As I embark on my 40th year I look ahead to menopause. I guess there is a good chance I’m approaching some foggy years. Brain fog, that is.
In the past week a flurry of online news articles review new research findings on the “brain fog” that many perimenopausal women experience. The brain fog is more easily understood as a slight memory problem, if you take the time to read through the various news stories. A new study analyzed how 75 individual women, aged 40 to 60, rated their memory performance based on factors like how often they forgot details and how serious their forgetfulness was. Researchers also gathered information about the women’s overall health, mood and hormone levels, as well as other menopausal symptoms, and tried to figure out the extent to which this “brain fog” exists. According to news reports, about 41 percent of the women in the study reported having forgetfulness that was “serious,” and those who felt that their memory problems were serious were more likely to score poorly on tests of working memory and attention. Some women who rated their memory problems as serious also reported some depression and other symptoms like hot flashes and sleeping problems. Other researchers suggest that the memory problems women experience are related to changing levels of estrogen in a woman’s body at menopause, but interestingly this new study did not find links to changing hormone levels.
The whole notion of “brain fog” is interesting, and I am suspicious of it as a strictly menopausal symptom. What about the brain fog we all experience when we’re tired or sick or just way too busy? Defining brain fog as a “menopausal” (really, perimenopausal) symptom further defines middle-aged women as somehow less than functional and set them up to be taken less seriously.
Putting this issue aside, though, what I actually find most interesting about all of the news coverage of this study is just how different each report of the study is. I am reminded that we should all be careful of which report we read about a study. For example, the first article I read on this study was placed in the Los Angeles Times and focused on the possible connections between menopausal brain fog, depression, and dementia. I was left feeling like the author of the article inferred that all menopausal women might have depression or dementia and that they should seek treatment. After reading this article I was angry because I felt as if I had been warned that midlife brain fog was the beginning of an inevitable decline for all women. Then I read a WedMD piece that simply described the study and did not concentrate on depression, dementia, or the need for treatment, and I wasn’t really sure what to make of the research study. Finally I read an article by a HealthDay reporter which quoted one of our own, SMCR member Nancy Wood, who reminds readers that “a number of other stressors in life, from work to taking care of children and parents, that pile up around the same time as menopause can hinder memory and ability to concentrate.” In addition, this article’s author states that “memory problems are not necessarily an early sign of dementia” and cognitive ability is regained after other perimenopausal symptoms subside. This third article concluded that the research study is helpful because findings suggest that brain fog is real – that women aren’t crazy – but that it is normal and not that detrimental to women’s long-term cognitive abilities. Continue reading...
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...
What would the world be like if young women were mentored by older women?
What would the world be like if we knew we had a place for our stories to be told?
So intones the voiceover at the start of the trailer of a forthcoming film.
And it is right on time.
The recent media attention paid to Tomi- Ann Roberts and Nikki Dunnavant’s research recent re: religious identification and menstrual traditions has got me thinking (more than usual) about women, bonding and menses. Roberts and Dunnavant’s religious women harbored more negative attitudes toward their periods than their secular counterparts, but they reported a sense of woman-to-woman connection during their menstruation that non-religious women did not.
So how do we create community and lose the shame?
Red tents anyone?
“Things We Don’t Talk About: Healing Narratives from the Red Tent” explores the increasing reach of the “Red Tent Temple Movement” seeded by women’s empowerment facilitator Alisa Starkweather and inspired by Anita Diamant’s 1997 bestselling novel The Red Tent – a rich fictionalized treatment of biblical character Dinah. In the novel, Dinah and her tribeswomen gather during their menses in a sacred women-only space.
The practice in a book became a movement.
Starkweather and others in more than 50 red tents across the nation and beyond (in 30 states and 6 countries) believe that the simple practice of gathering women and girls in a space dedicated ONLY to them (whatever their date on the menstrual calendar) is precisely what women and girls need to feel supported and nurtured. This is the stuff of healing, they say.
Red tents are an initiative within what I call the ‘feminist spiritualist’ wing of the menstrual activist movement — a loose collection of activists who emerged in the 1970s and share an earnest celebration of embodied womanhood. This style of activism, I’ve argued, has endured and innovated for more than 4 decades, but remains on the fringe of feminist movements as a mostly white middle class concern. Liedenfrost’s film, however, may nudge an expansion of the movement (or perhaps, show that it is already slowly capturing a diverse following?). A commitment to inclusion rings through the voices of the women captured in “Things We Don’t Talk About….” Red tents, as one woman explains during the trailer, are safe, welcoming and invite each woman to “come as you are and who you are is enough.”
Filmmaker Isadora Gabrielle Liedenfrost, a seasoned filmmaker specializing in “multicultural motifs and embedded cultures and spiritual traditions” presents a rich palette of reds, auburns, and fuchsias and a haunting soundtrack in this piece. Her camera brings us images of small and large groups of women crying, laughing, dancing and hugging together woven with the heartfelt stories of the empowering benefits of women-in-community.
Photo credit: Isadora Gabrielle Liedenfrost (used with permission)
I am left asking: could red tents offer women—whatever their spiritual inclination—a shame-free community? Could they restore a lost tradition now updated in a contemporary body-positive context? Surely, the feminine intimacy offered here is not for every woman, but for many, it might feel like home is a lovely little tent.
Tell me again, why can’t we talk about body stuff?
Your body is your home.
It’s your medium of self-expression — your voice spoken and written, your hands gesturing, making things, touching someone, legs walking toward, running away from, hips dancing, butt sitting, with arms folded — are you bored, annoyed, worried, satisfied?
Your body is your receiver and interpreter of the world around you and the people in it with you.
It’s integral to your life.
How can it be weird, embarrassing, inappropriate, [tactless?] to talk about your bodylife?
What happens inside your body is literally defining your experience of the outside world, and of yourself, and your possibilities.
You can’t feel your blood moving, hair growing, cells changing…
…Some things you can feel as they happen inside you, and with those experiences, you interact directly.
Our bodies aren’t sealed containers. They are living— we are living beings.
Nutrition, hydration, elimination of waste, sweating, breathing, menstruating — these things happen in our bodies and outside them.
We make choices about our behavior, buy supplies, clothing, fixtures — we are involved in the care and maintenance associated with these aspects of our body lives.
Why wouldn’t you talk about it?
Why wouldn’t you be interested in ways to improve your experience, or someone else’s?
Why would it be unusual or unacceptable to share your experience, to ask questions, to get advice? (out loud, anywhere) — like you would when it came to any other aspect of your life.
Why wouldn’t it be normal to be interested in the quality of your body-life?
According to a recent study, women are best at picking out a picture with a snake during the days immediately before their period. You might think this would be a surprise, given the general idea of premenstrual compromise in women. Mind you, there isn’t much data to support poorer thinking or performance for women during the premenstrual period.
However, the authors were able to salvage the idea of premenstrual compromise here. They argue that about 30% of women have premenstrual syndrome, and most of the rest of us show some kind of cyclicity. And so they attribute the 200 millisecond (1/5 of a second) faster response to anxiety and fear. Either that, or it is maternal instinct, protecting the small cluster of cells that might possibly be an impending pregnancy.
Media has picked this up, with headlines about PMS being good for something after all.
Sometimes it seems that women can’t win for losing.
Research by SMCR members Tomi-Ann Roberts and Nicki Dunnavan garnered a lot of attention this week. Stories showed up at Live Science – Why Why Women Should Bring Their Periods ‘Out of the Closet, popular ladyblog Jezebel – Your Period Is a Time for Deep Lady-Bonding, and the Daily Mail - Women, start talking about it. Period! Roberts and Dunnavan surveyed 340 religious and non-religious women about their experiences and attitudes about menstruation. As the Daily Mail reported: ”U.S. researchers say women across the world need to be more positive about menstruation – and that means talking about it in public.”
Credit: MK Carroll
There’s been lots of public discussion about contraception, some might say too much! The birth control/medical insurance coverage brouhaha hit a boiling point last week with Rush Limbaugh’s egregious comments about Sandra Fluke, and the heated debate rages still. Maureen J Andrade at OpenSalon writes that Birth Control Is Not a Women’s Issue: It’s a Human Right, while Asma T. Uddin and Ashley McGuire, blogging at the Washington Post, insist It’s about religious liberty, not birth control. A group of crafters has come up with a unique protest action: sending “interfering” male government members a knitted or crocheted uterus, vagina or cervix, while feministing.com has invited readers to Talk About Birth Control For REAL.
Everybody can use a good map to help them get to where they’re going. Why not women heading to the land of non-hormonal contraception?
In my post on January 11, 2012 I asked if coming off the pill was a growing trend. I proposed to write a series of posts about the issues associated with the decision to stop using hormonal birth control. For the purposes of this discussion assume that “coming off the pill” refers to quitting any method of hormonal contraception including the pill, patch, ring, shot, implant or Mirena intrauterine system.
As I was preparing a list of possible topics, I realized that one way to represent the complexity of issues involved in this decision is with a mind map: “a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea.” It also occurred to me that readers could then add to this schematic, filling in important points based on personal or professional experience. So I got out my colored markers, did a little brainstorming and came up with Coming Off the Pill: Mind Map 1.0. I invite readers to comment, offering additions under the key headings I’ve noted and suggesting other categories that should be included. Could this become a talking, planning or process guide for women considering the transition to non-hormonal birth control methods?
If you’ve thought about or been through the experience of quitting hormonal contraception, or if you’ve helped others through the experience, please contribute to the development of Coming Off The Pill: Mind Map 2.0 by posting your comments and suggestions. (I’ve already thought about other headings I could have included.) Besides providing me with a guide for writing future posts, what other ways can you imagine this mind map might be used?
The results are in: if you talk to your friends more during menopause, then your menopausal symptoms will bother you less. A study reported in The Telegraph last week suggests that talking either lessens women’s symptoms or helps them cope better (or both). In one study, women undergoing breast cancer treatments who also participated in “talking cure group therapy” as part of a study at Kings’ College in London “coped much better” with menopausal symptoms. Half of the women in this study were asked to participate in workshops with other women for six weeks. Women in the study were encouraged to talk about signs and symptoms of menopause, such as hot flashes (or hot “flushes” in the UK) and night sweats; they were taught techniques for eliminating “negative thoughts” and stress as well. Researchers touted this “talking cure group therapy” as giving “people the mental tools to tackle problems more positively” and led to “improvement” in symptoms. The author of the article suggests that non-medical approaches to symptom relief not only work but also could be growing in popularity among women who can’t or don’t want to use prescribed hormone therapies.
This is not unlike what I’ve found in my own studies of menopause and what plenty of other feminist scholars have found about women’s experiences of reproductive health more generally. Women who have support networks and/or who talk to other women about their experiences do indeed feel better about their own experiences and do gain some symptom relief (or, at the very least, coping strategies) just from talking to people. Indeed, even women with severe symptoms can get relief from sharing and talking. SMCR’s very own Jerilynn Prior and Christine Hitchcock have also done studies of how women will rate the severity of their hot flashes differently once they hear other women talk about theirs. Hearing and then knowing that people around you are (a) experiencing the same thing and then (b) might have suggestions for how you could navigate the experience always helps. This isn’t specific to women’s health – anyone experiencing any bodily event, symptom, or process will probably feel better if they talk to others. And of course we could go on from there – anyone experiencing anything confusing or hard or long in duration will probably benefit from talking to others. Anyone who has failed a math test or survived a hard relationship knows that.
The question I have is, isn’t it sad that this is a finding? Shouldn’t we all know that talking to others is better for our health and our sanity? I’m as much of a culprit as anyone else: I don’t talk to anyone anymore. I’m too busy. I barely see my kids or partner, let alone tell people how I feel about menstruation, whether I really feel “done” having kids, whether I think menopause is near, whether I feel reproductively healthy (or healthy in any aspect of my life for that regard), etc. Maybe some of you are much better than me about talking to others, but it’s pretty bad when major research journals have to remind us in their published findings that talking is good for us.
Feminist scholars have already documented the medicalization of women’s reproductive health and the fact that women now typically consult doctors as the “experts” on reproductive health and, by default, no longer trust themselves or other women for advice. Thus, to some extent, talking is stifled by the medicalization of women’s health experiences. But, ironically, now medical journals are reporting that we should talk more? Seems like we’ve made it full circle and women should consult other women as the real “experts” again. Continue reading...
Guest Post by Lydia Aponte — Marymount Manhattan College
In Professor David Linton’s Social Construction and Images of Menstruation course, our class watched two documentaries involving menstruation and menstrual suppression. Both Period: The End of Menstruation? and Red Moon addressed what is becoming an increasingly concerning topic: now that menstrual suppression in the form of birth control is becoming more and more readily available – and is even being promoted to specifically stop or slow the menstrual cycle – is menstruation necessary?
Many women, including myself, have asked themselves this very question – some because of the monthly cramps that have reduced us to a fetal position, some because of the awkward situations that menstrual stigma has put us in. Yet, many women still do not question it because menstruation is believed to be a natural occurrence that must happen because, well, that’s just life. What happens, on the other hand, when a man questions the necessity of menstruation? Or even further, does something about it? Meet Dr. Elsimar Coutinho.
From São Paulo, Brazil, Dr. Coutinho appeared briefly in Red Moon avidly disputing the necessity of menstruation. He believes that it is not necessary, because “what is the use of an ovulation if it does not result in a pregnancy?” I was initially stunned by his intensity when it came to the subject, not only because of his stance against menstruation, but because of the role he seemed to be playing. It seemed as if Dr. Coutinho were playing the “mad scientist,” distributing birth control to women and spreading the word that menstruation was “unnecessary” and “unnatural.” So I decided to look up this “character,” and came upon Dr. Coutinho’s biography page. Of course, the first paragraph of his bio was nothing but praise: “Dr. Elsimar Coutinho is, unquestionably, a man born to make history. For more than 50 years, his research and discoveries in the fields of human health and reproduction have broken paradigms and brought down millenary concepts.” (For a man who made history, I had never heard his name before Red Moon.)
Yet, I was more taken aback by how he had been quoted regarding menstruation. “My greatest contribution to humanity was to realize that menstruation was unnecessary, a disposable phenomena.” (Coutinho, E.M.) Not only is a doctor refuting the biological necessity of menstruation, which alone is jarring, but a man is refuting the necessity of a cycle highly regarded by many women, including myself, as a symbol of womanhood and deeming it “disposable.” Not only is Dr. Coutinho refuting it, he is actively taking measures to suppress menstruation through his research and practices.
If menstruation equals womanhood to so many, and Dr. Coutinho believes that menstruation is unnecessary, what is he saying about the beliefs and values that many people hold in regards to femininity? According to his philosophy, those,too, would be disposable. Dr. Coutinho’s suggestions — although questionable — have caused me to ask these questions: has something I regarded a natural part of my female biology been unnecessary this entire time? Is the human body wrong, and is Coutinho seeking to correct it with medicine? Or is misogyny still a key player in the menstrual realm?
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.
Teen girls are getting pregnant, in part, because they don’t understand their menstrual cycles. It’s time for sexual health educators to step up and teach girls the primary sign of fertility.
A recent report by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on teen pregnancy in the U.S., based on a survey of close to 5,000 young mothers who got pregnant unintentionally, found that half of them had not used birth control. When questioned further, a third of those said that they didn’t think they could get pregnant. Their reasoning ties in with previous research findings that girls who get pregnant in their teens have misconceptions about their menstrual cycles. They don’t seem to understand how ovulation works and are failing to correctly identify the fertile days in their monthly cycles.
Photo by Acaparadora // CC-BY-SA-2.5
My colleagues in sexual and reproductive health education should take notice. These findings reveal a knowledge gap in sex education: Teens don’t know about the easy-to-spot sign of fertility that precedes ovulation – cervical mucus secretions. Let’s fix it by adding one simple phrase to our sex ed classes: “When you have mucus, you can get pregnant.”
We would also need to explain the ovarian cycle, how estrogen promotes cervical mucus production, the role of mucus in sperm survival and how to check for it. This is arguably among the most useful information young women and men could receive before leaving high school.
If girls had this knowledge then I believe that at least some of them would more accurately identify fertile days in their cycles and at least some unintended pregnancies would be prevented. When a girl knows that mucus on the toilet tissue means she is fertile and able to get pregnant, she may be empowered to avoid intercourse, insist on a condom if she has sex, or know if she needs to seek out emergency contraception. Or she may decide to just hang out with her girl friends. I’m not saying that fertility awareness is a magic wand. Of course, many factors influence our decision-making. But teens are capable of making wise choices when they have accurate information on which to base them.
I’ve talked to many public health nurses throughout my 20-year career as a fertility awareness instructor. They usually quibble about the effectiveness of fertility awareness as a birth control method and seem reluctant to mention the existence of cervical mucus for fear that “a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.” They worry that some students, if taught fertility awareness, might screw it up, thinking they were “safe” when they were not. But the CDC report tells us that garbled understanding about how ovulation works is doing more harm than good.
I hasten to reassure my public health colleagues that I am not proposing we teach teenagers natural birth control. What I’m proposing is the awareness part, that we correct this critical gap in teenagers’ knowledge by explaining that mucus is an obvious sign of fertility.
I won over my local sex educator to this idea by showing her the evidence-based Justisse Method of Fertility Awareness User’s Guide. She now teaches the meaning of mucus in her ovulation lessons.I predict her students will benefit. When they feel that slippery wetness when wiping, they will remember that it has something to do with being fertile. When they see clear, stretchy mucus on the tissue, they will know it’s a fertile day. It seems obvious that reducing confusion about the fertile phase would result in fewer unplanned pregnancies among girls who are currently confused about when they’re safe and when they’re fertile.
Instead of withholding useful information about what cervical mucus means, let’s tell teens that avoiding sex when they observe mucus can prevent pregnancy.
I always felt that airline travel involves building many short-lasting friendships where people bond over delayed flights, weather problems and luggage issues. Recently I was traveling and had to make a connection in the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport. I was using the restroom and I could hear the lady in the stall next to me change her sanitary napkin. She dropped the plastic wrapping from the new pad and it floated into my stall. Without hesitation, I picked up the wrapper and disposed of it. We both exited our stalls around the same time and as we approached the sinks she turned to me and said quickly but firmly, “Thank you so much for doing that.” I was a bit taken aback but responded “Oh, no problem,” we washed our hands and we bid each other farewell as we left the restroom.
The reason I was taken aback was because I felt she had nothing to thank me for. I simply picked up a piece of wrapping and threw it away. However, the serious tone of her voice told me that she was grateful for what I did. Perhaps it saved her what she deemed the embarrassment of picking it up herself? Or maybe she was just thanking me for a kind gesture. It wasn’t as if I gave her something (like a pad or tampon) that she could thank me for and the act in no way inconvenienced me. I wonder if she would have felt inclined to thank me if she had dropped a candy wrapper or tissue instead.
While there has always been this overall social need to conceal the period, it seems lately that there has been a surge in the desire to conceal menstrual products. Procter and Gamble has a site, Being Girl, that gives the Dos and Don’ts of tampon usage, including practicing at home to “see how quiet you can be when making a quick change.” And silence is one aspect that P&G tends to advertise, especially with its Tampax Pearl product. The wrapper becomes a selling point for Tampax Pearl because of its quiet and easy-to-open tabs that allow for utmost discretion.
I’m sure most re:Cycling readers have seen the U by Kotex line of menstrual products. This line is aimed at a younger crowd, the website has a section for tweens, and takes the idea of concealing in a different direction. Instead of making the products discreet and quiet the company advertises “hot new colors and wrappers.” However, changing the color or design of a tampon wrapper is still missing the point and is just as damaging as advertising products with quiet wrappers. The period is still being hidden. If a woman drops a bright green tampon wrapper on the floor is she now going to be less embarrassed because of the color? It doesn’t matter if the wrapper is white, pastel or a bright color, she shouldn’t be embarrassed at all. That is what needs to change — the embarrassment factor women have about their periods, not the colors of the products used.
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.
As I embark on my 40th year I look ahead to menopause. I guess there is a good chance I’m approaching some foggy years. Brain fog, that is.
