Seeing red
What’s in your vagina?
Do you use a DivaCup? I’ve been using one for about four years now. Given to me by a friend as a gift after an afternoon spent curled on her floor, debilitated by the cramps that hit me once every three periods or so. She made me a blueberry pineapple smoothie — no idea why they help, but they do — then handed me one of these fetching little boxes.
Is this making you uncomfortable?
That’s become the tradition. One woman giving the next her first cup, as we’ve taken to calling them, “a shot glass for your vag,” then that next woman giving one to the next woman and on. It’s not the kind of product you just discover otherwise. They’re not carried in most stores, since each one lasts you about ten years, the volume of sales doesn’t make them appealing to most stores. Sure, it’s $40 a pop, but compare that to selling $10 of pads, tampons and liners — more if you need multiple absorbencies — each month to each woman every month. Yeah, not gonna win with the retailers there.
Then too, there’s how it’s used. That requires some explanation.
The cup is made of silicone. It really is about shot glass sized, with models 1 and 2 differing slightly in size to accommodate women who’ve had a child… cause their cervix gets stretched.
Now what you do, is you fold the cup in half long ways, then slip it into your vag, pushing it all the way up so it can pop open around your cervix, that little bump way up there. If you’ve got an IUD, you know where to aim for from checking your string each month. I’ll write more on those too… mine’s a ParaGuard, hormone free, good for ten years and I’ve loved it for five so far — and by the way, despite the scare back in the 70s that gave them such a bad rap, even NPR has started giving them some attention. If you don’t know where your cervix is, limber up, and shove a finger up there.
A note on this: if you’re turned on, you’ll have to be a good deal more limber to get your finger far enough up there. Along with getting wet when thinking about sexy time our cervix creeps up up up and away to make room for… well, from an evolutionary perspective, a cock. These days, put whatever you want up there, but just know it’s going to be a reach if you’re hot and bothered.
The slightly trickier part of your vag cup is getting the damned thing out again. For two days of my period each month, I’m bleeding hard. This used to mean changing out a super tampon once every three hours. Now, I wind up cramming my fingers up there to empty my cup once every four... but I can just pop it back in after a quick wipe down with some toilet paper if I’m in a stall, or a rinse in the sink if there’s one handy.
Otherwise, yes, her cup doth overfloweth. On those days I also wear a liner. Yes, I know. Green recycle yadda yadda. I tried the washable pads, and frankly, nope. There’s a reason I switched to tampons way back when. Liners are just enough to give me a few extra minutes to run to a bathroom and empty out.
Emptying these babies is pretty much the same as getting them in there in the first place. Drop your panties, reach from the front, get your fingers around the tip — knob, balls, ring: the bit that’s facing up in the photo above — and pull.
Slowly.
You can leave your cup in for 12hrs if you want to — HELL YEAH!!! — with no worry. But if your flow is steady, it’s going to be full.
Yes. Full. Of blood.
If it’s overflowed, you’ll be reaching up into some excess blood in your vag. It will get on your fingers. It will be full. You will want to make sure you pull down and keep it facing UP. Then tip, empty, and voila.
When you dump the cup out, either into the tub if you’re doing this in the shower — a really great way to get used to the thing by the way — or crouching over a toilet, you’ll probably get some blood on your fingers too.
So yeah. Blood.
It’s a funny thing that at any given time about a third of the entire world population is cycling, has either just finished bleeding for a few days, is about to start, or is bleeding right now… and yet it’s still the MOST taboo subject out there.
Do you know how much blood actually is coming out of you each hour on the different days of your cycle? Could you say how many fluid ounces? Probably not if you’ve been using pads and tampons all your life.
I worked in advertising for a bit as a strategic planner for the shopper marketing division of a fem care brand. Read: I helped them figure out when to do sales, how to display the products, and how to get retailers to put the damned signage up. Challenging when you’re talking about menstrual blood.
As part of my “brand training” I did a full day immersion not just on the fem care products [tampons and pads] but their lineup of other “absorbent products.” So we did diapers, and adult incontinence products. I referred to the account as “Absorbing the Human Condition” since we had paper towels, toilet paper and snot rags too… Yup. Glamorous.
About halfway through our day, while we were all dipping the competition’s tampons into jars of water to see how badly stitched together they were compared to our brand I asked if we were bringing a cup to market.
Total silence.
“You know, like DivaCup?”
Silence. Then… “Oh gross. You mean the ones you have to… Ew.”
These are the people who are championing feminine care in stores. Who represent the cutting edge of a leading brand in the market. Men and women both, sitting there, saying “Ew” to a product that oh my god no requires you to actually touch yourself.
The New York Times reported back in 2010 that many TV networks still won’t allow the word “vagina” to be used in an ad, and place intense scrutiny on its usage in programming. If it is directly in reference to anatomy, it might be ok. But add any hint of sex and be prepared for a fight. Maybe they’ve loosened up a bit, but I’ll remind you — in case this seems overly alarmist — those networks had no problem with showing ads for erectile disfunction. Correct me if I’m wrong, but… you’re talking about using your penis for sex, right?
Over the past thirty years the American public has been taught over and over again that vaginas are filthy things and if you own one, you should avoid touching it at all costs, particularly if there’s dirty dirty blood coming out of it. The movie Carrie, based on Stephen King’s book of the same name — and with a new current remake coming out! — takes our cultural horror over menstruation to a disturbing extreme. I sure wish I wound up with supernatural killing powers every time I was on the rag… jeesh.
But there are far more subtle issues conditioning us as women. Everything from douches, to scented panty liners, to the implication that menstrual blood is somehow dirtier than regular blood, is distancing us from our bodies.
Our tampon applicators have become progressively longer, smoother, — made of wasteful plastic when they all used to be cardboard — keeping your fingers away from any potential contact with “the grossness.” This is most common in the USA. In Europe, applicator free tampons are the norm, plus they’ve got neat reusable sponges on the market, among other fancy treats for your snatch [sorry, I love the term “snatch” and “vag treats” just didn’t have the same ring].
Pads are even more reprehensible. Sure, on the one hand they’re freaking magic, allowing women who’ve just had a child, to bleed in public without fear of a leak. Meanwhile, teens are being encouraged to wear liners to “absorb and hide feminine odors” before they’ve even started menstruating. Maxi-pads are now designed to feel wet sooner so that users change them more often, even if their absorbent capacity is far beyond the time when they’ll feel “iffy.”
As I mentioned, I use liners. I’m not going to address the eco-issues of pads.
The materials used to make tampons on the other hand are downright terrifying. No, “acid dazzle” isn’t real, but your tampon is in fact full of chlorine. Not a lot. But that’s what they treat them with to keep them bacteria free before use, with the nice side effect of being pure pure white. The material itself hasn’t been tested for long term use. With it absorbing all the moisture up there, bits will shed and stick to the walls of your vagina.
Wait. What?
How long have tampons been in the market? How long have these materials been in use? You’re using these for a week every month for about thirty years. Have they had thirty years to confirm that there is no risk to using these products against a membrane that the product itself is depriving of its natural protection? The reason that your vagina is so damned awesome and can have things shoved into it, mostly without worry or fear, is because of the mucus that lines it. Suck that up with a tampon and guess what… you’re left unprotected.
I’m going to end with the image above. Hopefully I’ve already given you plenty to think about, but what I love about this last one is that guess what… they’re not using some blue antiseptic horror liquid to demonstrate their product. In fact, if you didn’t know what it was, you might think it was a new innovative red wine glass, ready to launch just in time for you to sport your summer whites without fear…
