Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation (21 page)

In fact, we, too, have college memories of going on camping trips and all of us earnestly grilling each other beforehand: “You don’t have your period, do you? You definitely don’t, right?” We all knew what was bound to happen if one of us was lying … some crazed bear or wolverine or coyote would smell the blood and come slavering to get at us! If we were swimming in the ocean, we’d be yanked underwater by a shark and chewed up like a bagel!

As a matter of fact, we weren’t just being giddy coeds. For years, the U.S. Parks Department regularly distributed to campers a stern little flyer that was scarier than any Stephen King novel. “Special precautions apply to women!” barked the brochure. “For their protection, women should refrain from wilderness travel during their menstrual periods! Bears and other large carnivores have attacked women in this physiological condition!”

For the record, it’s been proven that bears won’t maul you if you have your period. In a study using menstruating women and actual bears (which makes us ponder how far we ourselves would go to earn a hundred bucks), eleven females were met with complete apathy by the carnivores, making the experiment seem not unlike speed-dating stories we’ve heard. For the final touch, another woman wearing a pad not only fed four bears by hand, she then walked within six feet of a group of male bears … and they totally ignored her. And to top it all, it was mating season!

When it comes to sharks, it also seems as if the danger is a tad overstated. While sharks have a notoriously keen sense of smell, there’s absolutely zero evidence that menstrual blood does anything for them, much less send them ravening in one’s general direction. In the book Diving and Subaquatic Medicine, the authors speculate that there might be some component in menstrual flow that sharks find off-putting, but what that might be is anyone’s guess.

We understandably expect some of you are shaking your heads in disbelief. We just can’t get the idea that our periods stink to high heaven out of our heads because that’s the way we were raised. But where does this conviction come from, anyway?

The earliest commercial menstrual products were invented in the early twentieth century, and from the beginning, their ads repeatedly reinforced the notion that menstruation was inherently a germ-ridden Mayday, a hygienic disaster that needed at all costs to be wrestled to the ground. To manufacturers, the equation was a delightful no-brainer: if you defined a problem, all you had to do then was add a product and multiply by fear, and hey—presto! The resulting sum equaled sales … lots of sales.

From the very beginning, tampon makers have boasted that since their product is worn internally, they’ve slam-dunked the entire smell issue, unlike the makers of pads. Their missives were often sober and earnest, as befitted such a grave subject (this one from a 1961 Tampax ad): “With a sanitary napkin, the flow collects on the pad where the warmth of the body increases its odor … . Many girls prefer to wear tampons … since they are worn internally where no air is present: no odor can form.” Another ad dutifully reported, “You can avoid menstrual odor entirely … when you wear a tampon. Because it is worn internally where no air is present, no odor can form at all

Kotex, Kimberly-Clark

Yet sanitary pad manufacturers weren’t taking this lying down. Outraged, they rose up as one and swiftly began introducing new products specifically formulated to combat odor. Quest, a deodorant powder invented by Kotex in the 1930s, was meant to be liberally sprinkled on one’s pad prior to use to ensure that ever-crucial “personal daintiness.” Educational booklets gave detailed instructions on how to stay clean, how often to change, and how to groom yourself so cunningly that no one could possibly notice the gigantic, lumpy bulge in your crotch.

The name is FDS * Feminine Hygiene Deodorant Spray. It is new. A most personal sort of deodorant. An external vaginal deodorant. Unique in all the world. Essential on special days. Welcome protection against odor—every single day.

FDS—for your total freshness.

Tampon makers struck back. In the 1970s, manufacturers started adding perfume to their products. New ‘n’ improved tampons and pads, both in scented varieties, started flooding the marketplace, practically elbowing one another off the shelves as they fought for their share of the market. Ads touted how wonderful their products smelled! How feminine! How refreshing! A 2004 Procter & Gamble tampon ad depicting a woman in an evening gown lounging elegantly by the water even featured an actual scratch ‘n’ sniff strip, so you could preview what your lucky vagina could smell like, too!

Like Hatfields and McCoys, tampon and pad manufacturers have been duking it out for decades. After all, when it comes to loyalty, women don’t merely attach to brands—when a girl starts with tampons or pads, she’s likely to keep using her choice throughout her menstrual life, which adds up to more than thirty-five years. And so the battle rages on.

Today, women are being aggressively sold on “feminine wipes,” which bear an uncomfortably close resemblance to the premoistened towelettes mothers everywhere use to wipe the poop off their babies’butts. Flattering comparison, no? Even more ominously, these wipes are actually packaged to resemble those very baby towelettes. One manufacturer even packages individual pads with their own wipes included, so you can wipe yourself clean every time you change a pad, and “feel shower fresh all day.”We ourselves are partial to that old standby, toilet paper … but where’s the profit in that?

What really creeps us out is that more and more women and girls have been complaining of a peculiar, chronic condition that’s only recently started to be taken seriously. Called different things, including vulvodynia, vaginal vestibulitis, and “the most painful thing that ever happened to me,” it generally consists of inexplicable burning, stabbing discomfort, throbbing and/or itching of the labia or vaginal opening.

Doctors are stumped as to what it is, exactly, or how to treat it. And while it can be brought on by an infection like yeast or herpes, vulvodynia also appears to be triggered by inflammation brought on by soaps, feminine deodorant sprays, perfumes, and commercial femcare products: the very stuff that’s supposed to keep us all so dainty.

We’re floored that even in these supposedly enlightened times, we’re still in thrall to the smell stigma that’s held us hostage for so many decades. While the battle over who can scare us more about our stench has been fighting itself out in boardrooms and the stock market, where does that leave us? Apparently, we’re left still believing the old arguments that we smell awful, whether we’re menstruating or not, and still blithely using products that regularly subject our incredibly sensitive and absorbent labial and vaginal skin to God-knows-what. Companies aren’t even required to list the ingredients on their product’s packaging and will often just use the catchall word “fragrance.”

Alberto Culver Company

The perception of odor is one of those subjective things—like having an ear for krunk music, a craving for cilantro, a genuine appreciation for plaid pants. We’re not going to tell you what to do with your own body or how we think you should smell, and we sure hope you feel the same way about us. But maybe it’s time to reconsider what’s being sold so earnestly to all of us, what it might actually be doing to our tender selves, and whether or not we actually want to step in and change the way we shop, the way we keep ourselves clean, the way we perceive ourselves.

Something actually does smell kind of funny, doesn’t it?

Alberto Culver Company

Chapter 10

SO NOW YOU’RE A WOMAN!

Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret. Gretchen, my friend, got her period. I’m so jealous, God. I hate myself for being so jealous, but I am. I wish you’d help me just a little. Nancy’s sure she’s going to get it soon, too. And if I’m last I don’t know what I’ll do. Oh please God. I just want to be normal.

—ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET

H
OW MANY HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF GIRLS have waited anxiously to get their chance to read that dog-eared, well-worn copy of Judy Blume’s seminal book from 1970, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, that secretly circulated throughout their school? Passed from friend to friend, talked about in bathrooms, at sleepovers, in notes passed in class, on long phone calls, Are You There God? was groundbreaking in that it gave a realistic and identifiable preteen voice to the often confusing experience of growing up.