1.) If you have period sex, and then the guy cums in you, how long should you wait to put a tampon in? This is something that never even occurred to me until two months ago when the situation presented itself for the first time. Ejaculate is really thick, and i know when I wipe it off me with paper towels, it just kinda smears around. If paper towels don't really absorb it, how can compacted cotton? And then what happens if you can't get all of the semen out of you, but you put a tampon in, and it doesn't get absorbed? Does it just hang around inside you, stinking up the joint? There were a lot of questions in this one question, I know.

2.) What should you do when you realize you have to poop immediately after you put in a new tampon? I've been mulling over this one for years. Luckily (or, actually, unluckily) for me, my poop opportunities are few and far between, and usually, I empty out right at the beginning of my period. But there are those rare instances when I do get caught with a tampon in and then get the urge to purge my bowels. It's so confusing because I don't know whether to pull out the new tampon, and risk getting all scratched up, or keep it in and risk "delivering" it in the toilet. I usually just spazz out, grimace and remove the scratchy tampon.

3.) Exactly how long do you have to leave a tampon in to get Toxic Shock Syndrome? One of my friends left her tampon in for 10 friggin' days, and even had sex with it up there, and she's just fine. Do women even get TSS from tampons anymore?

Earlier: Ten Days In The Life Of A Tampon
Jezebel Crashes The Tyra Show's Vaginas Episode

Ganesh goes on to explain that her family, like many others, "has long since discontinued with the seclusion tradition as archaic and regressive." While I'm sure we can agree that the mandatory isolation of a menstruating woman is a no-good thing, doesn't this "three-day vacation" idea sound rather appealing?

One interesting thing about India is that menstruation is part of the Hindu religion. Writes Ganesh: "Ancient tradition revered the Sacred Feminine, and regarded the menstrual flow as affirmation of life. At Assam’s Kamakhya Temple — one of the nine Shakti Peeths — the annual Ambubachi Mela celebrates the Sacred Feminine in the Devi’s annual menstrual flow. The spring water from the Yoni — symbolising the power of procreation — and pieces of red cloth are distributed as prasad (gifts)." And the idea of period blood as some kind of "gift" isn't really that far off: Ganesh asks, "What would my grandmother — if she were alive today — have to say about recent medical research that finds menstrual blood to be rich in stem cells?"

Thinking of the period as something divine, instead of unclean, makes even more sense now that scientists have revealed that culling stem cells from menstrual blood could be easier than mining bone marrow. But while it's great that we have put (most) taboos and superstitions behind us, for some reason this relaxing, three-day break for the flow still sounds like a good idea. Or am I the only one?

Sacred Feminine: The Divine Flow [Times Of India]

As Tracie wrote in her post about period dramas, blood makes people uncomfortable. TV commercials are gleaming, clean shiny things where no one bleeds or poops (ever see the All-Bran commercial where bricks stand in for crap?) Especially not women. The new Tampax commercials feature "Mother Nature" giving a woman her "monthly gift," which is a red present. Not bloody jelly blobs coming from her uterus, but a neatly wrapped box that might as well have a cashmere sweater inside. I'm not saying that I want to see blood in tampon commercials. I don't know what I want to see. And it seems like the ad execs don't know either. When it comes to period ads, what would you like to see? Have there ever been any ads that you thought were well done?

The Libra commercial:

A Touch of Feminine Hygenius [AdAge]
Earlier: The Importance Of Being Able To Change Your Period Products In "Public"
Leave It To Beaver

Of the dudes I polled for this post, most of them had the same answer: "If I'm into her, that stuff doesn't bother me." Which is the right attitude to have, although when asked if it was more intimate to insert a tampon or remove it, they all said they'd be less bothered by witnessing insertion. One guy actually said, "You know I'm a little crazy about blood and HIV and all that." HIV!!! On a tampon!!!

So when in a relationship do you cross that barrier? For some of us, it's not really a choice. When I was 17, I changed my pad at my boyfriend's house and his dog found it and tore the shit out of it and got it all over the upstairs in his house. We were at the movies at the time, so his brother-in-law had to clean it up. I was mortified and actually, looking back on it, they were kind of asses for telling me about it, just to embarrass me. The silver-lining to that is that period stuff has never embarrassed me at all since then.

Anyway, I've always thought it is bizarre and unacceptable when guys who like anal sex are weird about when girls talk about pooping. It's like, you know what? That hole was actually made for poop to come out, not for your dick to go in. And I think it's equally bizarre and unacceptable when guys are weird about their girlfriends changing their period products in front of them. I understand that the need for a level of mystique to keep things sexy, but it's almost impossible to sustain throughout the course of a relationship: it's exhausting. It's also damaging: trying to mask the reality of our bodily functions from men simply reinforces the idea of women as sex objects, not human beings.

Earlier: How Do You Break The Poop Ice With A New Paramour?

Issac Hayes Dies At Age 65 [Rolling Stone]
Issac Hayes, 65, A Creator of '70s Soul Style, Dies [NY Times]

So, for those of us not really organized enough to keep track of our periods, resulting in monthly surprise periods, pregnancy scares or embarrassment when the gyno asks you to list the date of your last period and it takes a really long time to work it out… Comes this nifty site, mon.thly. You give them the date of the first day of your last cycle (I know, but you're at home so you can take your time), and they then calculate the date of your next period and e-mail you a reminder. Oh, and it's free. This is why the internet was invented. [mon.thly]

I hinted at this a bit in my post about that Roman Polanski documentary, but people really took it the wrong way, saying that I was a rape apologist or something, which is just silly. I think what it comes down to is maybe the divide between second and third wave feminism. Or actually, maybe it's that some people don't accept that feminism isn't monolithic, and that we can (and do) have different views about a number of things, from porno to age of consent, with the one basic truth being that "women are people too." Of course I'm not a rape apologist. But I'm a child influenced by riot grrrl and the sex-positivity movement, so maybe things I say can come off as harsh, and perhaps get misinterpreted by those who don't place as much importance on those things. (Or maybe people placed too much importance on an IM conversation, which is always a more casual form of communication.)

Anyway, this is kind of related to that, but only slightly: What I'm getting at is that yeah, duh, rape is bad and awful and horrible. But there's so much more to our shared culture as girls than just rape, domestic violence and menstrual cramps. We have unicorns, and Easy-Bake Ovens, and our favorite vibrators, and Maybelline Great Lash, and a female presidential candidate, and stories of losing things up our vaginas for days on end that make us laugh.

I like the girl parts of being a girl. I can enjoy cross-stitching and cock-sucking. And I can express my own opinions without being labeled a bad feminist. And I, nor anyone else, should ever have to apologize for any of it.

Related: Bikini Kill - I Like Fucking [YouTube]

WARNING: The following is a really, really gross story. It may even qualify as "beyond gross." It also: signifies nothing, gives you wayyyy too much information, and is told by a total idiot. Its sole redeeming trait is that it involves a scenario we've all feared before — the one where you get a tampon stuck up inside you for a treacherously, perilously long period of time — and it has a (marginally) happy ending. Read at your own risk, folks. I'll tell you if I get Toxic Shock Syndrome!

It was a beautiful week and a beautiful weekend. It was verdant, sun-dappled, horticulture-redolent, exfoliated, affluent, groomed, merry, relaxed, pressed, aspirational, and at its beginning, even fragrant. (That would change.) It was all so dizzyingly gorgeous I could feel a low-grade panic trickle through my chest. But it was all good.

"Moe," my friend John asked. "Do you want half a Vicodin?" I did indeed.

I was at my best friend's wedding. As my heels dug into the soft mud beneath the outdoor pews, I could feel my period start. I hate my period more every time it comes. It comes a lot these days, every two or three weeks. I assume my uterus has put itself on a fast-track to complete the mandatory number of eggs required to call it quits and resign itself to waiting for death. But god, in the meantime, what a nuisance.

I could reproduce with John. He likes drugs and is writing a piece on a surgeon who conducts head transplants. Apparently the downside of a head transplant is that full-body paralysis is an unavoidable side effect. Whatever; I read a story about a perfectly mobile woman who sat on the toilet for two years, who sat on the toilet so long she became stuck; alone with her mind and the receptacle for her gross bodily functions. Yes I'm being glib! I just had half a Vicodin, but this I can say in all earnestness: I would not miss a single physical sensation involved with getting my period. I just got it. Thanks Vicodin!

The evening progressed gaily. I bought tampons and made jokes and smoked cigarettes and partook of a very open bar. At one point I leaned back into a candle and set my cardigan on fire but everyone laughed it off. At another point an old paramour showed me a picture of his 13-day-old child — so you've averted nuclear holocaust! I laughed — and told him about a recent abortion and he told me solemnly it was a shame because I'd "be a good mother" and I naturally laughed that off too. I made out with John and he told me he couldn't take me home because he felt that the girl he was dating he could actually see marrying some day, and I laughed that off — was there another option? —and apologized for my behavior and called it a night. There was no place to go, though, so I took my bleeding self to the train station to wait for a train back to the city.

Transit stations at 2 a.m. are invariably cold and populated by desperate people gone crazy from being prodded every time they fall asleep. They are what my psychographic imagines it is like to wait for death. Missing a train used to distress me gravely for these reasons, but I am old enough to know the Amtrak police have no sympathy for the distresses of my psychographic, and really, why should they. So I bought my ticket and sat calmly, curled my legs inside my hoodie for warmth, and resigned myself to five hours of misery lite. Some actually interesting things happened during those five hours, but the important part is that at some point in my fatigue I inserted a new tampon without removing the first.

The week proceeded with a routine debauchery that reflected the tone of the weekend that had begotten it. I went on a date on Sunday night, and a book party on Monday after which I ended up fucking a friend, and a bar on Tuesday after which I ended up fucking an old fuck buddy, and by Thursday night I'd washed my sheets and shaved my legs and gotten a facial and my period was still hanging around, so I went home early and decided to wait until the period had ended before attempting any more pointless copulation. I don't particularly like period sex to begin with, but this was a most foul period, heavy and brown and rotten-smelling; the sort of period that is trying to tell you something, if you believe in that sort of thing, which I don't, mostly because I am lazy. By Friday night it had still not passed and I woke Saturday morning to find, much to my chagrin, that I'd stained the sheets again. "I think it was pretty good because you said, 'That was awesome,'" sex partner d'giorno told me. I didn't remember. I ran to the bathroom to change my underwear.

By Sunday the stench had soured further. We took a long walk through the park and joked about how ill-attuned we were to things of "beauty." Beauty, how it is wasted on us. Beauty, how it fills me only with dread. "My senses are alive to three things," he said. "Stylish prose, good conversation, and the female body."

That's because he has never gotten a fucking period, I thought.

He was going on a date with a 22-year-old, he felt compelled to offer. Good. 22-year-old menstrual blood does not smell like this. It smells bad, sure, but it is at least mostly red. Don't lose your affinity for the female body. You have plenty of time to knock one up and watch it morph into something totally alien, then splatter out a whole mass of fluids and split open to yield one of those babies you are so fond of eyeing warily on the streets of Park Slope, as well as some inadvertent fecal matter.

I went home alone with my odors. He joked that he hoped I didn't get pregnant and bring about some "My Two Dads" scenario with dude #2. Ha ha ha, I thought. In My Two Dads, the mom got to be dead. I would not get that luxury.

By Monday it occurred to me it might be a bacterial infection, which I'd deserve, or some other sort of sexually transmitted disease, which I would also deserve, and that I ought to make an appointment with a gynecologist, which was true even before I started emitting the thin brown fluid of stench. The flow had slowed to a chronic drip — Drip! there's an STD named after that, right? — but the blood itself had gotten somehow older and fouler. On Tuesday I asked Anna for a day off to go to the gynecologist, grousing for a moment on my symptoms.

ANNA: you don't have a tampon stuck up there do you?
ANNA: like an old one?

I think my mind had entertained this notion, though somehow I expected that gravity, intent as it was on imposing its will on the rest of me, would have expelled the thing by now. But no, on further reflection, it made sense. I didn't work on the rest of me like I performed Kegels. There wasn't a whole lot else I could do, sitting on the couch all day. I pondered buying lube and rubber gloves and a six-pack of beer and attempting to dig it out right then. But it had been there nine days, and the primaries were on. I bought only beer. I drank two and a half. I fell asleep. The next morning I awoke. And smelled.

MOE: i think i actually must have a tampon stuck up me

ANNA: really

MOE: yeah after crappy hour i'm going to get some gloves on and get this shit out

ANNA: oh god

While cursing the gentleness of our anti-antibacterial Whole Foods soap, I devised a way around my lack of latex gloves. Condoms! Finally, a use for them.

I stuck one on my finger and one on my thumb and did my best to rub off the lube. Dooce came on the TV. I had been meaning to watch, but whatever. Progress seemed imminent, and six condoms later, it was. The tampon emerged, grayish brown and bloated like a corpse in the harbor. I carried it, fingers still in condoms, toward the toilet.

"It's a good thing you don't have a dog!" Anna said brightly when I relayed the news.

"Why?"

"Dogs always like to find this stuff and carry it around."

"Oh my God Anna, you think I would just throw that out? No, I flushed it. I flushed it THREE TIMES actually."

"Oh right, I forgot your policy on that," she said.

"But hold on," I panicked. "I had sex three times with that thing. Do you think it absorbed a bunch of sperm? Do you think I should get Plan B? Holy shit, you think I'm already pregnant?"

"NO!" she said automatically. "Sperm can't survive that. It's toxic. I'm pretty sure those sorts of conditions would kill the sperm."

"Like all the bacteria would kill them off?" I asked moronically.

"I don't know. I mean, maybe you should get Plan B," she said.

My roommate overheard us.

"Dude, if you managed to get pregnant with a super absorbency tampon stuck inside you the whole time, you have to have it, I don't care," she said.

"Dude, that is the most retarded thought ever. Ever."

Image: A Tampon Applicator [Flickr]

Writes LeBlanc:

Fourteen years after I started bleeding every month, I feel like I've mostly gotten the hang of it. But the other day, I realized the extent to which having 'gotten the hang of it' is only true within the limited context of our culture of concealment. Getting the hang of it means learning how to conceal it as best as possible, so no one ever knows you've got it. Where menstruating is embarrassing, and though almost every woman of child-bearing age menstruates, you still don't want any man not your intimate to know that you are actually bleeding right now.

Coming Out of the Menstruation Closet [Bitch Ph. D.]

Like, yeah motherfucker, that is what you do. I didn't choose to have a motherfucking period every month, but I was sufficiently blessed to be born in a country where most citizens have televisions and access to cars and the toilets are evolved many stages beyond the outhouses and holes in the ground used by our ancestors. So WHATEVER. I refuse to buy into this "don't flush tampons" crap when there are people who still can't pick up their dog shit and also people who charge their companies to fly around their own private jets and people slaughtering crippled cows and people mutilating other people's genitals...anyway, you get the idea.

First up is a TV spot from the '80s for Always Plus Thin, that has one woman orgasmically exclaiming, "I love thin!"

This '80s Always commercial is advertising the latest innovation in menstruation: Wings.

This is actually a modern tampon ad that's probably one of the best things ever, if only because of the split the cheerleader does, with a full-on crotch shot right in front of the camera. It's for Playtex Sport. (BTW, what the fuck is a "sport" tampon?)

Here's some of that blue liquid for you, circa 1997.

Also from 1997, a Midol ad, in which we learn that "some men think strong opinions are a symptom of PMS."

About 11 years earlier, Midol's advertising was much more science-y.

Another one from the '80s, Premsyn PMS, "for the period before your period before your period."

Here's Courtney Cox in a Tampax in 1985.

From 1981, here's Tampax Plus, with "decorative packaging!"

From 1979, Playtex with deodorant.

This one might be the best of the oldies, since it features the triumvirate of feminine protection ads: Mother, Daughter, and Best Friend.

In this 1981 ad, Brenda Vaccaro managed to land herself a spokesperson deal.

And for shits and giggles, here's the SNL spoof on "Kotex Classic."

Check out this vintage Midol print ad:

From 1974, the copy reads, "Be the you he likes. Good to be around, any day of the month."

And lastly, wouldn't you kill for that futuristic Kotex outfit/box!?

Midol: So Your Boyfriend Won't Dump You [Feministing]
Kotex Gives You Wings [Vintage Ads]

[Image via Oh! My God! I Miss You ]

Usually when people in photos are bleeding I get a queasy feeling and have to lie down, but with Britney I just stared for a few minutes. And got up to grab a yogurt. I tried to figure out when I'd be getting my period, failed, and sat down again. (And ate some dates. Maybe soon? Whatevs.)

The moment this woman ceased to be an exaggerated symbol of the distinctly American phenomenon that is "peaking in high school" and started being something different entirely was so long ago no one even remembers it anymore. Was it that first guy she married? Breaking up with Justin? "Do you believe in...time travel speed?" We say we want her to come back, but hello! No we don't! All she ever was to this country was a celebration of our dumbest, vapidest, most brainless guiltiest guilty pleasures. Even her voice is like... the auditory equivalent of Bugle corn snacks. And there I go again, with the overwrought analogies we all use to justify the time I just spent trying to inject meaning into that which is ultimately devoid of meaning, substance into an individual who has none. Who was never allowed to have any.

Anna called up the agency to see how much the period photos were fetching. "They're not for sale right now," she was told. But they're currently visible on their blog. "It was clear she was conflicted about them," said Anna of the woman who co-owns the photo agency. But in this business you don't really feel conflicted until the thing's already up on the internet. UPDATE: Hence with the "obituary writing contest." I was making a point by admitting that. See here for another example an attempt to make this same point.

I don't care about Britney. Perhaps in another time her meltdown would be something of poignance. Even Ronald Reagan's fiercest opponents didn't swarm his house posting photos of him having his diaper changed because hello, mothefucker deserved it for the Falklands/Panama/Iran Contra/whatever. Maybe "hate" is somehow more humane than the sort of sheer, comprehensive indifference we feel towards Britney Spears, even as we have witnessed her every hair color, wardrobe and weight fluctuation fluctuation for ten years at this point. Yeah, it probably is.

I guess we won't know for sure until Lauren Conrad dies.

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Bald Toxic Shock Girl's Misery Turns To Joy After Winning Three Year Modelling Contract [Daily Mail]
Toxic Shock Syndrome [Kids Health]
Toxic Shock Syndrome [Mayo Clinic]

• When it comes to choosing Mr. Right, women are more interested in a guy with good manners than good looks. Whatever, we like a hottie who can burp the alphabet. Can we get a 'true dat', Audrina? [Daily Express]
  
• Ninety-five percent of women have "issues" with their period. For women with more than the average "Ugh, you mean I have to run out and spend $6 on tampons again?" annoyance with their cycle — like severe cramps, diarrhea, and suicidal-PMS — CNN offers up the latest treatment methods. [CNN]
  
• The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence wants water births to be an option for all expectant mothers since they are the safest form of pain-relief during labor. Sidebar! Is birthing a baby in a pool just as funny as farting in a hot tub? Doubt it. [The Independent]

• An increasing number of Asian women are committing suicide in the London neighborhood of Southall by jumping onto train tracks. A women's organization attributes the rise in suicide to domestic violence within the community. [Times of London]
• Two Saudi women told the religious police to talk to the hand when the officers said they were inappropriately-dressed. Of course they were arrested (because that's what happens in Saudi Arabia when women dare to talk back). We hope they threw in two snaps and a circle, for good measure. [BoingBoing]
• Feministing cuts America's Next Top Racist a break, which is nice of them. We still think Adrienne Curry is a useless, bigoted fucktard, though. [Feministing]
• We can't believe this is even up for debate, but the US Court of Appeals is currently hearing testimony as to whether the state of Missouri can deny incarcerated women the right to timely and safe abortions. Bitch robbed a bank, let's punish her with an unwanted baby. [Ms.]
• The Acting Surgeon General appointed by President Bush is a hard-core emergency contraception opponent. Big fucking shocker. [Ms.]
• Pervy Polygamist Warren Jeffs was convicted as an accomplice to rape. Guess we know what's going to happen on Big Love next season! [NY Times]
• A long-term study has found that women who take the breast cancer drug Herceptin triple their chances of survival. Hmm, what are the chances our shitty health care insurance companies cover this wonder drug? [Daily Mail]
• Researchers have discovered 350 genes linked to female fertility which may help them figure out the mysteries of infertility. Biggest head-scratcher: Why is it that so many women who really want babies have a hard time (like Nicole Kidman!) but women who are completely devoid of a natural inclination to parent (like Brit) turn 'em out like flapjacks? [Science Daily]

The Menstruation Story [YouTube via NY Mag]

But wait! Today also sees the news that fertility experts are working on a pill-based method to delay the onset of menopause and allow women to bear children at later and later ages. Hey, we have an idea! Why don't they just combine the two pills? And, while they're at it, maybe they can add in some sort of toxin that makes women stop growing pubic hair!
Menstruation: Cycle Of Pain Or Creativity? [USAToday]
Pill May Help Delay Menopause [Guardian]
A Journal Of The Monthly Renewal Process [LiveJournal]
Earlier: Women Learn To Make Menopause Jokes. But The IT Guy Isn't Laughing!
Period Panties No More!

• Scientists may someday make sperm cells out of human bone marrow, thereby totally negating the need for men to help make babies. Oh, and the babies that would result from this special sperm? All girls. [Salon, BBC]

• In other baby news, a woman in California has given birth to the first baby conceived in the U.S. via a frozen egg and a frozen sperm. [CNN]

• India has wisely dropped its requirement that female civil service workers chart their menstrual cycles on medical forms. [BBC]

• A conservative group is suing the FDA over the agency's approval for Plan B, saying it was politically motivated. And some feminists agree. ]

• 3-year-old girls: Future Feminists of America! [Alas, A Blog]

• One woman in the Times' obits today: Dakota Staton, 76, immensely-talented but under-appreciated jazz vocalist. [NYTimes]