Blog of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research
In the grand tradition of Ms. magazine, we present the latest installment of SNL’s “Classic ESPN Women’s Sports Tournament” with NO COMMENT.
(OK, if you really want to know what we think, see our previous posts about this misogynist series. We’re just too tired to say it again.)
If you watched the Super Bowl this year, you likely saw the new Dodge Charger ad “Man’s Last Stand.” If not, drop what you are doing and watch it right this minute and sound the gender panic alarm!
There’s a crisis!
Masculinity is endangered! The women are taking over!
Men are-day in and day out–emasculated by the nagging, demanding, self-centered women in their lives and their trivial concerns (vampire lust! hairless sinks! fruit for breakfast! civility toward family members!)
It is so bad out there, apparently, that men need to recapture their manliness by “driving the car (they) want to drive.” (I don’t know what’s more offensive here, women-as-problem or car-as-solution)
The blogosphere and its environs is a-buzz with the work of MacKenzie Fegan who found, in her words, the commercial uh….“oft-putting”. She posted this response. Not sure I would have chosen the same complaints to highlight, but I did cheer with this dig:
“I will get angry and you will ask if it’s that time of the month.”
Crisis? If only there were one and that tired old excuse for not taking women seriously was on the way out!
Guest Post by David Linton, Manhattan Marymount CollegeA short item in the February 2010 issue of Harper’s Magazine captures, yet again, how nervous some folks are about any mention of matters menstrual. The piece referred to the publication of a list of words and terms that were blacklisted from use in crossword puzzles and other word games by a British computer program called Crossword Compiler.
Among the partial list of problematic terms, along with others such as bollocksing, bonk, clitoridectomy, fanny, nooky, ruttish, sapphic, sexy and shtup, was the word “catamenial.” This rather arcane term is one of the more obscure references to the period, more likely to appear in medical or, surprisingly, broadcasting documents.
For the first 25 years of commercial TV’s existence in the US, the National Association of Broadcasters specifically banned the advertising of feminine sanitary products. It was not until 1972 that the ban was lifted and a year later, 1973, the first mention of the menstrual cycle appeared in a ground breaking episode of All in the Family.
First, it was Tampax, and then it was Vagisil. But it’s good they didn’t leave out Summer’s Eve. And I expect Midol (for those irritating PMS-y women) and something about menopausal women’s hot flashes (can’t they control themselves with hormone therapies?) to be next. Although probably SNL writers aren’t savvy enough yet to even contemplate what menopause is or how they feel about it, so they’ll probably stick with skits that revolve around women’s body parts and younger women’s reproductive experiences.
I was frustrated with SNL’s skit about ESPN’s coverage of a women’s billiards tournament, “Tampax to the Max Tournament of Champions” (see my blog post about it). I was disgusted and concerned that SNL writers revised this skit for a second airing, to include a spoof about women’s yeast infections during a Women’s bowling tournament, “Vagisil Superstars of Bowling Tournament”. After seeing the second skit, I (along with many other critics) knew that the power of the skits was not in jokes about women’s menstruation alone but, rather, in jokes about the disgusting nature of women’s bodies more generally.
The feminist blogosphere has been buzzing lately over all the decorations available for ladyparts. We chimed in ourselves on the labia dye, My New Pink Button. Now, via Broadsheet, we learn of “vajazzling”, or bedazzling one’s vajayjay. Actor Jennifer Love Hewitt, star of The Ghost Whisperer, recently announced to George Lopez and his talk show audience that her “precious lady” now “shines like a disco ball” because it is covered with Swarovski crystals.
Note that I used the term “vajayjay” above only because that is the term used by Love Hewitt in advocating the practice of vajazzling. (She says all women should vajazzle their vajayjays, and has an entire chapter of her new book dedicated to the topic.) Perhaps I take things too literally, but I understood vajayjay = vagina, so when I read Mary Elizabeth Williams’ Broadsheet article, I had a lot of questions. Like, WHY? why put crystals in your vagina? No one but your gynecologist will see them! And doesn’t it hurt? Aren’t crystals sharp? And what, exactly, does one use to ATTACH Swarovski crystals?
Of course, Jennifer Love Hewitt isn’t putting crystals in her vagina. She’s decorating her vulva. But cutesy terms like precious lady and vajayjay obscure women’s anatomy even more than Swarovski crystals and pink colorants. Vajayjay entered the pop culture lexicon because network censors would not approve a Grey’s Anatomy script using the word vagina too many times:
Shonda Rhimes, the creator and executive producer of “Grey’s Anatomy,” who brought the word into full public view, never intended to promote a euphemism or slang term for the female anatomy. Rather, she fought to use vagina in the script.
“I had written an episode during the second season of ‘Grey’s’ in which we used the word vagina a great many times (perhaps 11),” Ms. Rhimes wrote in an e-mail message. “Now, we’d once used the word penis 17 times in a single episode and no one blinked. But with vagina, the good folks at broadcast standards and practices blinked over and over and over. I think no one is comfortable experiencing the female anatomy out loud — which is a shame considering our anatomy is half the population.”
When grown men start referring to their penises as “pee-pee” or “winky”, I’ll consider vajayjay an acceptable label for my vulva. As for vajazzling, I’m with Madeleine and the other Lunapad ladies:
At the end of the day, for all the language of self-love and empowerment used in the marketing copy for these products, I still can’t get around the underlying implication that our vulvas are not in fact just fine, thanks, without smelling or looking any different than they already do. To my way of thinking, even planting a seed of doubt of this kind in a woman’s (let alone a girl’s) mind about her bodily self-esteem is to perpetuate a dangerous climate of self-loathing against which most girls and women will struggle at some point during their lives.
Readers of re:Cycling know that we love menstrual humor – we’re always willing to mock femcare adverts and can even laugh at ourselves. But, honestly, what’s funny about repeating the names of feminine hygiene products? It wasn’t funny when SNL had their fake sportscasters say “Tampax” over and over again in October, and repeating the same skit with Vagisil last weekend wasn’t funny either.
The show has a history of having a writers’ conference room that resembles a men’s locker room, and it appears that little has changed since the days when John Belushi would run around the set ranting about how “Women aren’t funny.” I wonder if he would think vaginas are hi-larious the way the show’s current staff does.
Trying to find a reason to stay up late this past Saturday night, I found myself watching Saturday Night Live for a few minutes. Unfortunately I tuned in right before a skit called “Tampax to the Max,” a skit within which two male SNL actors played sports announcers for a “Ladies’ Billiards” competition. Drew Barrymore and SNL’s Kristen Wiig played the two billiards players, but the skit wasn’t really about the billiards tournament at all. The skit was written specifically to highlight Tampax as a sponsor of the billiards event and, therefore, the skit was filled with superfluous tampon jokes and random interjections of the word “Tampax” (which, of course, brought the most laughs for the skit). Putting all other comments aside about the perpetuation of gender inequality in sports as well as all of my feelings about how ridiculous Drew Barrymore and her SNL counterpart (Kristen Wiig) were made to look in this skit, I think that we cannot just sit by and let this skit air without commenting about the place of menstrual products (and, by default, menstruation itself) within it. On one hand, this skit was simply a way for some SNL writer to air some really bad Tampax jokes and allow male actors on SNL to get a chance to say “Tampax” as many times as they could within one skit. In this context, perhaps some could characterize this skit as harmless. Yet, on the other hand, menstruation and women’s activities surrounding menstruation become a complete joke in this skit as a result. The inferences made about the connections between menstrual products and women’s sports are strange (Is Tampax what everyone thinks about when they watch women’s sports events? And are the sponsors more important than the actual sports event, if it is a female sports event? And is it more fun to think about women’s menstruation than to watch women compete?). The fact that the billiard players’ place within the skit becomes shadowed by their menstrual products is maddening, however. The skit makes clear that women’s involvement in billiards (perhaps sports in general?) is unimportant but their use of menstrual products is much more interesting to men…
While I understand that SNL makes light of all different kinds of bodily processes (and that IS funny at times), the underlying equations of women with their reproductive processes and the laughs gotten from the pure mention of Tampax in this skit are disturbing. As I watched this skit, I couldn’t help thinking about why we haven’t moved on from laughing about menstruation and menstrual products. As we all know, jokes often let us know exactly how unequal the world is and, in my opinion, letting male SNL actors just get a chance to make some random Tampax jokes in a skit is not doing women or reproduction or menstruation any good at all. Does menstruation become any more positive or any more well understood because of this skit? I don’t think so. I was offended by this skit, and would be interested to hear if I was the only one who was….
A lot of ideas get hatched in a bar over drinks with friends. Most don’t make it past the sober morning after. But a conversation in a Denver bistro in 2008 led to the creation of a new Internet service that aims to address Rodney King’s eternal question, “Can’t we all just get along?” In this case the “getting along” applies to men and women who feel afflicted by the scourge of Pre-Menstrual Syndrome – PMS – and its presumed negative impact on otherwise harmonious relationships.
Despite the sound research and persuasive arguments of writers such as Carol Tavris (The Mismeasure of Woman), Anne Fausto-Sterling (Myths of Gender), Joan C. Chrisler (Charting a New Course for Feminist Psychology) and Paula Caplan (Fighting the Pathologizing of PMS), to name just a few who have labored to dispel the pernicious misconceptions and stigma surrounding the menstrual cycle, stereotypes and myths have been tenacious. Thus, in the digital age it was probably inevitable that PMS Lore would find new outlets for dissemination. Which brings us back to Denver.
This morning brings our first guest post, from our friend Chella Quint at Adventures in Menstruating.
Sometimes they come in…second.
Hear me out – I’ve (possibly in my sleep, which means this is one of my genius-or-madness-and-probably-madness ideas) come up with an award for positive use of menstrual comedy in a fictional work.
I’m calling it the Adventures in Menstruating Second Place Award, and, yes, it’s because second place at most good county fairs, municipal soccer leagues, and junior athletics tournaments is usually a red ribbon. I drew the one above to (badly) illustrate my point, mainly because I couldn’t find a photo on the internets that I could leglly use, and because my own red ribbon that I got for long jump in sixth grade is in a box back at my parents’ house. I’m sure you could also read all sorts into ’second place’, like the potential second class citizen status that menstruators are reduced to by the other kind of menstural humour. You know, the kind that presents women who bleed as bitchy, disgusting or insane? That doesn’t get a prize. (Well, not from me, anyway, although people who tell those jokes sometimes get their own comedy special. Go figure.)
Anyway, my award (which only exists in pixel form at the moment – sorry about that…) is for jokes that, refreshingly, do not make us the punchline. It shouldn’t be a novel concept, but there it is. I’ll add the ’second place award’ category to my links and post more examples of this as I find them, and invite you all to send me suggestions. I’ll add them to the blog as I get them.
We’re kicking off with last week’s episode of a comedy detective show called Psych (which I’m pleased to say co-stars and is sometimes written by an old Tisch classmate of mine) where periods very briefly feature in a verbal gag based on a simple misunderstanding: PTSD vs. PMS. Props to the writers, who could easily have made reference to the charater’s alleged demonic possession (long – and quite funny – story) and linked it to a cheesy PMS joke, but didn’t. It’s a good show – US viewers can check it out themselves this week online, and everyone else can grab it on DVD sometime in the future.
Look out for more second place awards.
Cross-posted at Adventures in Menstruating.
Did anyone happen to see the recent episode of the Tyra Banks show about menstruation? I was traveling when it aired and unable to watch or record it, so I’m curious. Reports are that the invited guests were three photogenic lady doctors who explained the physiology of menstruation and PMS. As Jessica Wakeman at The Frisky said, “It’s a ghastly state of affairs for sex ed if grown women are learning why they get their periods on The Tyra Show.”
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