Period Piece

Don’t click on this story if you are in any way squeamish. But I DARE YOU TO. Double. Dare. You.

Menstrual activism. Think about that for a moment because they are two words not often used together. The only activism most of us indulge in during our period is running to the pantry to fetch more chocolate. But there are other women who feel differently. Who ACT differently. Women who do interesting and creative things during their period. WITH their period.

Are you still reading? Stay with me because it gets so good.

The Guardian reports:

Menstrual activism certainly isn’t new. In 1970, in The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer memorably wrote that “if you think you are emancipated, you might consider the idea of tasting your own menstrual blood – if it makes you sick, you’ve a long way to go, baby”. Bobel has charted the movement’s history, writing about the first “bleed-in” in 1973, when 13 women gathered in the US and “shared stories of their first periods”.

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.

Lipstick! From menstrual blood! There’s a budget beauty tip for you! And who knew you could use a tampon string as a musical instrument. See how much you learn here on Mamamia?

Now, I want to tell you about another menstrual activist, an artist called Lani Beloso who saves all sorts of money on paint. Oh yes.

Jezebel reports:

“One day,” she says, “I thought: I’m gonna sit over something and I’m going to see exactly how much comes out of me-because I thought it was a gallon. I thought I was bleeding to death every month. I wanted to actually see the amount…I’m just going to sit over a canvas and make a painting out of it while I’m at it.”

That was the beginning of “The Period Piece,” a project in which Beloso, already a painter/photographer, created 13 canvases with her own menstrual blood, representing a year’s worth of cycles. She wasn’t making a statement-she was just wanted to make the pain worth something.

Beloso actually did just stay there and bleed on a canvas for the first painting, but for the others she collected her blood and then applied it.

 

Marvelous. Bloody marvelous.

Hmmm, if you painted a picture with your period, what would it be?