Playing On The Grit
Twitter: @leighjcooper
- Apr 2, 2008
- 340
This is seriously f***ed up!
One of Ingrid berthon-Moine's portraits of women wearing their menstrual blood as lipstick
One morning in 2005, Chella Quint was lying in bed wondering if her period was due. That day she was entering a contest to create a magazine in 24 hours. She needed an idea, and the two thoughts collided. Why not create a 10-year chart for her menstrual cycle? She need never lie in bed wondering again. She could include interviews, a diagram of female reproductive organs, an ode to alternative sanitary products . . .
So began Quint's life as a menstrual activist. Since that hastily written debut, she has created four issues of her 'zine, Adventures in Menstruating, complete with leakage horror stories and tampon craft projects. She has taken her "menstrual comedy" show from her home in Sheffield to feminist festivals in Berlin, Cork and Malmö. And she has started a project to photograph her "biggest bugbear": the sanitary disposal units (SDUs) in British toilets.
"My partner Sarah calls them 'the elephant in the smallest room'," she says of the SDUs. "Nobody talks about them. They're huge, grey and hulking, and if your bottom is bigger than your head then you've come into bodily contact with them. I'm just trying to chronicle the number of clues a woman might see each day that say 'You are a bio-hazard'." Quint's mission is to take the shame out of periods, to "help alter the visibility of menstruation, so that it's at least normal to talk about it. Because, right now, it's not".
Earlier this year, 18-year-old Rachel Kauder Nalebuff published My Little Red Book, a collection of first period stories by women including Erica Jong, which became a US bestseller. In June, the British-based artist Ingrid Berthon- Moine exhibited a video at the Venice Biennale of her twanging her tampon string to the song Slave to the Rhythm. She is currently completing a series of photographs featuring women wearing their menstrual blood as lipstick.
One of Ingrid berthon-Moine's portraits of women wearing their menstrual blood as lipstick
One morning in 2005, Chella Quint was lying in bed wondering if her period was due. That day she was entering a contest to create a magazine in 24 hours. She needed an idea, and the two thoughts collided. Why not create a 10-year chart for her menstrual cycle? She need never lie in bed wondering again. She could include interviews, a diagram of female reproductive organs, an ode to alternative sanitary products . . .
So began Quint's life as a menstrual activist. Since that hastily written debut, she has created four issues of her 'zine, Adventures in Menstruating, complete with leakage horror stories and tampon craft projects. She has taken her "menstrual comedy" show from her home in Sheffield to feminist festivals in Berlin, Cork and Malmö. And she has started a project to photograph her "biggest bugbear": the sanitary disposal units (SDUs) in British toilets.
"My partner Sarah calls them 'the elephant in the smallest room'," she says of the SDUs. "Nobody talks about them. They're huge, grey and hulking, and if your bottom is bigger than your head then you've come into bodily contact with them. I'm just trying to chronicle the number of clues a woman might see each day that say 'You are a bio-hazard'." Quint's mission is to take the shame out of periods, to "help alter the visibility of menstruation, so that it's at least normal to talk about it. Because, right now, it's not".
Earlier this year, 18-year-old Rachel Kauder Nalebuff published My Little Red Book, a collection of first period stories by women including Erica Jong, which became a US bestseller. In June, the British-based artist Ingrid Berthon- Moine exhibited a video at the Venice Biennale of her twanging her tampon string to the song Slave to the Rhythm. She is currently completing a series of photographs featuring women wearing their menstrual blood as lipstick.
