Blog of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research

In fairness, in freshness: Why Men Love Whisper

February 11th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling

It’s not news that menstrual products are marketed with claims of how well they conceal menstruation. But usually from whom must it be concealed is implied, rather than made explicit. Not so in this new campaign for Whisper in southeast Asia. (Whisper maxi pads are known as Always in the U.S.)

The commercials and associated web sites are all about “Why Men Love Whipser.” Of course, this isn’t the first time men have been shown in menstrual product ads. Readers who grew up in the U.S. in 1970s (as I did) may remember the Midol ad that appears after the cut from teen magazines of the era. And our friend, colleague, and frequent guest contributor David Linton published a study of men in menstrual advertising from 1920-1949.

This ad series does seem a little more explicit than those examples, with the men speaking directly to the camera, and the image of the woman wearing the Whisper pad sitting on the man’s shoulders. Can anyone provide a translation of what is being said? The ad is only partially in English.

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Posted in Advertising, Disposable menstrual products, Men, Menstruation | 3 Comments »

Men in Menstruation: Vinnie’s Tampon Case

February 3rd, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling


We’ve had a couple of productive discussions recently here at re:Cycling about men and menstrual humor, so it seems a good time to introduce Vinnie D’Angelo, creator of Vinnie’s Tampon Case. Therese Shecter has graciously shared this clip from her thought-provoking film, I Was A Teenage Feminist.


I’ve written about Vinnie and the role of men in menstrual activism before, in the “Menstrual Counterculture” chapter of my book, Capitalizing on the Curse: The Business of Menstruation. Here is a brief excerpt from that chapter:

According to interviews, D’Angelo’s motivation in developing his tampon cases was to help out his female friends. He would see them fishing in purses or backpacks for a tampon and retrieve “a mangled applicator and a lump of cotton with old gum stuck to the string” (quoted in Raappana). He also liked the idea of changing attitudes toward menstruation. . . . Interviews with D’Angelo reveal a feminist sensibility that extends beyond providing menstrual support.

[ . . . .]

I confess to some ambivalence here: I am uncertain what men’s role should be in celebrating menstruation. I appreciate [Harry] Finley’s genuine curiosity, and I admire D’Angelo’s feminist approach and his lack of squeamishness. I’m glad to see men talking about menstruation and not insisting that it remain hidden. I like D’Angelo’s playful, accepting attitude toward menstruation, but at the same time I find the fact that he has built a cottage industry of it vaguely exploitive. No one is harmed by his products, of course, but it is more than a little ironic that someone who doesn’t menstruate launched this successful line of whimsical, self-conscious menstrual products. On the other hand, perhaps D’Angelo’s masculinity adds a social legitimacy (as well as a humorous novelty element, as he has noted in interviews) that a woman’s name would not carry in the current cultural climate. And he’s great with the clever slogans: He owns the domain name knowyourflow.com, and recent ads for his tampon case say, “Don’t let your period cramp your style.”


What do you think, re:Cycling readers? How do you feel about the fact that two of the most visible examples of menstrual activism in the U.S., Vinnie’s Tampon Case and Harry Finley’s Museum of Menstruation, are created and promoted by nonmenstruators? Does it matter if these ventures are commercially successful? (Just for the record, Finley has received no financial benefit – only internet notoriety – from the Museum of Menstruation. Since introducing his eponymous tampon case in the late 1990s, D’Angelo has also developed Vinnie’s Giant Roller Coaster Period Chart and Sticker Book, and Vinnie’s Cramp Relieving Bubble Bath, which is also available packaged with Vinnie’s Soothing Bubble Beats CD of “music to menstruate by”. I do not know how profitable these products are for him.)

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Posted in Activism, FemCare, Humor, Independent Film, Internet, Men, Menstruation | 5 Comments »

The Guy with a Good Attitude Toward Menstruation

January 28th, 2010 by Chris Bobel



All this iPad humor has got us thinking about menstrual humor more generally–what’s funny (to some) what’s not (to others), why and why not.

In the end, anything-menstruation is almost always met with either

1) a shudder and a swift topic shift

OR

2) an uncomfortable laugh that reinforces once again, the menstruation-rule-we-live-by.

Then there’s our friends Chella Quint and Sarah Thomasin who brilliantly and creatively write and perform menstrual humor that is genuinely funny without being offensive to women. But their work is truly exceptional.

Usually, the humor is more like this classic from Kids in the Hall. Finally giving up the luddite’s fight, I joined Facebook this week and look what I found: this page referencing a sketch starring Dave Foley

The over-the-top earnestness of this guy is funny, sure, but that’s not all that’s going on.

Yeah—he offers a lot more appreciation for the menstrual cycle than even I aspire to– but is the premise–that a guy could offer something other than disgust (or at best, indifference) to menstruation– really that hysterical?

Granted, the concluding passage (below)had me laughing, but like most (all?) satire, after the laughs die down, I’m left wondering: why IS that funny, anyway?

And what does the success (or the failure–you decide) of the humor reveal about enduring assumptions about masculinity, women’s bodies, and heternormativity?

That’s why the woman I shall love will be able to menstruate as fully and freely as she desires. Even if her monthly flow should build in intensity to a raging rust colored torrent! An unbridled river of life giving blood flowing from between her legs! An awesome cataract plunging off the edge of our couch. I wouldn’t be phased! No, no, even if coureur de bois would come up stream, battling the rapids, and singing a ‘jaunty song’! I would take no offense, rather I would ford across that mighty womanly river, and fetch herbal tea and Pamprin. And then I would mop her brow and admire her fecundity. For I…Have A Good Attitude….Towards MENSTRUATION!

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Posted in Humor, Internet, Men, Menstruation, Television | 7 Comments »

It’s Always Funny to Joke About Tampons

December 3rd, 2009 by Chris Bobel
Button by InsanitywearMagnet sold at http://www.zazzle.co.uk/

My friend, the poet and writer Andrea Scarpino, posted this brief essay on a blog she regularly contributes to–Steven Kuuisto‘s “Planet of the Blind.”

It is not a coincidence that a blog centering on disability (specifically the consequences of living with blindness) hosts a narrative like this, one that makes strikingly clear the importance of challenging the denigration of SOME bodies.

We at re:Cycling are heartened whenever we hear that we are not alone speaking up in the aisles of grocery stores (and everywhere else women’s (and their bodies) serve as the punchline).

December 01, 2009

Trader Joe’s and the Menstrual Taboo

By Andrea Scarpino

Los Angeles

I love shopping at Trader Joe’s late in the evening right before it closes. The crowds thin out, restocking of shelves begins, and the employees start pumping some raucous dance music. They also start gossiping, about their shifts and managers, about which area is the most boring assignment, about budding employee romances and new products.

Last night, though, I eavesdropped on another customer. Standing in the aisle with toothpaste and other personal products, I heard a masculine sounding voice in back of me say, Do you need any tampons? And then laugh. I turned around. Both the speaker and the friend to whom he was speaking looked like adult men. One was bald, for god’s sake. The friend made eye contact with me. It’s always funny to joke about tampons, I said to him with my saucy-teenager-perfected sarcasm. The speaker kept laughing, but started to blush. His friend looked uncomfortable. You know, he said, I was just looking at hand soap.

I smiled. You can tell that you’ve reached maturity when you’re still joking about tampons, I said. That’s my tried and true method for sassing people—smile big while you’re doing it. Both men looked at the ground. As I walked away, I thought about the fact that menstruation can be funny—just like Steve has said before about blindness. Remembering first period stories with friends now that we’re adults can be pretty amusing. I use reusable cloth menstrual pads, and on more than one occasion, have found a missing pad folded neatly on top of my apartment’s shared washing machine, left behind from a load I had washed the night before. Imagining one of my macho, muscled, BMW driving neighbor-men folding my missing pad on the washer for me to reclaim totally cracks me up.

But the statement I overheard last night wasn’t an attempt at “honest” humor, so to speak. It was a man mocking his friend by engaging in our cultural menstrual taboo. You know, the thing that makes women use words like “time of the month” to describe their period. My good friend Chris Bobel researches menstruation and has many more insightful things to say about the menstrual taboo than I could ever muster (she contributes to the blog re: Cycling which I highly recommend) but suffice it to say that making women uncomfortable in their bodies is a continually acceptable cultural phenomenon. Sure, we have much more “plus-size” model visibility than we’ve had in the past (and by “plus-size,” I mean still-thinner-than-the-average-American-woman) but on the whole, there is much money and power to be gained from teaching women to hate their bodies.

And the menstrual taboo is part of that. Menstruation is a biological process that almost half the human population experiences at some point or another and yet, it’s so infrequently discussed that a joke about buying tampons is still considered kosher by grown men. Seriously?  Continue reading...

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Posted in Activism, Communication, FemCare, Humor, Language, Men, Menstruation | 4 Comments »

Please Advise: Matt’s girlfriend doesn’t know she has PMS

November 27th, 2009 by Elizabeth Kissling

cartoon_No_pmsDear Amy: My girlfriend wants to “talk” again. She is currently experiencing her monthly cycle.

Can I ask her to wait until this is over? She usually gets a bit worked up and later apologizes.

I do not want to come across as inconsiderate. Based on past discussions, I’m sure she wants to talk about our future together. This is important but shouldn’t it be done when she is a little more balanced?

If you agree, can you offer a caring way to frame this statement of concern to talk at a later time?

— Matt

Poor considerate Matt. He doesn’t want to hurt his girlfriend’s feelings by telling her that he doesn’t take her feelings seriously. What would you tell him, re:Cycling readers? Ask Amy advises him to patronize and belittle her.

Dear Matt: You might think: “Let’s have this conversation at a time when I don’t think your head will spin around and fall off.”

What you should say is, “I want to talk to you, too, honey — because this is important. But for now, why don’t you enjoy these flowers? Oh, and by the way, have you lost weight?”

Amy further suggests that Matt do her the kind favor of letting her know that she’s moody: “You should also talk about her hormonal issues. Many women, myself included, don’t quite realize the patterns in our monthly moods until someone else lovingly points them out to us.”

I can’t help but recall Joan Chrisler’s comments about over-diagnosis of PMS and PMDD (which are both associated with high levels of relationship and family stress): “We’re conditioned to want a pill. Instead of something you might need more, like a nap or a divorce, or the ERA.”

[via Melissa McEwan at Shakesville]

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Posted in Newspapers, PMS | 4 Comments »

Hysteria: It’s HIS, too

November 15th, 2009 by Elizabeth Kissling

There’s a brief article in the current issue of The Lancet (free registration required) about the history of hysteria. Although I was aware of the history of the word referring to women’s health and behavior being determined by the uterus (hystera is Greek for womb), I did not know of the ancient belief that “retained sperm could contribute to male hysteria, igniting a debate which was to run for centuries over whether men could indeed suffer hysteria.” I’ve only heard of – and seen – the concept used against women. The article also references Elaine Showalter’s analysis of hysterical epidemics as a cultural phenomenon, but offers little analysis of its own.

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Posted in Language, Men | Comments Off

Blood on Screen: MENstruation

November 4th, 2009 by Giovanna Chesler

I often hear women state that men would be uncomfortable if they overheard our discussion of menstruation. Many women work to keep men out of the menstruation conversation. But… surprise! Men are ready to participate. And very often, I hear men say that they want to learn more about menstruation. In studies by Jane Ussher and Jane Perz they found that women in lesbian relationships that are more egalitarian, empathetic and satisfying have different PMS experiences than women whose male partners misunderstand their PMS symptoms. That is partially because their lesbian partners understand the experiences of menstruation, even if they do not share the same symptoms. Imagine, straight ladies, if a male partner were also aware of your PMS symptoms through the information you impart? And that through this conversation and hopefully, through different behavior on his part, you could potentially change your PMS experience?

Or…what if he understands those symptoms through his own experience?! Last year, Angelique Smith, then a student at Marymount Manhattan College in a course called Social Construction and Images of Menstruation (co-taught by David Linton and myself) made MENstruation. This video was inspired by Gloria Steinem’s 1978 Ms. Magazine article “What if Men Could Menstruate?”. As Smith asks her participants Steinem’s question, “What if men could menstruate,” their answers  reveal much about cross-gender consciousness.  It screened as part of the Blood on Screen series at the Spokane SMCR conference.

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Posted in Film, Independent Film, Men, Menstruation | Comments Off

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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.