Blog of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research

Menstrual Moments in Modelland

January 25th, 2012 by Elizabeth Kissling

Guest Post by Jaime Hough

 

Tyra Banks wrote a young adult fantsy novel. And it’s a NYT bestseller. The book, titled Modelland, is about the journey of one awkward-looking girl who is whisked away to a magical boarding school which trains girls to become supermodels with superpowers, known as Intoxibellas. It’s kind of like Harry Potter, if Harry Potter revolved around modeling and was a battle between conventional and unconventional beauty rather than good and evil.

But I’m probably making it sound bad and it’s not, really. Modelland is the story of Tookie de la Crème,1 a girl unnoticed by her classmates and mostly ignored by her family, whose life is turned upside down when she is recruited for Modelland. The reader follows Tookie to and through her first year at Modelland as she, along dozens of other girls, trains for the chance to become one of seven Intoxibellas, supermodels with superpowers, in her graduating class. At Modelland Tookie makes her first real friends while becoming embroiled in a mystery involving the school’s headmistress, known as the BellaDonna, and the world’s mysteriously missing foremost supermodel, Ci~L.2

I read Modelland because I was curious and because I have long been fascinated by the public persona of Tyra Banks. What can I say? We all have our guilty pleasures. Most of Modelland is, for the most part, what you would expect, especially if you’re familiar with Tyra’s moneymaker, America’s Next Top Model. However, I was completely surprised by the fact that Banks chose to use menstruation as a key plot device to develop Tookie’s character. Below are excerpts from the book dealing with menstruation and my brief analysis of how these menstrual moments [MMs] function in the novel and could potentially function for the intended reader.

 

MM1: Not Yet A Woman

Menstrual Moment One comes near the beginning of the book when Tookie has just come home from her day at school and the readers are being introduced to her dysfunctional family. In particular, we’ve just met Tookie’s younger, dumb blonde little sister, Myrracle.

“Don’t laugh at me!” Myrracle said, frustrated. “I’m on my periodical right now! It makes me forgetful!”

“It’s period, not periodical!” Tookie growled.

Myrracle smirked. “How do you know? You haven’t even gotten yours yet!”

Tookie turned away, her face flooded with heat. Myrracle never resisted the urge to reminder her that she had gotten her period already, even though she was two years younger.3

 

MM2: Menarche

In Menstrual Moment Two Tookie has just spent her first night at Modelland and is about to start her first day of classes. We follow her as she prepares for class.

 

Disoriented, Tookie stumbled into the large, sterile-looking community bathroom. As she did, a dull pain shot through her legs, hips, and stomach. She doubled over, feeling as though she was about to vomit. Perfect, she though. I’m sick on the first day of school. . .All at once , every single girl in the bathroom doubled over in pain, gripping her stomach and back just as Tookie had. . .Tookie shut her eyes, wincing again with another pain. “Piper, my back and tummy are killing me!” she whispered.

Piper shrugged. “Join the club, Tookie. Every new Bella started menstruating at the exact same time this morning.”

“Wait. What?”

“You’ve never heard of menstrual synchrony, or the dormitory effect?” Piper asked. “Menstrual synchrony is a theory that suggest that the menstruation cycles of women who cohabitate-think army barracks, female penitentiaries, convents, and university dormitories—synchronize over time. It usually takes months for the alignment to occur but her at Modelland, it seems to have happened in twenty-four hours.”  Continue reading...

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Literary Menstruphobia – Part II

September 13th, 2011 by David Linton

Speculation about the private lives of historic figures is always a dicey thing. The task is made more difficult depending on how long ago the individual lived, how well known they were in the first place, whether they or their acquaintances wrote about them, whether there is an epistolary trail of letters to and from others that have not been destroyed or lost, etc. Furthermore, the more intimate the aspect of the life under investigation, the more likely it is that there is little evidence to lead to reliable conclusions. Hence, when it comes to sexual practices, preferences, and prejudices, conclusions are often highly speculative.

(How different our present personal historical records are with their endless streams of Facebook revelations and confessions, YouTube postings, uninvited tagging, cell phone and email hackings, endless streams of digital photographs and videos.)

Which brings us to the intriguing case of John Ruskin, a botched honeymoon, and the unconsummated marriage.

John Ruskin (1819-1900) was perhaps the preeminent English art critic and social commentator of the 19th Century. His collected writings run to 26 volumes of well over 400 pages each, and there have been numerous biographies, dissertations, and scholarly treatises about him and his work covering at least five shelves of even a modest college library. His diaries, letters and journals have also been published. It seems he believed that every thought that crossed his mind was worth preserving and scholars seem to think it’s all worth reading.

The most intriguing personal detail centers on his relationship with his wife. At the age of 29 Ruskin married Effie Gray, a woman 9 years his junior. According to letters and documents separately written by both of them they did not consummate the marriage on their honeymoon. And, by the time Effie sued for an annulment six years later, they still hadn’t.

In a letter to her father following her separation from Ruskin, Effie explained what went wrong, “Finally this last year he told me his true reason, . . . that he had imagined women were quite different to what he saw I was, and that the reason he did not make me his Wife is that he was disgusted with my person the first evening.” But the question remains, exactly what was it about Effie’s body that repulsed her new husband? Biographers have speculated that her pubic hair turned him off because his notion of female beauty was formed by the hairless bodies of classical statuary and paintings; or perhaps she had a strong body odor.

Now that the mention of menstruation has become increasingly acceptable in all realms of society, it is thought that Effie’s period may have been the culprit. This is the line taken in a new book titled, Effie: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, John Ruskin and John Everett Millais by Suzanne Fagence Cooper. Of course, we will never know for sure what John Ruskin’s real hang-ups were. However, the fact that male menstrual ignorance was so thorough at the time makes it reasonable to suggest menstruphobia as a likely explanation for his lost libido. Furthermore, the fact that scholars entertain and write about the possibility and that the detail is included in a male-authored review of the scholarship in The New York Times constitutes yet another sign of shifts in the menstrual ecology. (For a full review of Effie in The New York Times, see Charles McGrath, “Victorian goddess, a Real Wife and a Sour Marriage,” June 22, 2011, pg. C-4.)  Continue reading...

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Literary Menstruphobia, Part I

September 1st, 2011 by David Linton

The taboos against menstrual sex are ancient and deep-seated.  Despite the well established fact that sexual intercourse during the period is not medically counter-indicated nor somehow debilitating to women and, furthermore, that some women find the experience more pleasurable than the non-menstrual variety, the prejudice lingers on.  What’s more intriguing is the ways and places that menstrual sexual phobias are made manifest.

According to several literary and cinematic biographies, two of the most revered figures in the English language critical and literary cannon may have been so traumatized by menstrual encounters on their honeymoons that they swore off sex for evermore.

In 1994 a British biopic named “Tom & Viv” offered up the sad story – we might call it an anti-romance – of the poet T.S. Eliot and his wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood (played by Willem Dafoe and Miranda Richardson) who eloped in 1915.  According to the IMDB summary, the film depicts how “her longstanding gynecological and emotional problems disrupt their planned honeymoon.”  In fact, what the scene shows is that Eliot is so appalled by his wife’s menstrual condition – the sheets are awash in the results of her heavy flow – that he nearly goes into shock.  His repulsion is so great that he has to leave her for a walk on the beach where he wades fully clothed in the waves to cleanse himself.

The entire film consists of little more that a series of scenes in which Viv causes one embarrassing emotional fracas after another in desperate attempts to gain the affection of her increasingly alienated, cold and aloof husband.  There is little doubt that hormonal imbalances are the cause of her instability as early in the film a close mother-daughter conversation conveys the fact that she is perpetually on the brink of yet another menstrual misstep.

Eventually, Eliot has his wife committed to a mental institution where she spends the rest of her life, even after she enters menopause and, we are told and shown, she has become calm and serene.

The YouTube clip that is posted from the film does not include the crucial honeymoon bloody sheets scene but, at over eleven minutes in length, it does display quite a few of the scenes demonstrating Viv’s hormonal flare ups.  Though the film might deserve a subtitle like “Beware the Menstrual Monster,” it does give Miranda Richardson an opportunity to chew up every piece of available scenery.

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Posted in Film, Independent Film, Literature, Men, Menorrhagia, Menstruation, Sex | 3 Comments »

Landing the Menstrual Part

August 15th, 2011 by David Linton

The ways in which a “menstrual stain” can signify embarrassment, shame, or even some sort of moral or career failure are surely infinite.  If not a literal stain even being associated with menstruation in the most benign way can be seen as perilous.  Sharra L. Vostral, a Keynote Speaker at the June 2011 SMCR conference, reviews this dynamic in her book, Under Wraps: A History of Menstrual Hygiene Technology.

And until the tennis star Serena Williams broke the taboo in 2009, no established celebrity, actress or athlete was willing to appear in a menstrual product advertisement. [Editor's Note: Brenda Vaccaro, with her "Make Mine a Double!" ads for Playtex tampons in the 1980s, was an earlier exception.] The notion that being publicly associated with menstruation (in fact, being a menstruator!) is a sign of failure or at least marginalization crops up in peculiar places.

For example, the novelist and journalist Carl Hiaasen is known for his snarky style as he lambastes Florida’s often bizarre and convoluted social political and ecological goings on.  His most recent novel, Star Island, features a young actress named Ann DeLusia who has been hired to double for a teen pop star who is frequently so drunk or drugged that her career would be ruined if her dysfunctional behavior were captured by the ever-present paparazzi.

One of the ways Hiaasen lets the reader know that the actress is in the lower tier of Hollywood hopefuls and desperate for a role is by revealing that previously she has been limited to appearances in obscure films, failed series and menstrual product commercials.  On three occasions he makes the same point:

  • If the stand-in job didn’t work out, “Unfortunately, . . . Ann would again be waiting on line with her friends, auditioning for soap operas and sanitary-pad commercials.” (p. 25)
  • At the start of her career “. . . she landed nonspeaking parts in TV commercials for an assortment of feminine hygiene products, including a recyclable contraceptive ring.” (p. 111)
  • Her mother quit speaking to her after “. . . one of my mother’s so-called friends called her up after she saw me on a Maxipad commercial. . .” (p. 160)

It’s too bad that Hiaasen couldn’t come up with a more creative and original way of illustrating the character’s career limitations than by signing on to the trite, and fading, prejudices about appearing in menstrual product ads.  He’s not as progressive as he might like to seem.

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KOTEX: The Antidepressant of the Ancients

March 3rd, 2011 by David Linton

BH0260-medIn the late 1920s, at the peak of the Flapper Era, a series of Kotex ads made extravagant use of images of attractive young women in couture outfits in sophisticated settings. The most intriguing and subtle ad in the series was published in 1929. It shows two slender young women lounging on the deck of an ocean liner dressed for the evening’s shipboard festivities. The way we know that they are aboard a liner is the presence of a life preserver attached to the railing beside them. The name of the ship is printed in large letters upon the device. They are aboard The Nepenthe.

This is an extraordinary detail, perhaps penned by an English major turned copy writer who remembered fondly Edgar Allen Poe’s well known and often taught “The Raven.” Poe’s poem, the tale of a grief stricken man unable to overcome the loss of his dead lover, pleads with the stolid, unflinching raven for “surcease of sorrow,” some balm or drug to slake his misery, such as the mythic potion alluded to in Homer’s Odyssey and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen: the mysterious elixir, nepenthe, the drug that banishes sorrow by making the user forget his woes, the antidepressant of the ancients. The narrator implores the raven,

“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee–by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite–respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

The young women in the ad have set sail on the good ship Kotex Nepenthe, the miracle conveyance that will carry them away from conscious need to worry or grieve over the burden of their menstruating bodies.

What does it mean to board the Kotex Nepenthe? What port is being left behind? Where have the women set sail for? The ad copy provides three answers. First, as the headline and the first sentence of the text assert, one can advance one’s class: “Why 9 out of 10 smart women instinctively prefer this new sanitary protection,” states the headline, and the copy adds, “It is easy to see why the use of Kotex has become a habit among women who set the standard of good taste.” Furthermore, as one “smart matron,” puts it, “Now I wouldn’t go back to the old way. This is so much more civilized-how did we ever get along without it?” By implication, women who continue to use old rags are of a primitive nature. And note the use of the phrase “Kotex has become a habit,” an apt coinage for a drug-use metaphor.

Second, as the photo illustration and the copy confirm, a Kotex user can feel young and glamorous: “For such women have young ideas, young minds.”

Third, and most significant, Kotex can help one hide the olfactory and visible signs of one’s very gender: the scent of menses and the sight of a pad beneath one’s dress: “ROUNDED, TAPERED CORNERS – make for inconspicuous protection,” and “DEODORIZES. . . safely, thoroughly, by a patented process.” [caps in original]

The ad embodies the major theme that runs through nearly a century of advertising, that one can pass through the decades of one’s menstrual life as one who does not menstruate. The difference is that rather than using a drug metaphor to claim you can make the period disappear, now, thanks to the pharmaceutical industry, we’ve got the real thing.

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Jesus: A Menstrual Hero?

March 10th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling

Guest Post by David Linton, Marymount Manhattan College

Debates about Christianity’s attitudes toward women sometimes focus on Jesus’ relationship with Mary Magdalene and isolated engagements with other unnamed women encountered during his travels.  Little is made of a healing scene in the book of Luke(8:43-48) where Jesus had momentary contact with a woman who, in all likelihood, had a severe case of menorrhagia.  Here’s how the translation is described in the Revised Standard Version”

“As he went, the people pressed round him.  And a woman who had a flow of blood for twelve years and could not be healed by any one came up behind him, and touched the fringe of his garment; and immediately her flow of blood ceased.  And Jesus said, “Who was it that touched me?”  When all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the multitudes surround you and press upon you!”  But Jesus said, “Some one touched me; for I perceive that power has gone forth from me.”  And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him and how she had been immediately healed.  And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”

The story is rendered with remarkable efficiency.  The stealth of the woman was motivated by her clear understanding that she was a pariah in her community,that she was forbidden by the rigid rules of Leviticus from having contact with others lest she contaminate them.  Peter’s response is particularly interesting.  Rather than acknowledging the severe violation of the rules and dealing with its consequences (Jesus would have had to go away from everyone to be cleansed), Peter denied that any contact had even occurred. (Does this foreshadow his later denial of even knowing Jesus?)

But Jesus seems utterly indifferent to the rules as he places the well being of a suffering woman above the demands of his cultural prohibitions.

The fact that Jesus’ heroic menstrual encounter has been expunged from the narrative of his life reveals, yet again, just how pernicious the taboos and prejudices are. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Sunday School classes set the menstrual record straight?

To make matters worse, the wonderful gospel song that extols the woman’s faith, first recorded by Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “The Hem of His Garment” has been similarly sanitized so that she is simply “sick.”  The  YouTube link that contains the song takes on extra layers of meaning when you listen to it with the thought in mind that it is an unacknowledged story of reactons to the menstrual taboo.  The YouTube link also contains an additional Soul Stirrers recording, “Jesus Wash Away My Troubles” – a bonus!

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Blood on the Page: Book Review

February 22nd, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling

Book Cover: The Bleeding of America, by Dana MedoroGuest Post by David Linton, Marymount Manhattan College

Dana Medoro, The Bleeding of America: Menstruation as Symbolic Economy in Pynchon, Faulkner and Morrison, Greenwood/Praeger, 2002. Pp. 198. $98. ISBN 0313320594.

One of the ways the taboos surrounding menstruation find expression is through absence.  For instance, until recently menstrual references in American novels were rare.  Contemporary writers, particularly women novelists such as Joyce Carol Oates (The Tattooed Girl, 2003) and Erica Jong (Parachutes and Kisses, 1984) and occasional men such as  John Updike (The Widows of Eastwick, 2008)  and Philip Roth (The Dying Animal, 2001), have more frequently used period reference to advance a plot or to symbolize something or other, but historically the menstrual cycle has generally been off limits.  Similarly, literary criticism has tended to ignore or avoid an examination of the social, cultural and psychological significance of the cycle within the literary marketplace.  There is, however, in the area of scholarship one significant exception.

In 2002 Dana Medoro published a seminal study of menstrual references and symbolic allusions titled, The Bleeding of America: Menstruation as Symbolic Economy in Pynchon, Faulkner and Morrison.

Here’s the way the publisher describes the book:

Working from the premise that the Puritan construction of America as a return to Eden endures into American literature of the 20th century, Medoro focuses on the rhetoric of cyclical regeneration, blood, and damnation that accompanies this construction. She argues that a semiotics of menstruation infuses this rhetoric and informs the figuration of a feminine America in the nation’s literary tradition: America, as a New World Eden, is haunted not only by the Fall, but also by the “Curse of Eve.” The book examines how 9 novels by Pynchon, Faulkner, and Morrison link variations on the figure of the menstruating woman to the bloody history of the United States and to a vision of the nation’s redemptive promise.

Since publication of The Bleeding of America, Medoro has continued to explore the rich potential of menstrual symbolism in fiction as part of a presentation at the Modern Language Association where she deconstructed the levels of meaning in the many bleeding occurrences in Stephen King’s Carrie and later on in her reexaminations of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.  Her work stands as an outstanding example of how deeply embedded are aspects of the cycle in every facet of cultural expression.

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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.