This is all new to me, but here i go!
I am one fifth of a street art collective aimed at adding voice and visibility to issues surrounding women and trans people, our goal is to be loud and creative. This project is done as an educating tool to engage and entertain the women and trans community.
All of us have our own issues that we want to entertain through mindful street art, but we are working under the broad yet inclusive mandate to create loud voices that anyone and everyone can adopt. With this open policy in mind, we are going to be documenting our amateur descent into feminist centered street art.
My focus is going to be on Menstrual activism, which is chocked full of amazing history.
Inspiration for my Menstrual activism started way back in 1992 when I watched video of L7's lead singer Donita Spark chuck a tampon at an angry crowd. L7 is old school all girl punk/metal band, if you haven't heard of them yet you must check them out.> L7
Interestingly the only video I could find reveals a lot of anxiety about menstrual blood. For example the commentator has trouble calling a tampon a tampon and insists on the sanitized term of "feminine hygiene product" - these products are not hygienic (they are often very toxic) and what the hell is so wrong with the term "tampon"? Instead women are forced to see and hear sanitized rhetoric everywhere from the public bathroom stalls to VH1!
Also this video is embedded in a sausage filled world known as metal! After VH1 reveals this 'shocking moment' they need a comedian to respond with disgust in her un-lady like behavior: "the lady, and i say that loosely... thats not lady-like"
hmm.. what is 'lady-like' have to do with it? Why does a fierce, outspoken woman lose her femininity to so called 'masculine' actions ?
There is an obvious comparison to be made between monthly blood and what I would like to call 'masculine blood.' Because Spark is not spewing bat blood from her mouth or spitting beer into the audience this "different" form of personal bodily fluid is considered "yucky"
albeit I don't want to be slapped in the face with a tampon, but i think its interesting to question the nature of our cultural ideology of gross or yucky.
Just to remind everyone, I'm not trying to say that we should all throw our bloody tampons at one another and embrace our monthly blood. Instead, im trying to understand how monthly blood is defined by our culture. Through the narration of the video clip blood is defined as "yucky." but why?
Is it the idea that monthly blood is a bodily fluid that can't ( or shouldn't) be ( literally ) thrown around as legitimate form of expression? Its tough to imagine it as legitimate.
So my question is why can a bloody war wound or bloody bar fight injury define a man as strong and reinforces his masculinity? Yet women who use tampons and bleeds for a week ( in my case two ) are "Yucky" ? what would happen if women embraced this silenced and shamed topic and began measuring the amount of blood lost in each month to how feminine we are?
here is the video >>
Flying Tampons
this is all true: i remember watching the VH1 special that showed and discussed Donita Spark throwing the tampon into the audience - i think i was about 8 years old. i recall being completely repulsed and i never really forgot about it even now. obviously, i feel very differently about it now but as an 8 year old girl i was definitely appalled. i think, most of all, i was grossed out by the thought of someone throwing a used tampon at people. also, as a young girl i was horrified by the thought of getting my period. i dreaded it from the day my mom told me that "one day" i would get it. i don't know why i was so scared. i wish i could go back in time and ask myself why. and then when the day came that i finally got my period, january 12 2002 (i know, it's weird... i remember the exact day) well i would call it nothing short of a shitfest. i remember screaming and crying and wanting to die. i stayed home from school because i couldn't stop crying. i was so angry with myself and i hated myself on that day. it's strange that i felt that way. i don't know why, really. i think it goes back to society shaming menstruation and making it into something really private. i just thought i would share a little story about myself and my experience as a child and first-time menstruator. i'm fine with my period now and i'm fine with Donita Spark and all her tampon-throwing, non-lady-like behavior - in fact, i respect it now.
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