Blog of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research

How to Ask for a Raise

August 26th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling


Step 1: Wash your vulva.


Ad for Summer's Eve from Woman's Day magazine


Yep, you’re a lady, so step 1 in asking your boss for a raise is washing your ladyparts with special ladysoap. It’s not until step 8 that we get around to “focus on things you’ve done for the company’s bottom line”.

Excerpt from Summer's Eve ad

(Actual advertisement from actual ladymag.)


ETA 08/27/2010: Via the always-awesome Bitch magazine, we’ve learned that Summer’s Eve brand manager has apologized for this ad, and is working to remove it from circulation:

Hi I am Angela Bryant, Summer’s Eve Brand Manager. I would like to first of all apologize if this ad in anyway has offended anyone. We are taking immediate next steps to remove the ad from circulation. We want you to know that Fleet Laboratories and the Summer’s Eve brand have the utmost respect for women. While we understand how some may come to an alternative conclusion regarding our recent ad, that was never our intention. Thank you.

[via Trixie Films]

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The Red Scare: Blood Rituals

July 16th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling

Red Scare illustration from Whore! MagazineAnyone else seen the premier issue of Whore! Magazine (Fast, Feminist, and Feminine) yet? My copy arrived yesterday and while I haven’t read the whole thing yet, I’m enjoying the quality of the writing and the production values.

I’m also pleased to see a positive story about menstruation in a magazine, in Tracy Merlau’s essay, “The Red Scare”. It’s short, sentimental essay about adolescence and menarche, and the sadness of the nearly complete absence of any public recognition, let alone celebration, of menarche for girls in the U.S.

Recommended.

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It’s OK to Talk to My Daughter about Sex, but Don’t Tell Her about her Vulva!

June 15th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling

In Therese Shechter’s guest-post about the German teen magazine feature article, “Every Vulva Is Different”, she noted that we’re unlikely to see such an explicit, body-positive article in a U.S. teen magazine. Therese, as usual, knows what she’s talking about. In this just-released video clip from her forthcoming documentary How to Lose Your Virginity, Susan Schulz, the Editor-in-Chief of CosmoGirl! magazine, tells viewers about the time CosmoGirl! ran an article titled “Vulva Love”, which included a cartoon drawing of vulvar anatomy and some basic, age-appropriate physiological and health information about vulvas. It was the most complained about article ever published by the magazine. The complaints were not from the magazine readers, however: the grievances were filed by the mothers of subscribers. Parents thought it was inappropriate material for their teen daughters.

After you watch the clip, consider throwing a few bucks Trixie’s way so she can complete the film – the project needs another $3585 pledged by July 1 to receive the $10,000 they’re trying to raise.

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Having a Vagina Makes You Brave

June 3rd, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling

Ad for Summer's Eve moist towelettes, from People magazineBut only when you’re clean and fresh “down there”. Apparently women’s natural, in-born courage is best nurtured with scented moist towelettes.

I can’t decide what’s more offensive – the content of this ad, or the fact that someone got paid to write it.


[via Copyranter]

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Word Games

May 13th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling

From now on, I’m going to refer to periods as “monthly Balkan dance parties”, just because Philebrity magazine told me not to. Seriously, that’s at least as good as “Communists in the fun house” and “rebooting the ovarian operation system”. (For more, see Harry Finley’s list at the Museum of Menstruation.)

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Hooked on Estrogen

May 13th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling

Guest Post by Jerilynn Prior, M.D.,  Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research

Estrogen moleculeYes! I’m sure you can hear my whoop of excitement and vindication. Finally, something negative about estrogen and positive about progesterone in the mainstream media. According to this article by Emily Anthes in the current issue of Scientific American: Mind,  women’s risk for addiction, and potential for successful withdrawal, are both linked to our menstrual cycle hormones. Estrogen increases women’s addictive behaviors while progesterone assists with successful addiction recovery.

Why am I feeling vindicated? Because I recently declared that hot flushes/flashes and night sweats are estrogen addiction (1). That wild but supportable hypothesis is based on the evidence that prolonged or high-dose estrogen exposure is required for hot flushes to occur. But, it is the subsequent abrupt decrease in estrogen levels that triggers vasomotor symptoms. Drug exposure—drug withdrawal symptoms. And do women feel high on estrogen? Perhaps. Clearly the withdrawal is miserable—as one woman said, “I continued to take it only because I couldn’t stand being off the hormone. I really couldn’t function.” (p. 2130 (2). Just ask any woman taking estrogen for hot flushes who has tried to stop it.

Estrogen is the New Ritalin. NOT.

May 10th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling

Guest Post by Barbara Sommer, University of California-Davis

Ritalin bottle with tabletsWhy is it that assertions about hormones and behavior lead us to readily suspend our capacity for critical thought? It seems like folks will accept just about any assertion with regard to the power of estrogen and the fluctuation of the menstrual cycle.

My observations over several decades (I am nearly forty years post-doctorate) have been reassuring. I have not seen women crushed in the working and professional worlds by the demands of their physiology. In fact it looks like women might be moving towards running the world, at least in those areas where they have access to education. Nevertheless, it rankles when a journal of some credibility makes assertions based on scanty evidence.

It is difficult to evaluate the quality of the research underlying the claims of the article “Is Estrogen The New Ritalin?” in the current issue of Scientific American: Mind. The title is cute. A writer for the New Yorker recently claimed that “White is the New Black.” Do we believe it? The article was provocative, and did not pretend to be a scientific piece of work. In contrast, the estrogen piece, by appearing under the prestigious banner of the Scientific American, carries an imprint of scientific credibility. The first paragraph claims the menstrual cycle might affect the brain as much as caffeine, methamphetamines, and Ritalin. Nowhere in the study is there any indication that estrogen levels or even menstrual fluctuation effects were actually compared with the above substances. The author also claims that this study is “the first to show that cognition is tied to estrogen levels in people” – perhaps the first because no one else has done a good job of it, but certainly not for a failing to try. There are many published studies claiming that estrogen affects cognitive function.

The central problem with this report is that the scientific community has not vetted the research. There is nothing to suggest that it was subject to review. It has not been published – at least nowhere that could be found by this writer with access to a university library. I don’t expect a popular version of scientific research to include information about whether there were adequate controls for subject selection, for practice effects on the task performance, or that the claim of population dopamine levels was accurate, and whatever measure was used to estimate estrogen levels was reliable. But someone needs to have looked at those aspects of the research. Without that, we end up with questionable conclusions at best, and junk science at worst.

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Is There Hair Down There? In Today’s News about Vulvas

May 4th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling

Two provocative stories about ladybusiness today:

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The Pill in the News

April 25th, 2010 by Chris Hitchcock

This week was a big one for media coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Pill. And it looks like this is also being taken as an opportunity to reflect on women’s history over the past 50 years, which will also be a good thing. Women often lose our history, and those of us who are 70 now grew up in a very different reality than those of us who are 20. I am 45, smack in the middle of that span, and it’s very interesting to me to look both forward and back. We are living through incredible changes in social history, and we need to know this to understand what is going on today and what will happen tomorrow.

The pill made the front cover of Time magazine. The author, Nancy Gibb, makes some very good points about how the existence of the pill changed young women’s ideas about the possibility of planning a career path that included being sexually active (probably in the context of marriage) but with control over the timing of pregnancy.

There’s a Time editorial here.

And there are a few interviews with Nancy Gibb, the author of the Time article, on Time’s own web page, on CNN, and NPR (Gather.com).

In the Huffington Post, Christianne Northrup discusses important social and medical context for decision-making about contraception, including the Pill.

Katrina Onstad wrote about the pill’s birthday in Chatelaine magazine.

Books and book reviews on the anniversary of the pill:

Michelle Goldberg reviews a new book about the pill in the American Prospect.

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And 58.4% of statistics are made up on the spot

April 18th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling

April 2010 magazine ad for Always Infinity maxi-padsThe latest magazine ad for Always pads (pictured at right) reads, “97% of women who tried Always Infinity said they’d recommend it to their friends.” Smaller print notes that these data are from a survey at Always.com — suggesting a self-selected population of women who like Always. Respondents who won’t recommend the product are dismissed as women who never like anything.

Sounds like someone’s been reading Darrell Huff’s classic book, How to Lie with Statistics!

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Previously, in Kotex Advertising . . .

April 2nd, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling

One of my Women’s & Gender Studies graduates, who is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Gender & Sexuality Studies, recently sent me this Kotex ad from last fall. (She received it from one of her students — don’t you love how that chain works?)

This ad predates Kotex’s all-new we’re-so-hip-and-cool-we-don’t-have-to-tell-you-how-great-our-products-are campaign by at least six months. Lisa found the names of the illustrated sleeping positions disturbing, but what I find interesting about this ad is that it seems to be doing exactly what I’ve suggested femcare ads should do: it tells us why the products are worth shelling out my hard-earned money. There’s no patronizing crap about flowers or freshness, and mercifully, no blue fluid. Ad for Kotex Overnight pads from Cosmopolitan, November 2009Just “the most coverage of any ultra-thin pad” so that you can “sleep comfortably and move freely”. Because periods happen.

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The Latest Menstrual Technology Is Also the Oldest

March 17th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Magazine advertisement for Stayfree picturing a maxi-pad cut out of a woman's t-shirt.

Magazine advertisement for Stayfree Maxi-Pads, March 2010.

In the ongoing femcare arms race, manufacturers compete to promote the latest technology in menstrual wear. We’ve seen LeakLock®, Four Walled Protection®, Built-in Backup® Skirt, Clean SorbTM Cover (I am not making this up, to borrow an old line from Dave Barry), and now THERMOCONTROLTM technology.

But it’s illustrated with one of the world’s oldest technologies for period management: Just tear off a piece of your shirt. There. Isn’t that nice – soft and absorbent?


By the way, the fine print at the very bottom of the ad reads, “DRAMATIZATION. Stayfree® Ulta-Thins are not made from the same material as athletic fabric.”

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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.