“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.”
Alexander Pope
knowing half the story doesn’t give one insight into the complexities of it. It gives them a shallow understanding and an unjustifiably pretentious attitude. Lacking understanding of a situation gives way to uncalled for judgement and a never fading resentment from the other party.
While on Whyte Ave last month, I stopped at Earth’s General Store to make a purchase. After months of research, reading, and a general attitude of wanting to change the way I look at my period, I decided to buy the keeper. The Keeper is a great alternative to the wasteful imaginings of a basically evil marketing industry, that promotes a feeling of shame and the idea that menstruation is something that is dirty. Typically, manufacturers resort to neat, packaged terms that allow for them to completely disassociate the concept of menstruation from the product, because women obviously cannot handle scientific terms/phrases like “vagina”, or “the ovaries release of the egg”, or even “blood”. The wonder and beauty of menstruation are kept from generations of women for the sake of marketing. Pills containing excessive amounts of hormones are sold to teenaged girls (or sometimes much younger, given the prevalence of early onset puberty in north america) with the idea of “getting rid of that pesky horrible bodily function forever!” Menstruation isn’t pissing or shitting. Menstruation is the blood that comes out of your cunt, the blood of a woman, the blood that indicates the process of something beautiful happening inside your body. Understanding that makes it substantially more wonderful to be a woman. Ever heard of Menarche Rituals? Probably not…in North American culture, one ofthe most hypocritical and patriarchal cultures in the world, a woman’s period is something to be dreaded, something relegated to an embarassing moment with white pants and a classroom full of boys. Education about menstruation is given to the girls at a young age, and boys are forced to make horrid assumptions about a bodily function that their own mothers experienced. Imagine how different a place north america would be if a woman’s period was celebrated.
Anyways, back to the keeper. It’s a menstrual cup. Easy to insert, less harm to your body, less harm to the environment, lasts for ten years, and overall cost effective. Stick it to the industry that teaches a woman that her normal bodily functions are to be loathed.
