challenging the medicalization of sex. For the benefit of those of us unable to get to New York for this event, there is now video available of some of the exhibits and speakers.

[via The Red Tent Sisters]

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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.