ONE GIRL, ONE CUP

A PERIOD PIECE

IS YOUR PERIOD GROSS?
When you tug on a tampon string and out slides a soiled gore cork, you hold it like it’s a dead mouse. A look of repugnance on your face. When you peel that pad out of your panty crotch and it makes that tearing sound like velcro you worry that someone will hear. You roll it up and wrap it in the plastic wrapper of the new one you are taping to your ugly period panties and throwing it in the trash. Hoping that no one will find it and see what a nasty filthy secreter of ick you are. The dry weave layer keeping your precious princess from wallowing in your sloppy sick woman goo. Wings? The wings don’t keep it from ruining panties and the pads don’t even fly. Tampons are wads of… well… cotton. OK, but you pee on the string, don’t you. When you have to go really bad and forget to hold the string off to the side.
How does this make you feel? It makes you feel dirty and unclean and unsexy. UNFEMININE. Why are you doing this every month?

Did you know that there’s been an alternative since the 70’s? The period cup is an unsung hero.

ALL HAIL THE PERIOD CUP!

YOUR USED PADS ARE IN A LANDFILL SOMEWHERE MAKING RATS CRY FROM THE SMELL.
Stop doing what big corporations tell you to do. The feminine hygiene aisle at the supermarket is huge. A huge waste of space. They want to create disposable products in order to make more money. They don’t care about anything else.
Here’s what they are saying to you:
Stick this in your odorous wang moccasin! It’s scented, you smelly witch!
Buy this! it’s got an environmentally friendly applicator, you leaver of carbon footprints!
Ooh, look how pretty! It’s in a pink box with flowers on it, it makes you feel so feminine and no one will be able to tell what it is should it fall out of your purse, you brainless consumer!

Ever sneeze with a tampon in and feel it peek out? Running to the bathroom to push it back in there, or to put a new one in. Oversize hand bag full of supplies. Now they have nicely packaged wipes to make you feel oh so fresh. Discretely wrapped tampons. Pretty little packages containing a single pad.  It’s a vicious cycle. Your lady garden stinks like period so you use products to mask or add flowery smells to the whole mess. You worry that you smell like period because YOU DO! And now you smell like period and a bouquet of springtime cherry blossoms that have been in your underwear covered in bloody discharge and sweat all day. Like someone has brought a floral arrangement to pig rendering plant.
The landfills are full of your uterus leavings. Your flesh-soaked waste doing nothing but taking up more space. Stinking, decaying, and slowly becoming one with all your trash.
Part of you. NOW GARBAGE.
How much money do you spend in your lifetime on period products? Go ahead, calculate it. I’ll wait…. just kidding you don’t have to, but you will want to later. It’s probably a lot. You have to always have some in stock in your bathroom. You have to send your man out and get you some when the cramps are bad and all you want to do is lay around popping motrin and watching tv in your crappy pastel fleece pj bottoms. Do you have a brand/style/size that you have to get? Better run out yourself with a paper towel jammed in your undies so you can get the exact right ones. If only there was an easier way!

We are amazing creatures. The way our bodies work. Self cleaning machines. Perfection. We are not dirty. We are not unsexy. We are beautiful. Why are you letting our culture make you feel like we poor poor ladies have to endure this indignity every month? Because when you were 13 someone told you that it was gross and just a thing we have to live with so some day we can be mommies. Here, put this up there and don’t talk about it. Health class takes the magic out of it.

BEHOLD, THE PERIOD CUP!
The greatest invention that you have never heard of. You buy one for about $35 bucks. Never spend another penny on your period. Unless you want chocolate and motrin. Now you can afford the good toilet paper.
It’s silicone. No latex, dyes, or chemicals. No smells. No trash.
You simply pop it up in your vagina and it catches all the blood. You can’t feel it. It never leaks. You can run, do yoga, go dancing, go commando. GO FREAKING CAMPING IN THE WOODS FOR FIVE DAYS! Trip on acid, get drunk at a bar, go somewhere without your purse! Wear a bikini, one that rides up your buttcheeks. Wear jeggings. wear a miniskirt without underwear. I don’t own any “period panties”. In fact, I rarely wear panties at all. Be free. Let that thing flop out!

Surprisingly, it’s hard to find a cup to buy.  I’m not trying to sell you anything. But I do think that they should be more readily available as an option. In my area you can find The Diva Cup at small whole foods stores and all natural pharmacies. For some reason it’s difficult to buy them online. If you can’t find one locally, please contact me and I will be happy to sell you one using paypal. If you’re already convinced you can stop reading now.

Light that tampon string on fire like it’s a fuse and blow up your tampons.

ENDOMETRIOSIS
This is why I started using it a few years ago. After being sick of having to wear both tampons and pads at the same time. Endometriosis is very common and usually no big deal, but it means that my flow is sometimes chunky. I have a friend who passes massive clots that look like fetal pigs. I swear they have heartbeats. What good is a tampon? No good for her. She has to sit in a kiddie pool in her living room for 5 days grunting out blood babies. The tampons don’t soak up globs of uterus lining. It  just works it’s way out and slides onto the pad. Where it gets all squished up against your pretty parts and eventually works it’s way into the pad. That’s yucky. Muff all matted with chunky red snot. Walking around with all that sticky wetness rubbing into your delicate skin, irritating you and giving you diaper rash. MISERY. So uncomfortable.  When I walked in a giant clot catcher/pad I sounded like a toddler rustling along with huggies. When I would sleep on my back it would inevitably leak up my ass crack and get all over my sheets. I had to sleep on a towel. With a giant long pad stuck to my giant period panties and a super absorbent wad of cotton inside me that I swear I could feel sucking every drop of moisture from my body and a slimy tail hanging out of me.

MECHANICS
The cup stays in place. Unless you are taking a giant monster dump. Just take it out if you need to poo. That should be common sense. Usually I dump it out in the toilet before my morning movement. I empty it before bed too. Just rinse it in the sink and pop it back in.
With time you will get really good at taking it out and dumping it in one swift movement. You will develop your own technique for putting it in.  Like a snatch ninja. You will know when it’s in place. The freedom of knowing that you are good to go. It’s amazing. Everything takes practice. You fumbled when you first started using tampons and pads. This is easy.
There are instructions on the box and videos on the internet of how to put it in.  It’s springy silicone and very malleable. You pinch the mouth shut and fold it over as you stick it in your hole. Releasing it as it gets past the opening so it pops open and sort of suctions itself into place. Wiggle it around and twist it until it feels comfortable. Done.
To take it out you “bear down” a little and pull gently. Sometimes you need to break the suction by putting your finger up next to it and pushing in on the side of the cup. Pulling it out without squeezing it so as not to spill it.
You can even orgasm with it in. I mean not because it feel so good to wear. That would be a little weird.
Want have intercourse? No problem. Take it out first. Period sex is amazing and helps with cramps too. There’s a new reusable cup available in the period aisle called The Soft Cup. Finally! This one is great because you can have sex while it’s in. No mess… unless you’re into that sort of thing.

HOLY GRAIL
There are markings on the cup to measure your flow. I’m not particularly anal about how long I leave it in or how much comes out. I am so used to it that I just know when I should empty it and when my period is over. When I’m in a hurry, I don’t even look. Sometimes I like to squish my finger in it to see how thick it is and to observe the tattered lining of my uterus. Hey, why not. It’s not dirty, and it’s mine.

So as I’m dumping my lovely cup full of uterus cleansing magical lady-soup into the toilet, I’m thinking… about stuff. Like weird things because I’m the overly creative type. I think about that hoarders show and wondering if anyone hoards their period blood. About Howard Hughes. How funny it would be to have a shelf lined with mason jars full of blood neatly labelled with dates. Lines on the sides measuring output for the month.
Snickering to myself thinking about many different strange things could be done with stored period blood. Rinsing out the cup in the sink and watching the swirling red strings of uterus lining spin-art around the white porcelain. I’m mesmerized with the possibilities.

That miracle substance isn’t just blood. It’s full of uterus lining, stem cells, a teeny tiny little egg, bodily fluids, blood, etc. That egg. It had potential to be a person. Men get to spill their seed all over a paper towel, or a woman’s face, or their desk at the office as they yank it to porn. This must be a great feeling of power. Women just bleed into stinky cotton products and feel shame. I’m staring at a silicone cup of stuff that came out of me. Neatly collected and full of potential.  I’m mad with power! I want to rub it all over myself and run through the neighborhood shrieking. I want to spill it on some guy’s face as I’m cumming and revel in the humiliation and sense of sexual domination that a man gets to feel when he ejaculates LIFE. Hell yeah! Someone needs to kiss me with a mouth full of my period blood! (you were wondering why on earth I’m single… I don’t know either). Drink me! Who knows what it will happen?

This is sacred stuff. Precious fluids! Now we have a way to collect it. Why dump it down the toilet? That’s putting it into a treatment plant somewhere. More human waste. I’m no hippie, but waste is just wrong.
It’s got to have some kind of use.

There are tons of theories about the fountain of youth. Immortality through blood. What substance could be more powerful than this? I’m not talking about goofy satanic rituals where we all stand around chanting and sipping from a goblet full of virgin’s period blood before we sacrifice her during the solstice to gain her soul. Wiccans topless in a drum circle drinking a mixture of human milk and period blood as they show their oneness with the Goddess. We are mother earth, fertile and giving life. Ok, all that does sounds fun.
I’m talking about science-y stuff. Someone smarter than me needs to get on it. Heal the world with menstrual fluids. At the very least it can be used as compost. Mixed with water and given to plants. I’ll bet my tomatoes are going to be the bomb this year.

MAY YOUR CUP RUNNETH OVER

Get a cup. For yourself, for the ladies in your life. They make wonderful gifts.
Enjoy your periods. I’m enjoying mine.

-B