I have a minor addiction to the Guardian G2 Shortcuts section and quick crossword. Yes, they're available online, but as a zine writer, I need it in print form. Today's dose included Kira Cochrane's account of a viral ad campaign about masculine hygiene products by, um, one of my competitors. It's getting a bit freaky how closely feminine hygiene product advertising seems to be echoing our comedy sketches lately. Have we tapped into the zeitgeist? Or are their marketing departments just very thorough? If it's the latter, "Hi there, marketing department researchers. Thanks for stopping by. I think." (Waves nervously.)
I did these ads for the launch of issue 3 of Adventures in Menstruating, and they've been around ever since at our live comedy shows, which feature various riffs on 'pads for men' ads.
You may enjoy my own contribution to the viral internet canon, which, like the other Skids stuff, went live in August 2007. Thanks to Cakebread Illustrations for offering to make the website after seeing our show in Berlin. Stay tuned for further additions.
In the meantime, please enjoy the fantastically hilarious comments on today's G2 article. Now Mooncupreally know how to do viral.
Time flies. Issue 4 is due another reprint, and we're back in Berlin on 18 July.
The London Zine Symposium was fantastic. Met great people, saw some beautiful work, and loved loved loved reading with a cadre of funny and intelligent fellow zinesters. I'd tour with those guys. It rocked!
At the moment I'm working on Robyn's Egg: A child's Introduction to Menstruation (which I think I've mentioned before), and two companion children's books, which is taking some honing of my rusty illustration skills. The other two books are 'Rocket to the Moon' (tampons as improvised toys and craft supplies) and 'How Does Your Friend Make You Feel' (a colouring and activity book based on menstrual euphemisms that I think might also make a good creative writing/comic workshop - stay tuned).
I'm also in the middle of developing my guide to sanitary disposal units: The SDU and YOU: Public Inconveniences. Stay tuned for the results of interviews with industry insiders!
We're looking at summer plans and should have a couple of events lined up soon.
The stirrings of spring mean our hiatus is over and a new issue of Adventures in Menstruating is on the way at last – a ‘true confessions’ style bumper edition.Thank you to everyone who's waited patiently this year while we got gaymarried, worked on the Obama campaign and supported an ill friend.
The year hasn’t been totally devoid of things menstrual or zine, though –
We had an excellent review from Brittany Shoot at Feminist Review and she felt moved to write a piece for our next issue. Brittany's writing is fantastic and we're really pleased to have made friends with this radical woman. Chella will be contributing to Brittany’s upcoming zine about expats - stay tuned for an article called 'Adventures in Emigrating’ and more details about that zine later this month.
We did a mini tour called 'Honeymoon Period' which included a comedy sketch performance, menstrual craft workshop and poetry reading at Ladyfest Berlin and concluded with Malav's gallant hospitality once again at Bluestockings in NYC.
Sarah won a poetry competition at this year’s Off the Shelf Festival –one of the poems she read, ‘A Celebration of Menstruation’ (which you may have read in the zine or seen on tour) united the crowd and the judges, and a trophy cup has joined her mooncup on the bathroom shelf.
An extract from AiM #3 was included in Zine Yearbook 9 put out by Microcosm. Details available here.
Chella is getting involved with Red Chidgey and Elke Zobl's fantastic book - working title: DIY Activism! Dispatches from the Transnational Feminist Zine Movement - and is keen to promote their website.
And finally, Chella's recently (like literally just today, actually) been asked to contribute work to a book coming out next year by Christine Bobel tentatively called New Blood: Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation from Rutgers University Press. More details on that as they come in.
So that’s been the zine highlights of the year for us – we’re excited to be back, uh… bigger and redder?
All the best from
Chella and Sarah
PS Chella will be in New York from the 6th – 12th April – if you’ve got a hankering for putting something zine or menstrual together, get in touch.
Zinefest is on today at the Women's Library in London. We went to the last one and really enjoyed it - it's a great space. There was a really cool write-up of that one in the London edition Time Out. We're sorry to be missing this one, but finances are keeping us local.
Issue 4 of AiM is coming together, believe it or not. I have the cover and back cover ideas mapped out, about 70% of the content, and the covers have given me the theme for the new issue, which I may or may not reveal before it's done - I'll keep you posted.
The myspace page has been pretty active recently, although I'm not a fan of the myspace layout and actually find it almost too jarring to use it regurlarly (the page skins aren't a problem - it's the user area I find a bit 'sensory overload'), but I'm trying to because I've met some quite cool people on there through the Ladyfest network, so please keep the friend requests coming.
I'm still in my post-inauguration come-down. I may do some research on how the tone of US feminine hygiene product advertising changes with each new president - like, do tampons tap into the zeitgeist? Maybe not. Maybe I was just trying to shoehorn in a menstrual topic to an otherwise non-menstrual event just so I could still post it on this blog - although getting your first period in the White House might lead to a leakage horror story, actually. Maybe I'll approach the Obama kids for a contribution sometime during issues 6 - 10...
I went as Ms. Scarlet from Clue* to our Cluedo**-themed Halloween dinner and cocktail party. It was fun dressing up as characters from a different Tim Curry film for a change, actually.
Just a quick note to say that Zine Yearbook 9 has just come out and it includes 2 pages from Adventures in Menstruating, as well as lots of other good stuff. It's kinda like the Doctor Who Annual and it's pretty rockin'. I was lucky enough to get a free copy as a contributer, and it's at my mom's house as we speak. She's loving it and sent a couple of pictures.
I can't wait to read it myself. Hooray for parcels in the post!
In the meantime, I haven't forgotten about Adventures in Menstruating #4, which is long overdue. We've had some big distractions over the last couple of months, but are getting back into the swing of things now, so I'll keep everyone updated if we get time to do any live stuff before the end of the year.
Until then, careful now with the candy corn.
Chella
* Clue is called Cluedo in the UK. ** Cluedo is called Clue in the USA.
This is what it's supposed to look like. Although, you know, you tell me - do you prefer the one font or the two? I like the bewitched-esque font for the newlywed-ness, but the century gothic has been the zine cover default for a while now, although London Between is the inside default.
Anyway, logo aside, the gigs are as follows:
Friday 8th August, 7:30 pm Studiobuhne, Kreuzberg, Berlin
So I have always had the opinion that if you do three or more of something, you're in it for the long haul, probably ever since tenth grade geometry when I started plotting points with feeling. Hannah Neurotica is getting ready to do her fifth episode of her radio show and wants some readers and listeners. Check it out.
Speaking of three of something...the new issue of AiM isn't ready just yet- it's the live show we're fixin' to do, that flyer below. For some reason it's uploaded in blue, but it's actually meant to be red and black! I'll speak to my adobe-wrangling friend John about vectors when he gets back from Canterbury, but in the meantime, enjoy the purdy colours.
So, Feminist Review has done a piece on the zines, and it's pretty darn glowing. I'm incredibly flattered and just wanted to say thanks. Their website is a pretty handy-dandy resource and I'm adding it to my links over there on the right.
I'm kinda speechless, which is very out of character for me. I'll just point out the awesome patchwork of covers someone over there put together to go with the article.
And why don't you write? Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. I know why you haven't written. (And why I didn't write before the age of 27.) Because writing is at once too high, too great for you, it's reserved for the great - that is, for great "men"; and it's "silly". Besides, you've writtena little, but in secret. And it wasn't good, because it was secret, and because you punished yourself for writing, because you didn't go all thw way; or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension of it, just to take the edge off. And then as soon as we come, we go and make ourselves feel guilty - so as to be forgiven; to forget, to bury it until next time.
Write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you: not man; not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which the publishing houses are the crafty, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by an economy that works against us and off our backs; not yourself. Smug-faced readers, managing editors, and big bosses don't like the true texts of women - female-sexed texts. That kind scares them.
-Hélène Cixous summer, 1976
Sarah just read me this from some research for a paper she's writing and I was like...yeah.
We're heading to New York tomorrow morning for a couple of weeks, and I've booked a reading from Adventures in Menstruating #3 at Bluestockings on January 2nd at 7 pm.
Please pass the message on to your NYC pals, or come along yourself - we'd love the support! Here's some more info from the listing:
Menstrual Taboos are so 2007...
Bluestockings Zine Reading: Adventures in Menstruating #3 – Funny. Period.
Wednesday, 2 January, 2008. 7 pm. FREE.
Start the year with some menstrual mayhem as Chella Quint and Sarah Thomasin launch the third issue of this popular UK comedy zine. Readings will include comic poetry, product testing, and deconstructions of vintage feminine hygiene ads. As always, Adventures in Menstruating welcomes menstruators and non-menstruators alike.
Bluestockings is located at 172 Allen Street between Rivington and Stanton, one block south of Houston and 1st Avenue. (Trains F: 2nd Avenue, JMZ: Essex/Delancey Street.) For more information call Bluestockings on (212) 777-6028.
Drop us an email if you think you can make it, or come introduce yourself if you stop by.
Getcher zines here, folks. Adventures in Menstruating #3 is here with full colour covers, because I finally got my ass to the photocopy shop. The zines will be available all weekend for those who are attending Ladies Rock, with a reading at 1 pm Saturday, and will be on sale at the Windmill, Brixton this Sunday (doors open at 5 and it should be a kick-ass gig).
It's in a limited run but is available to UK distros - if this is you, get in touch!
Chella Quint is a comedy writer and performer based in the UK. Chella writes the zines Chart Your Cycle and Adventures in Menstruating, and performs a live sketch comedy show based on Adventures in Menstruating. She also delivers talks and workshops that deconstruct feminine hygiene advertising and explore comedy as activism. When the mood strikes her, she performs impro with her friends for fun and minimal profit. Chella is originally from New York, but has recently begun to acclimate to her adopted country after a mere 11 years or so. She's having a torrid love affair with wordpress, though, so check out her blog there as well: www.chartyourcycle.co.uk
