Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation (2 page)

The sad fact is that menstruation—the process, the images, the word itself—is as unspeakable and undercover as it ever was. Think about it—even in movies, TV shows, and commercials that actually mention menstruation by name, you never, ever see any sign of it. In fact, although you can watch buckets of fake blood merrily sploodging out of heads and torsos because of fists, bullets, knives, car accidents, grenades, bombs, breaking glass, garrotes, machetes, falling buildings, swords, laser beams, airline crashes, or hungry mutant zombies, rarely will you ever see a single drop as a result of menstruation. In 1995, a Village Voice cover featured a tasteful photo of a naked woman in profile, with a white string nonchalantly dangling between her thighs (the article was on Toxic Shock Syndrome), and from the subsequent outcry from readers, you would have thought the paper had endorsed Satan for president. (And this is the Village Voice we’re talking about, the paper that has routinely covered everything from genital piercing to golden showers.)

Even in the most up-to-date print ad or TV commercial, you will never once see a menstrual product being unwrapped, applied, inserted, tugged at, yanked out, pulled off, wadded up, wrapped in toilet paper, flushed, or thrown away—God forbid showing a before-and-after shot of a tampon (now that’s a memorable visual!) or what it looks like when you accidentally spring a leak. The ads don’t even show the inside of a bathroom, which is weird, considering that’s where most tampons and pads are inserted or applied in the first place.

Whenever menstruation is mentioned these days, it’s only because there’s an underlying sales pitch
.

The accompanying ad copy is invariably as bloodless as the images—neutral, soothing, and maddeningly vague. You can stare endlessly at a print ad featuring a beautiful woman walking across a field in a flowy gown, ponder the tagline “fresh, free, and natural”until your head feels like it’s going to explode, and still come away not knowing what the hell they’re selling: Is it air freshener? A new line of hemp clothing? A timeshare in the Poconos?

The first time the word “period”was even mentioned in the entire history of TV advertising was in a Tampax commercial starring, funnily enough, Courteney Cox Arquette—and that wasn’t until 1985! The Red Dot campaign by Kotex was the first to use the words “period” and “red,” and that rabble-rousing piece of subversion didn’t even occur until 2000.

Procter & Gamble Company

Yet despite the ad world’s contorted attempts not to show or say anything that could be seen as even remotely scandalous or off-putting, their efforts are apparently still not enough for most people. From what we can tell, public attitudes haven’t changed much at all over the decades; as a result, menstrual ads have remained so incredibly sterilized and unspecific, you could look at them and honestly not even realize human blood was involved.

And it’s not just a problem with advertising. Our language itself has essentially been purged of menstruation, like there’s been some kind of creepy propaganda campaign forcing us to discuss it (if we do at all) in a mysterious code known only to CIA operatives. If you don’t believe us, take a moment to consider the many, many ways we all refer to menstruation.

You’re on the Rag. Your Friend’s in Town, or maybe it’s your Aunt Flo Who’s Come to Visit, or your Aunt Ruby, or, for the sports-minded, the Red Sox Have a Home Game. Expressions for menstruation range from the jaunty (Saddling Up Old Rusty, the Tomato Boat Has Come In, a Visit from Cap’n Bloodsnatch) to the descriptive and occasionally gross (the Bleedies, the Dam Has Burst). There’s also the essentially grim and resigned (the Curse, the Crud, the Misery, Monthly Trouble, the Nuisance, Being Unwell, Out of Commission).

Hey, it’s always fun to complain, especially if it’s about something inevitable (taxes, jury duty, that weird skin under your chin once you hit forty). Humor, after all, is the time-honored way we deal with discomfort, anxiety, and fear. What fits the bill better than menstruation? Even if you’re a perfectly well-adjusted, in-your-body kind of gal, who can resist telling her friends she’s like Picasso in His Red Period or that she’s Riding the Big Red Cadillac Down the Avenue of Womanhood?

There are creative film references for the pop culturists out there (Taking Carrie to the Prom, Miss Scarlett’s Come Home to Tara), as well as endless uses of the word “red” (Code Red, Wearing the Red Badge of Courage, Off Visiting the Red Planet, Riding the Red Tide, Driving Through the Redwood Forest). If you’re Having Ketchup with Your Steak, you might have to Walk Like an Egyptian or go Ram a Tam; if the Communists Have Invaded the Summer House, you probably need to go Change Your Cooter Plug or Straddle a Pad.

Look, we enjoy a good laugh as much as the next gal. Yet what freaks us out is that beneath all the bonhomie lurks the very real and unspoken message that as much as we’re encouraged to make light about menstruation, we’re somehow not supposed to be talking about it seriously. Is it just us, or don’t you find it sinister when, say, a female lawyer in her thirties who can usually discuss anything from the G-8 summit to Etruscan pottery coyly lets slip that It’s Arts and Crafts Week at Panty Camp?

And in case you were wondering, this isn’t just the crazy, puritanical ol’ US of A we’re talking about here. Even those hip, sexy, sophisticated countries you think would be so over body shame have jokey expressions for the whole process. Worldwide, we’ve lost count, but we think there are currently about sixty trillion euphemisms for menstruation.

In the Netherlands, you might say De Tomatensoep Is Overgekookt (the Tomato i Soup Is Overcooked); if you’re Brazilian, it might be Estou com Chico (I’m with Chico); if you’re Chinese, it’s Little Sister Has Come; in Latin America, Jenny Has a Red Dress On; in Australia, I’ve Got the Flags Out; in Denmark, Der Er Kommunister i Lysthuset (There Are Communists in the Funhouse); in Ireland, I’m Wearing a Jam Rag.

People around the world have apparently taken to creative euphemizing with the zest of game show contestants. In England, there’s I’m Flying the Japanese Flag (get out your Flags of the World placemat if this one eludes you); in Japan there’s Ichigo-chan (Little Miss Strawberry); in France, Les Anglais Sont Arrives! (The English Have Arrived, presumably in their traditional red coats). In Germany, it’s Die Waldbeerfrau Kommit (the Cranberry Woman Is Coming) or Ihren Kram Haben (Have Your Trash); in Puerto Rico they ask, ¿Te Cantó el Gallo? (Did the Rooster Already Sing?). In South Africa, Granny’s Stuck in Traffic. And in Finland, PMS is charmingly referred to as Hullun Lechman Tauti, or mad cow disease.

FIVE THINGS WE DIDN’T KNOW BEFORE WE WROTE THIS BOOK

1.
Your period on the Pill isn’t really a period.

2.
Doctors once stimulated patients to clitoral orgasms as treatment for hysteria.

3.
Bloodletting came about to mimic menstruation, which was seen as a way to relieve bodies of noxious blood.

4.
Hormone replacement drugs are made from the urine of pregnant mares.

5.
There’s a thriving menstrual porn industry.

From a postersize reproduction of an actual ad

Despite the humor and even the occasional grossness used to describe this most basic of female functions, what’s actually taboo is any serious discussion of menstruation. If you don’t believe us, just try this experiment: stroll into your next dinner party, family cookout, postwork happy hour—anywhere there’s a reasonable mix of men and women, young and old—and try striking up a serious group conversation about, say, dioxin in tampons and its possible link to endometriosis. Watch as the faces around you swiftlyturn to stone, as elderly relatives start to choke on the three-bean salad, as mothers whisk the kids away, as the menfolk get that strained look we know so well. Skirts will be drawn aside, and voilà! In a New York minute you will have become persona non grata.

Now, why is this?

We’re not being annoyingly naïve here, so please bear with us. To you, this may seem like a weird question because the answer is so obvious. Nobody talks about menstruation because it’s so, well, inherently distasteful. Plus, it’s personal. Right? To many if not most women, a serious discussion about one’s monthly flow in polite society is about as much of a conversational nonstarter as religion, how much money people make, and an in-depth analysis of one’s genital warts.

Yet we have the sneaking suspicion that these seemingly unshakeable convictions of ours actually arise from centuries of calculated shame, moderated by money—with a dash of internalized objectification thrown in for good measure—as well as a genuine, centuries-old fear and suspicion of female body processes.

Paranoid? Who, us? Like flat-earthers laughing at crazy old Christopher Columbus who was so obviously about to go sailing off the edge of that ocean, many women may find it hard to believe that we all in fact have swallowed a line so completely that we can’t even imagine life without it. And yet, bear with us a second as we mull this further.

In her book The Curse: Confronting the Last Unmentionable Taboo: Menstruation, Karen Houppert makes the point that even in these supposedly modern times, menstruation is always referred to with depressing, loser-ish verbs (“decay,” “shred,” “shrink,” “slough,” “disintegrate,” “dribbles,” “discharge”), whereas ejaculation gets all the sexy, empowered, action-hero verbs (like “spurt,” “spray,” “pump,” “shoot”). Be honest—with verbs like those, if you had to be a biological process, which would you rather choose? Even textbooks and gynecological literature make menstruation seem so, well, dweeby and passive: that what’s actually going on, far from being the dynamic, incredibly complex process it is, is instead vaguely pathetic. We are left with the impression that the sad-sack uterus (pun intended) has once again not been asked to the pregnancy prom, so it just stays at home and lets it all go—that menstruation is, essentially, a lame combination of inertia and failure.