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18 sep 06 "What are your feelings on feminine hygiene products?" maybe this is going to be the new format: "'what do you think about llamas?' 'well, first of all...'" it's an easy way for me to elaborate, but i do like some variety. well, first of all, i don't think "feminine hygiene products" (are women scrubbing themselves with tampons?) are disgusting or terrifying, if that's what you're trying to find out. and i think it's amusing when advertisers say things like "that not-so-fresh feeling", knuckling under to "the menstrual taboo". i suppose they don't have any choice, because a taboo can't be sold. i've heard of hippy women going "eco-friendly" in their use of...menses-control products (MCPs), and stuffing a sock in their panties once a month. this seems reasonable to me. i don't know a lot about the smell of coagulating blood, rotting with fecal bacteria and suspending chunks of uterus-lining like pulp in semi-fermented orange juice (maybe the socks are perfumed with patchouli), but its prevalence and importance are certainly exaggerated by the oversocialized -- i've never noticed it hanging in the air. besides, what is a bad smell? any piece of cloth is fine (eventually you run out of socks), if only to keep from bleeding all over the office furniture and ruining the decor. i have no problem buying MCPs -- i sort of enjoy it, actually, because i know that something is going through the heads of the people who are watching me, and i like to try to guess what it is. probably something like "poor guy, his girlfriend is making him buy her tampons...heehee, he must be whipped". along those lines. maybe i should buy maxipads every few weeks or so, girlfriend or not, so i can generate reactions. the rule is that various substances exuding from the body are to be kept to a minimum. "bad" breath must be controlled, we don't pee or change our dirty underwear in public, and we don't leak menstrual blood all over the sidewalk (unless we're doing some sort of feminist performance art). basically, all of the things that remind us that we're of flesh and blood need to be minimized, controlled, and concealed. concealment is essential to menstruation in particular, for socio-cultural reasons: it's a reliable indicator of upcoming fertility, which obviously affects the behavior of the surrounding spectators. here's what some learned (wo)men say: humans menstruate more and more visably than other primates (the only order of animals that does it), and this event is responsible for the behavior that marked the beginnings of human culture. because menstruation signaled upcoming fertility, men were motivated, just after these signified times, to engage in predatory reproductive practices -- ie, running around from fertile girl to fertile girl, impregnating them, and then neglecting to care for the resultant offspring in favor of running off to impregnating more girls. so, women found it to their advantage to conceal menstruation, and banded together so as to make a group effort at protecting and restraining the fertile young ones ("horny as a schoolgirl"). menstruation's signaling, or signifying, or meaning something else (in this case, fertility) lead to behavior that constituted an attempt to control male philandering. meaning inherent in something other than the thing itself (the birth of the signifier/referrent relationship) marks the beginnings of both language and culture, which are inseperable; menstruation may have been the very first signifier, and may have thus created, or at least helped contribute to, the origins of who we are as a civilized society. but, whatever. suffice to say that menses has an overwhelming social location, one that we try our best to minimize here in modern times, because it's a reminder of our bestial natures as well as a relic of that necessary precultural concealment. it's akin to "going into heat"; just not something we're proud of. did you know that homosexuals use the pejorative "breeders" to describe heterosexuals? the menstrual taboo is a powerful one (don't talk about it, cover it up, avoid it, etc), and is visible in the way it's referenced by the moneymen: "not-so-fresh feeling". the words "menses", "menstrual" or "menstruation" are never spoken, because no-one would buy MCPs from a company so bold as to violate social dictum. the menstrual taboo reaches its zenith among the dogon tribe of central mali, who have their menstruating women stay in special huts, in which there are no tampax vending machines. my feelings on "feminine hygiene products" are that they do the jobs they were intended to do: absorb, conceal, perfume. whether or not these jobs need to be done in the first place is a decision that is necessarily not up to me, unless i'm a facilities manager responsible for a lot of off-white office chairs. |
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