Period Drama:
Now that big pants have become socially acceptable, what about what women really need:
big sanitary towels
Thongs: I’ve never really seen the point of them – the most unflattering, uncomfortable, attire (you only have to look at sumo wrestlers and The Full Monty). They are also unhygienic. Why women think they’re sexy I’ll never know, especially when you see them poking out the top of their hipster trousers, riding half way up their backs (I thought the whole point was you didn’t get VPL). Give me French knickers any day.
The same goes for panty liners: Jo Brand was right when she called them “fairy hammocks”. It’s about the only use for them. They only end up screwed up in your crotch. So what if you get stains on the gusset? After all, what are black knickers for? (they don’t show skid marks either)…
And don’t talk to me about “wings”. In my experience they never stay where they should. Usually the adhesive sides get stuck in pubic hair or to the inside of my thigh – and it’s a devil to peel off, leaving one hell of a nasty red sore on the skin – not pretty.
No, what women like me who bleed with a vengeance each month really need are proper, BIG no-nonsense sanitary towels. I’m talking king-size mattresses, as opposed to elfin bedding. None of your so-called normal, super, maxi, ultra or even night time - also for use after childbirth (you see them lined up on the shelves in their different colours: usually purple for night time, it seems). I mean pads for those of us for whom one of any size is never enough (you may as well wear them as a blindfold, as Yoko Ono did when she appeared on Top of the Pops with John Lennon performing Instant Karma).
You see, as with thongs, it appears I’m the only woman in the world who can’t wear tampons. While this partly has something to do with fear of leakage, it can also be traced back to when I first started having periods, as a nine year old in 1983. Even though I knew what tampons were, I remained under the impression that they were for older women, having been told by Mum that they were for ladies who’d had babies. Not that I ever really fancied the idea of them anyway, whether they hurt or not. Menstrual fluid was something that to me belonged out of the body, instead of being forced to remain corked up inside it.
When I started my periods I was so confused I didn’t tell anyone for two days. Two days with no sanitary towels. I got by with stuffing my knickers with copious amounts of loo roll, frequent visits to the toilet and always keeping my legs close together. The next thing I knew was that Mum had turned up at school with an emergency supply of sanitary towels. How did she know? The tell-tale blood stains on the gusset of course, after finding my knickers in the linen basket.
At that time there still wasn’t much choice as far as sanitary protection was concerned. I had what Mum gave me and that was that. Not because she said so but because that was all you could buy. I soon learned however that I was going to have to do something to cope with my Niagara Falls.
In those days before super thin towels, strings and dry-weave top sheets, when choice was more limited, many’s the time I recall anxiously contorting myself into all manner of positions, scrutinising the back of whatever it was I happened to be wearing, in an effort to check if anything was showing, whether anyone could ever tell. What if my sanitary pad (ironically called Stayfree) was bulging through and people could see a funny shape? What if I was to spring a leak? The prospect of flooding through to my skirt or accidentally revealing my presence by leaving stains and smears behind on chairs and sofas (which I did more times than anyone ever realised) became too tortuous to bear. Sitting down and standing up became the most traumatic of experiences. Although better than toilet roll, one sanitary towel never quite seemed adequate, no-matter how often I changed. Eventually I took to wearing several sanitary towels at once during heavier days, camouflaging any bulges in front or behind by layering dark colours (white was always out of the question): two pairs of knickers, thick tights, a couple of petticoats underneath my grey skirt when at school. Psychologically this strategy worked well for me.
Since then, however, I’ve become less inhibited about it. I actually don’t mind having my periods, happy to bleed unself-consciously for a few days each month: an opportunity to heal, eat chocolate and get too emotionally involved in soap operas, today’s equivalent of when women would sit on a pile of straw in a red tent in Biblical times. Thankfully my husband has never minded, but if he did he’d have to lump it. Life’s too short and, while not quite as bad as Donita Sparks from L7, who once threw her used tampon into the crowd at a gig shouting, “Eat my Tampax, f***ers!” I just can’t be bothered to get precious or paranoid about what it all looks like to him, or indeed anybody. How can I when I sometimes have to wear as many as six sanitary towels at once in my special reinforced, armour-plated big period pants. Thongs? Pah! Invisible? Discreet? Svelte? Don’t make me laugh. Every month I get to star in a period drama all of my own.
© Agnetha 2002
Some great period links:
www.http://onewoman.com/redspot/
http://www.myvag.net/about1.shtml
Have a look at some great menstrual art at the Museum of Menstruation:
Red Flag by Judy Chicago (not for the faint-hearted!)
Padded by Nikoline Calcaterra
Some thoughts on periods:
“I’m totally pre-menstrual. I thought once I became a vampire I’d stop having periods, but hey – it’s one of the pitfalls the horror writers don’t tell you about. Anne Rice doesn’t mention it. Bram Stoker certainly doesn’t. I haven’t come across any writers who’ve referred to menstruating vampires. And believe me, I’m an expert. The worst thing about bleeding is that it makes me so f***ing hungry…”
Nosferatu, the Valley Gyrl, by Marina Blake.
“…every woman knows she has two kinds of flow that come from her vagina. Ancient sources called these the River of Life and the River of Death, meaning the clear or white flow at the times when a child is more likely be conceived; and the forbidden red flow of menstruation, when it is most unlikely that a child will be conceived. To the Rabbis, sex at the period when the blood is flowing was most strictly taboo. It made monsters, they said. It attracted Adam’s other dark bride, Lilith… It is a taboo which approves only that half of the woman’s nature which is concerned with childbirth and pregnancy…”
The Wise Wound: Menstruation and Everywoman, by Peter Redgrove and Penelope Shuttle.
“As the garments which have been touched by a sacred chief kill those who handle them, so do the things that have been touched by a menstruous woman. An Australian black-fellow, who discovered that his wife had lain on his blanket at her menstrual period, killed her and died of horror himself within a fortnight. Hence Australian women are forbidden under pain of death to touch anything that men use, or even walk on a path that any man frequents…”
The Golden Bough, by Sir James Frazer
I think what is happening to me is so wonderful, and not only what can be seen on my body, but all that is taking place inside. I never discuss myself or any of these things with anybody; that is why I have to talk to myself about them.
Each time I have a period - and that has only been three times - I have a feeling that in spite of all the pain, unpleasantness and nastiness, I have a sweet secret, and that is why, although it is nothing but a nuisance to me in a way, I always long for the time when I shall feel that secret within me again.
The Diary of Anne Frank
I talk of the life-death cycle of the body. Well, women tell time by the body. They are like clocks. They are always fastened to the earth, listening for its small animal noises. Sexuality is one of the most normal parts of life. True, I get a little uptight when Norman Mailer writes that he screws a woman anally. I like Allen Ginsberg very much and when he writes about the ugly vagina I feel awful. That kind of thing doesn't appeal to me. So have my limitations too. Homosexuality is all right with me. Sappho was beautiful. But when someone hates another person's body and somehow violates it - that's the kind of thing I mind.
Anne Sexton, in interview with Barbara Kevles, Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, 4th Series.