Berlin continues!

We had a great weekend at Ladyfest, where we met loads of amazing people and heard some awesome bands. (More details to follow!) We're co-organizing another event with Lady Gaby (who contributed to Adventures in Menstruating #4) tomorrow night - details are below - please forward and repost to anyone you know in Berlin! :) I had the great pleasure of meeting Brittany Shoot yesterday, and I'm really psyched that there will actually be four contributors reading at the same event!

Cheers,
Cx


Vintage Women – Reclaiming Time!
Wednesday 22 July 2009
14:00 until late
20:00 Doors open for evening performances
Lady Gaby presents @
Wonderbar Wienerstr 45. Berlin XBERG
Entry: Suggested donation 2 euro

Daytime Workshops:
Adventures in Menstruating on 50s adverts – deconstructing the media and creating your own spoof ads; Gender stereotypes – subverting oppression through comedy exploration of representation.

24 Hour Zine Thing – Create your own zine response with ad collages and captions using materials provided or vintage ads/images/text you bring. The completed zine will be available to trade or buy on the night as part of July’s International Zine Month!

Coffee, cakes, brownies, cookies and treats at 1950s prices!
Swap shop: bring vintage clothing and accessories to trade and share! Fabric pens available for quick modifications – bring your own sewing supplies/ribbon if you’ve got some!

Knitters and crocheters welcome!

DJing by Mary from The Baby Cheeses

Evening - Doors open 8 pm – Comedy sketches, poetry and spoken word from Lady Gaby, Adventures in Menstruating’s Chella Quint and Sarah Thomasin, Brittany Shoot and more!
Live Music from The Hairy Marys!
Retro set by DJ Girl Detective

Skids Pads, Viral Ads...and AWESOME comments sections.

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 Mooncup really know how to do viral.




Time flies. Issue 4 is due another reprint, and we're back in Berlin on 18 July.


-Chella

Meanwhile, back in menstrual superhero land...

One word:

Vajewellery.

You heard it here first.



-Chella

Thanks to Brittany Shoot for the link.

I'm taking it as a compliment.

"You were the funnest person I've met in a toilet for ages."

I was recently chatting to that girl I met in the toliet a couple of months ago, and this was her parting comment.

That's good, right?

Chella

Synchronized!

I met a woman in the toilet.

I know what you're thinking.

But you're wrong.

What happened was...

...ok I know what you're now thinking....

and you're still wrong. (Thank you, Laura, other woman I just met in the pub.)

Shit.

Seriously, I'm out at the pub with some friends and we're all having a laugh over my ineptitude at keeping quiet about menstruation.

I just can't help myself. It's like a disorder.

What happened was, I met a girl who asked to share my table, but the seat was taken. Then I happened to go to the toilet at the same time as she did, three times. It went: awkward looks in mirror as we were both surprised to see each other again, embarrassed apology on our second meeting for denying her a table, and finally, friendship. She saw me again and said, 'Wow! We've synchronized!'

Readers of Adventures in Menstruating #3 may remember my concerns about what to say about menstrual synchronization. It's a whole other ballpark when it's toilet synchronization. We're now friends, I think. She works for an organization that gives kids free bikes. One day soon, I'll explain to her about the zine, and why I nearly exploded with laughter in her face at 'Wow! We've synchronized!'

Last weekend I was in the public toilet at the newly refurbished theatre in town, and got into a very long and loud conversation with some cool old ladies about the width of the cubicles finally meeting their approval.

"I wrote in," said one. "The old toilets were too narrow for my mature backside! I'm glad they finally listened," she beamed.

Mature backside one, Historically cramped public inconveniences - zero.

I'm going to have to find a swift and sensible way to explain why I tend to loiter in public toilets and strike up conversations though.

Chella

Newphemisms.

So, in our quest for ever stupider content, Sarah and I have been doing some fart-joke style menstrual riffing. Proper lowest common denominator stuff. That's your disclaimer.

I mentioned to Sarah that I wanted to come up with some new menstrual euphemisms - just for fun - no stigma attatched but more for vocabularic variety. There are fabulous metaphors for masturbation, defecation and all the other -ations that come out of your body, but menstrual metaphors all seem very negative and 1950s to us.

Her suggestion: When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along - I laughed and laughed. Then we looked up the song and realised it was sung by Doris Day (we love Doris Day), mentioned throbbing, and was about feeling positive. Why not specifically period positive, we say.

Usage:

Sarah: Hey, Chella, my Red Red Robin just came Bob Bob Bobbin' along. Have you got a tampon?

Chella: What a coincidence. My 99 Red Balloons have just gone by and and I've still got a pad in my bag.

(Only the English version of that song works, by the way, and could have some straw-grasping interpretations about male panic about menstruation rather than an impending invasion.)

In more sensible news, Sarah's poem was posted on Feminist Review today. For her efforts, she's won a quite cool looking book. Another winner, Erika Mikkalo, wrote a poem that reminded me of the Radio 4 programme I mentioned the other week about feminists being funny: Call Yourself A Feminist.

Do send us newphemisms.

Chella

Wrapped in plain brown paper?

Readers of my zine will know I always judge a feminine hygiene product by its cover - packaging is an instant indicator of the taboo-breaky-ness (that's the technical term) of the pad or tampon company in question.

So I like the way Jeff Krichmar designed these:I like that the name is a riff on both 'time of the month' and 'rhythm'.

I like that the waxing of the moon and graded darkening of the boxes correspond to both the passage of time and (from what I can infer) the heaviness of your flow each day.

I like the colour not being pastel pink, the imagery not being abstract.

I like menstruation being linked to scientific fact, not misogynistic fantasy.

I really like the chart motif.

And what I like even more is that the writer of What Made Me Look said this about it when she posted a link to it on her blog:

"I wish there would be a tasteful packaging like this that you are not embarrassed to carry around in your handbag."

Awesome that the embarrassment factor comes from bad design.

Further thanks to Tina at swissmiss for indirectly making me look at what made me look.

Chella

Licentious? Nah...

No joke - in the UK you have to have a tv license to pay for public television. When I first moved here, I was amazed to learn that if you had a television, you had to get a license for it, for about £130 a year. If you don't have a license for your television, you can be fined. Well geez, I used to panic about this. Up until a few months ago, I actually thought people would demand to see the license if they knocked on your door, and I'd have to prove I had one by having it at the ready, like they were my identification papers during the war. So I used to keep this very official bit of paper under the tv in safe place so I'd have it to hand when that knock came. There was a VERY convincing television ad that gave me this impression several years ago, I swear. But it turns out they have the info on a database and you don't actually need to show anyone a bit of paper. If they see that you're not paid up, and you've got a satellite dish or cable wire going into the brick, or an antenna on the roof, someone from the tv license people may knock on your door and demand you pay for a tv license, but that's it. No terrifying knock, no frantic scrabbling around for passports...

But despite this odd practice, the BBC are good people. A couple of weeks ago, a programme called QI jumped into the top mainstream comedy slot at 9 pm on BBC 1 (the one occupied by Friends in the 90s, if that gives you an idea). QI is a 'Quite Interesting' comedy panel game where if you guess the most obvious-seeming yet wrong answer, you lose loads of points and quite a lot of self-respect. Scores are regularly in the negative numbers at the end of each episode, and its facts are so esoteric and forgettable that my friends and I can even watch this in reruns and feel clever and stupid by turns. It's hosted by one of my favourite gay, Jewish panel game hosts, Stephen Fry (the other one is Simon Amstell).

QI used to be on BBC2, which covers the 'clever and quirky' demographic quite nicely. When it was moved to BBC1 for its most recent season, I was worried it'd dumb down and go mainstream. How delighted I was last week in the Flora and Fauna episode when the very first question name-checked menstruation in a big way. The episode is still available on iplayer in the UK, and I seriously hope it arrives on BBC America and elsewhere soon enough. The question was about the significance of the camellia flower in a book called La Dame au Camellia (and in the film and opera based on it). All the guests, including this week's token woman, Jo Brand (who has never shied away from huge amounts of sexually themed and menstrual comedy in her stand up act) joined in with the discussion of wearing a white camellia flower 25 days a month and wearing a red camellia for the other 5. (Now THAT's regular!) Women were not the butt of the jokes! Menstruation wasn't considered disgusting! Best bit: Stephen Fry in role saying 'Sorry, I can't, I've got a period on,' and Jo Brand guffawing as she gently corrected him: 'Stephen, it's EITHER/OR! Either 'I've got my period' or 'I'm on!'' A good third of the show was devoted to menstrual comedy. It's quite sad that I'm so shocked and pleased by this, but wanted to log the praise where it's due. It also taught this menstrual maven a thing or two about the history behind Germany's arm of Kotex branding its pads Camellia. (Actually I wish the US arm (wing?) would depart from their 50s medicinal moniker and head the same way - it'd mean the To Bleed Or Not To Bleed sketch I do in our live show (it's about menstrual suppression) would be able to end with 'the fair Camellia' in both countries. "The fair Camellia! Pad, in thy soft layers/Be all my blood collect'd!")

I sat down to write about this all last night but got engrossed in a BBC Radio 4 programme called Am I Normal doing an entire episode deconstructing stereotypes around menopause (recommended reading from one of the interviewees was Mrs. Dalloway - so now that's two books, an opera and a film to add to my reading list), directly followed by Call Yourself a Feminist, which turned out to be the first of three documentaries tracking different waves of feminism. (Which one are we on now? Third, right? Do we all graduate to fourth at some point? I've been in third so long I'm starting to feel like I got left back.) I was fascinated by comments from an oldskool feminist called Sonia adamantly insisting that feminists weren't humourless, and that it was irresponsible of the media to only show the drier side of feminism. Right on, sister!

So yeah, the BBC is on message. They are ready to acknowledge that feminists can be funny, and comedians can talk menstruation. Perhaps I should send in a sitcom idea about women who work in a tampon factory. Actually, I think I will. You heard it here first, folks - it'll be called Up Yours (with its own comedy tampon packaging to get my design!brain going). Look for it at 9 pm on BBC1 in a couple of years...

Chella

Adventures in Menstruating: Bigger and Redder

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 6^th – 12^th April – if you’ve got a hankering for putting something zine or menstrual together, get in touch.

Zinefest Today!

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...

No longer pretending to be Canadian,

Chella

Election Fever, Literally

So, to quote my friend (and Official Adventures in Menstruating Bluestockings Gig Groupie, so some of you may know him) James, a lot of us had the best Guy Fawkes Day ever because of this guy. Our collective buzz was harshed the next day when all the votes were confirmed in California to be supporting Prop 8. Please don't hate on California as a whole, tempting as that is, or you'll be forcing all the hip and liberal Californians to pretend they're from Oregon, just like we Americans abroad always had to say we're Canadian...until Wednesday. But yeah, it was amazing to hear Our Barry say 'gay' on national television and use it as a normal adjective, so let's hope there's more good news to come.

If you're not suffering the credit crunch too badly and are in the area, you might like to attend Ladyfest Manchester this weekend. We'd been planning to but have been stymied by the flu, so just a quick heads up to people who were expecting us that we will be taking a lot of vitamin C and waiting for next time, unfortunately.

I've been kicking around an idea for a while to do a blog about our wedding, tracking it in retrospect so there's a bit of distance to reflect on it and really share what we did and why and how and what it meant. It was difficult to find the time to do it as we were planning, and I didn't want to just throw another blog out there if I didn't need to...but I'm feeling more like even if people choose not to use any of my ideas for their own weddings, at least another lesbian wedding is out there in the public domain, just kind of...being visible. What do you think?

In the meantime, bed and the US remake of Life On Mars for us, I think. Night!

Too early to call.

While I'm up, waiting for the election results (I voted by post, which fed my mail-art fetish as an extra bonus), here's some other non-election related stuff.

In news closer to home, Sarah's just told me that the Mooncup got a mention on Women's Hour today in the thrift section. (You may also want to check out the piece on sexism and homophobia in the workplace, which I haven't listened to yet but will check out tomorrow.)

Also, props to M L Madison and Brittany Shoot for their Feminist Review co-editorships!

More later.

Chella

Back in Town

Had a great summer, came home to see the BBC coverage of RepubliCon (it sits better with my zeitgeist if I fool myself they're comic book collectors or sci fi fans). Found this awesome vid courtesy of an FCW mailing.

Cheers to those who came to the readings and we'll update more thoroughly soon!

In the meantime, I'm gonna go register absentee.

dumplings

We're on the road in about 20 minutes, which is just enough time to say a quick thank you to our awesome hosts at la-diy-fest Berlin and to the other performers for sharing their stuff with us. More later!

(Edited to add that the title is dumplings in honour of the dumpling cafe just north of neukoln in Berlin. Their all-day, all-you-can-eat brunch was an amazing way to spend Sunday, and although I only managed four dumplings, they were awesome. Sarah read some poetry, I coveted the 1950s chairs and coffee tables, and it was awesome. I'll post a link when I get hold of it, because, seriously, guys, dumplings.)

Zinecore Radio

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.

Chella

Feminist Tested, Feminist Review Approved

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.

Thanks to Brittany Shoot, who does half of HollaBackBoston among other nifty things, for the props.

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.

Cheers,
Chella

Cork: city of dreams and menstrual comedy.

Should you happen to be in Cork, Ireland this weekend, here are our Ladyfest gig and workshop details:

Funny Period - random comedy bits from us: Friday at midnight at Cyprus Avenue above the Old Oak on Caroline St. Queen Kong are on just after us, and I promise not to be the catalyst for an international incident involving ski pants again. (Sorry, Dave.)

Saturday we are doing 2 workshops in the Lee Room of the Victoria hotel:
1 - 3 pm is Bloody Brilliant - menstrual musings, comedy and activities
5:30 - 7:30 is the impro(v) comedy workshop - we wanted to call it Whose Cunt is it Anyway? but it's just listed as an impro(v) workshop.

If I can swing it, I'm hoping to screen my short film, The Fuck You Story, sometime Saturday evening.

And Saturday night, also at the Cyprus, we're following Party Weirdo who are on at 9 pm. We're doing 9:35 til 10:05 and it's gonna be our usual shtick plus some new bits and any impro we try out with some new impro peeps, we hope.

Then after that it's our Hag night! If you're in Cork, please join us!

If you're in Sheffield, I can recommend the Fem08 conference, afterparty hosted by Lola and the Cartwheels.

If you're in Stratford, please attend Shakespeare's birthday party for me.

If you're in London, be our proxies at the London Zine Symposium. This is my first time missing it and I'm gutted. Big up to Nat and Edd for organising this every year, and cheers to Eran for making all the previous ones tons of fun.

If you're anywhere else, I hope you, too, have a lovely weekend. In fact, I'd like to know what you get up to!

Chella

Writing lines...

I will not adhere to a self-imposed media blackout.
I will not adhere to a self-imposed media blackout.
I will not adhere to a self-imposed media blackout.
I will not adhere to a self-imposed media blackout.
I will not adhere to a self-imposed media blackout.

You'd think I'd be good enough at multi-tasking to maintain a blog, check my myspace, return emails and lead a fairly ordinary life, right?

Luckily, I managed to remember various user names and passwords, looked at the old myspace, and discovered Party Weirdo were playing about 2 miles away from us tonight, about ten minutes before the doors opened. So we scarfed down spaghetti, got dressed, and dashed out of the house. We got there about five minutes before the first band, which was a hilarious guy who did covers using a music program on an old nintendo gameboy. It was one up from circuit bending and we were totally hooked. He'll be on our myspace soon.

The Weirdos rocked the house as usual, to a pretty hefty crowd, and Em did mad things with her pointy-fingered dancing. It was the first time we actually saw Chart Your Cycle the song, as we'd been backstage last time waiting for our cue. Hopefully they'll post some photos somewhere soon (I was stunt photographer). And I would have missed the whole thing if I'd kept avoiding the internet.

I'm in New York next week, I should mention, which is one of the perks of having not quit my day job. If you're around, give me a shout.

Chella

New Year's Resolution: Say it with tampons!

Thanks to swissmiss for pointing out this inspired addition to the collective tampon art canon. This UnBeige logo was designed by Melanie Rodgers, and it's screaming out to become a font or text generator of some kind, no? I can think of a hundred uses.

In other news, I'll be posting some highlights from our recent New York trip in the coming days. Jet lag has hit hard this year.

And a couple of people will be pleased to note that I've finally routed out the obscure (to me) bit of blogger that wasn't set to display comments. You can now comment at will!

Happy belated 2008!

Chella

How does it feel to be immortalised in song?

Kinda like how Mulder and Scully would have felt, I reckon, if they hadn’t actually been fictional characters. Party Weirdo also performed at Ladyfest Berlin last summer. They played crazy good tunes – unpredictable, manic, and yet I enjoyed it…kinda like how I feel about menstruation.

So I contacted them about using one of their songs in a podcast I was planning. Cara, the guitarist in the band, said she’d do one better and write us a musical tribute. A few months later I got an email with the song link, and the day after that it was on the band’s myspace, which can be found here: http://www.myspace.com/partyweirdomusic.

Here are the lyrics:

CHART YOUR CYCLE
ADVENTURES WHEN YOU'RE MENSTRUATING
I FORGOT IT'S ONE OF A KIND
THE KIND I'LL FIND IS ALWAYS ON MY MIND

CHART YOUR CYCLE
MORE ADVENTURES MENSTRUATING
JEMILLA SHEMILLA
PROTECT YOUR WOMB, YOUR WALLS AND ALL INSIDE

CHART YOUR CYCLE
FEEL FREE TO DISCUSS AT ANY TIME
MENSTRUATING
LOVE IT HATE IT CRAMP IT ALL YOU WANT

The lyrics are one thing and the music is something else entirely – I really dig the sound and there’s loads of instrumental experimental grooviness. My favourite part is the end of the song, where you hear a little magical chime. Please listen to it if you can (if you’ve overcome your fear of the borg that is myspace), and show some love for this wicked band.

Oh yeah - I asked Cara who Jemilla Shemilla was.

She said it was her period’s stage name.

Awesome.