charting your cycle

Last week a group of women and a few token men sat in a lamp lit room on cushions snacking on tea and biscuits and listened to the adventures in menstration, a two women team reading from zines and telling stories of menstration. Your rag, the time of the month, your friend or your period, what ever you happen to say seems to be a mystery to most and a tabboo for many. The event itself was great, but the best part like usual is the discussions in the pub. Thats when the horror stories come out, the phlisophical discussion on to have or not to have the period and the support on our experiences of PMS. And from what I shared and heard there needs to be support groups for our partners almost more then ourselves!!

From my cultural studies feminist mind the most interesting part was the critique of mentration ads over the years. The pertrayal of menstration as something to hide to be ashamed about. Years of advertising that sell products that poisen our bodies and continiuosly tell us that there is something wrong with our bodies something we should be ashamed of and that we should subordinatly bow down to the men in our lives who don't want anything to do with our smells, moods and undaintness.

The duo had made this charts to keep track of your cycle. I never use to pay much attention to these things. But over the years I have begun a much closer relationship with my body, for the first time I have started to keep track of my period and I love it. The idea that you can start understanding the way to feel and can predict the upheaval. For someone who doens't have a 28 day cycle its intrigueing to see the pattern I do have. The women were saying that although your one year cycle might seem all over the place; if you were to chart your cycle for a few years there might be a bigger pattern out there.

So stories of keepers, reusable pads, leaking and mentrual blood art have filtered there way into daily conversations and I say its about time. Its not new for women to talk amonst themselves, yet we often filter our dialogue in groups with men. Yet if we are to reach equality I say that something that is this normal with such regularity among half the population we should be talking and talking loud, till the men in our lives are sharing stories in the adventures of menstration by proxy.