Period Piece: Radical Menstruation

My husband is used to my frankness but gets a bit embarrassed if I start harping on about the glories of the human body in the company of others. One of his nightmare scenarios is sitting down with friends to a lovely home-cooked meal, only to hear me declare with relish, “Do you know what? I fed these carrots with my own menstrual blood! Cheers!”

Now, despite popular opinion, I’m not one of these people who goes along with drinking urine (although if I had a skin complaint which wouldn’t go away, or the legendary jelly-fish sting, and I’d tried everything else, I may well be tempted to dab a bit on with some cotton wool, to see if there’s anything in what I suspect may be a sub-urban myth). And despite everything I say here, I’m not sure I’d be one of those women who’d eat my own placenta (or anyone else’s for that matter – even if it was fried with garlic and anchovies in the finest truffle-infused olive oil by Nigella Lawson). I always remember Ricky Gervais on Room 101 talking about being offered a breast milk milk-shake by a lactating friend, an idea he found so distasteful he threatened to make her a “spunk sandwich” in return. Quite.

Nevertheless, I'm always struck by the beginning of American Beauty, when Annette Bening’s character claims that the secret of her beautiful red roses is “egg shells and Miracle-Gro”. Whenever I see this, I always wonder if she’d ever thought of using menstrual fluid. Packed with hormones and nutrients, especially iron, alongside, perhaps even surpassing, horse manure, home-made compost and indeed even Miracle-Gro in terms of efficacy, menstrual fluid is the best garden fertilizer money can’t buy. Granted, it wouldn’t have the same ring to it in a film script, and I doubt most people would feel comfortable slipping it into a conversation (except myself, it seems), but still. What better nourishment than that used to feed a growing foetus?

Think about it (if you dare). If you’re like me and think that periods are pretty awesome and radical things in the first place, then the chances are you’ll relish the opportunity to put them to good use. It’s a well-known fact that plants love blood, but unless you happen to be a vampire, cannibal or a serial killer, or are into self-harm, it’s usually quite hard to get hold of any. Luckily, we women have a free monthly supply of the stuff in bucket-loads (literally, as you will see later). Instead of flushing it all down the toilet, or tossing saturated sanitary towels and tampons out with the household rubbish, why not transform your monthly gothic horror blood-fest into something beautiful? Why not use it to fertilise your garden? And what could be more beautiful than stunning red roses? Instead of moaning about 'the curse' each month, you could start to look upon your heavy, iron-smelling blood, thick with black clots, as a blessing, a precious resource, and do something constructive with it.

Just what am I going on about, exactly? Well, allow me to elaborate.

Every month a mysterious bucket of soapy water appears in the corner of our bathroom (it's actually the old bucket I used to heave my guts up into whenever I had food poisoning or too much to drink – I've grown quite attached to it now). Soaking in this bucket, in a mixture of cold water and environmentally friendly detergent such as Ecover, are my home-made washable cotton sanitary towels. Each time I put one in to soak, I change the water, pouring the old bloody water – shreds of velvet suspended in crimson liquid, like the inside of a marble – onto the garden. When I've finished my period, all the used towels go into the washing machine (by which time they have soaked long enough to be included with my usual laundry), and my bucket gets a good old scrub.

Very few people know about my monthly ritual (until now that is), not because I've ever wanted to keep it a secret, but because of the reactions of shock, embarrassment, incomprehension, and occasional rudeness I've had already just by mentioning the subject. I have been looked at and laughed at as if I'm insane - weird at best. I've been accused of being backward, of travelling back in time to when people knew no better, of living too much in the past, on another planet, even; of being disgusting and dirty; of being obsessed with "women's things", festishistic, and most illogically of all, of being a raving, man-hating feminist (as if being interested in menstruation and attempting to discuss it openly, write about it and post it on a web site, necessarily casts you in the role of a bra-burning women's libber who spells 'women' as 'womyn', and thinks 'menstruation' should be called 'womynstruation': apart from being utterly predictable and out of date, in my case there could be nothing further from the truth).

The question usually accompanying such reactions is, "Why?" Why would anyone want to spend their time – indeed, waste their time – faffing about with buckets of water and strips of cotton towelling, when all they have to do is throw their toxic, non-biodegradable towels and tampons out with the household rubbish and forget about it – there – all nice, easy, convenient, clean and corporate. Out of sight, out of mind (long gone are the days when we were encouraged to flush them down the loo, I hope: Just tear along the length of the towel and flush away! If anyone still does, shame on you. *May you be visited in the night by the period gremlins, forcing you to suck used tampons clean until you yield; until you stop forcing the earth to suck them instead. Aah, there's nowt so lovely as a dip in the sea, and a slap in the face with a used sanitary towel...).

Waste, of course, is the operative word. According to statistics, the average menstruating woman will get through about three hundred pounds of sanitary products in her lifetime. That’s roughly ten thousand disposable towels, tampons, and applicators thrown out with the garbage or flushed down the toilet. Multiply that by the number of women in the world and that's a heck of a lot of towels and tampons clogging up the planet, not to mention a heck of a lot of money flowing into corporate coffers, and not to mention an awful lot of blood. It's surprising how much blood is shed in the process of a period – even if it's not particularly heavy – something that becomes even more obvious when it's not "locked away" within a tampon or beneath a dry-weave top sheet.

And besides, I've never seen it as "faffing around". For me it is a labour of love. The great American gastronome MFK Fisher once wrote, "No yoga exercise, no meditation in a chapel filled with music, will rid you of your blues better than the humble task of making your own bread." I would suggest that the same is true of making your own sanitary towels. Since I've been using them my experience of having a period changed into something a lot more therapeutic, spiritual and liberating. Moreover, my menstrual blood not only looks but feels different on organic cotton. Soft, cool and comfortable, they are much more absorbent than gimmicky textures and top-sheets, wings and wrappings, bleaches, glues, gels, plastics and adhesive backings and liners. Nothing can beat them. Throughout my menstruating years I used to leave stains and smears in the most embarrassing places. When I left university the bed in the house I shared was a sight to behold. It looked like someone had committed suicide on it (or indeed a Tracey Emin exhibit). However, now that I've been using my own reusable cotton pads, I never flood anywhere, and my side of the mattress remains as clean as the day we bought it.

And as if that's not enough, because of the lack of chemicals, my blood even smells different (not unlike freshly-baked bread, red wine, or indeed roast beef, in fact, with a sweet, flowery, fruity overtone). I've even begun to like it.

Dirty and disgusting? I don't think so. The idea of using synthetic, corporate brands seems like a travesty to me now. As it says on the Gladrags site: "Just envision your lifetime supply of used pads and tampons in landfills or washed up on a beach. Now that's gross!" Like wearing nappies? Those with even a basic knowledge of anatomy will know that nappies and sanitary towels involve completely different orifices. And be assured that reusable sanitary towels come in so many styles, designs, shapes, colours and patterns these days, that it is fast becoming impossible to confuse them with nappies any more: from practical black, camouflage red, leopard skin, tartan, flowers, or any colour to match your underwear or mood… Although there's still a lot to be said for white. Quite apart from the fact that I can see how much blood I'm losing, there’s something ever so primitive and satisfying about the sight of crimson against white. And you know that when they're clean, they're clean.

And if you're making your own, you can personalise them as much as you like. The patterns available to download online are hysterical, and if that all seems a bit of a fiddle, all you really need to do is tear old bath towels into strips and hem down each side - something I quite enjoyed doing by hand for a while, until I got fed up and it dawned on me that ordinary face flannels were exactly the right length, and required no hemming or alteration at all. They can be folded accordingly and held in place with safety pins, poppers or velcro, although I find they tend to say in place of their own accord if I'm wearing the right knickers: close-fitting stretchy Lycra works really well. Failing that, you could always experiment with some of the many new brands available to buy online or in health food shops (too many to mention here, although Lunapads, Gladrags and Sweet FA, which I have tried myself, are always a good place to start).

Oi, mate! Save yourself the trouble –

it's closer than you think!

If you can't face the thought of a life without tampons, there are reusable alternatives too. Sustainably harvested sea sponges absorb blood like a tampon, are rinsed out with water and re-used until they become grotty. Menstrual "cups", such as the Keeper (made from rubber), the Diva Cup (made from silicone) or the Instead Cup (made from polyethylene), are likewise inserted into the vagina, but instead of absorbing blood they collect it (fascinating for Da Vinci Code enthusiasts and Holy Grail revisionists everywhere – hallelujah!). All are less likely to disrupt natural vaginal acidity, or cause rashes, irritation, and infection, and unlike conventional tampons, there has never been a reported case of TSS.


Sounds too good to be true? Not to some. The amount of shock and aggression this all causes is a measure of how much our attitudes are conditioned from an early age. Information handed out in schools is usually sponsored or produced by the companies that manufacture disposable pads and tampons. Hence, few women realise that alternative sanitary products exist (I hesitate to use the words 'sanitary protection' – protection from what?). Those who are starting to promote their use risk not only being labelled dirty and unhygienic, but mad, it seems. To quote one online forum poster:

Radical Menstruation (as some wymyn are prone to calling the trend) is a response on behalf of the riotgrrls, feminists and other types of nutty-crunchy hippie chicks to what they feel is the medicalizing and sanitizing of All Things Womany by the media, medical industry and consumerist culture. The idea is to get away from the sterile, bleached, first-aid-supply feel that accompanies all period-related products because that sterility implies that the female body is dirty/wrong/unhealthy/etc, and to move towards cute, comforting, natural products like pads made of cotton, flannel, animal fur and colorful crocheted yarn, all of which radiate the energy of health, happiness and normalcy. It takes a certain type o' gal to feel all fuzzy towards her flow, I think, and I'm just not one of them. I have about as much desire to hand-wash a used plaid flannel maxi pad as I do to host an infestation of headlice. I'm too lazy to make my own, and the last thing I need is to make more bloody (ha ha) laundry for myself.

It's a shame, albeit not a surprise in today's selfish throwaway age, that green thinking should provoke such disdain, although fortunately minds are beginning to turn and there is a backlash against such short-sightedness. In the UK at least, land-fill taxes are on the increase and the government is starting to impose hefty fines on councils not recycling enough. Therefore, we all need to take responsibility for our own waste – especially that which is bleached and unnatural – and drastically increase the amount we recycle. If the main objection seems to be inconvenience because we can't be bothered, well, my heart bleeds.

Not only that, it's time we women started facing the issue – literally – for ourselves. Too often we are told to be quiet about periods. Adverts tell us to be discrete – unseen and unheard – and that what we shed each month is odourless, colourless, there to be delicately and discretely soaked up while we get on with clubbing in skimpy dresses, salsa-ing through the streets, or running along the beach in our bikinis. We all know that reality is far from a TV advert and it's time we stopped falling for the con:

For generations British women have been systematically discouraged from taking responsibility for their own well-being. They've been told that for the management of any and every function of their reproductive system, from menstruation and contraception to pregnancy and childbirth through menopause and beyond, they routinely require the active intervention of the professionals, who will choose from an array of aggressive and invasive procedures about which their patients know little or nothing. If women now regard their pelvises as inanimate boxes to be peered into, unzipped and scraped out repeatedly over a lifetime, it's because a huge amount of time, money and energy was devoted to indoctrinating them.
(Germaine Greer: The Whole Woman).

Hmmm... An inanimate box to be peered into?

Gustave Courbet, L'Origine du Monde

None of this is new, of course, or even that radical, really, only what women have done for centuries – or at least until very recently. I like to see it as being part of a grand tradition, my own monthly ritual putting myself in touch with women throughout millennia, elemental, bringing my spirit closer to my body. Our bodies do leak and ooze, there's nothing we can do about it, and actually, it’s OK. And it’s OK not to use conventional sanitary products. You don’t have to. Don’t let the adverts and the brands play upon your fears and insecurities, and don't knock it 'til you've tried it. Let's rescue menstruation from its sterilized and corporate image, say no to corporate brands, support those who are offering valid alternatives, and help the environment at the same time. Sometimes the old ways are the best. Our ancestors weren’t so backward after all.

Taking responsibility for the waste your body produces is at the heart of what’s been coined 'radical menstruation'. And if you’re into recycling, as most of us are, it’s about as far as you can go...

Fancy coming round for a meal? Dare you! ;)

FOOTNOTE:

*Incidentally, "I'd rather suck on a used tampon" has long been my expression of reluctance when obliged to do things I'd rather not.