Ads for menstrual products have been notoriously evasive, avoiding the dreaded ‘v word’ (vagina) and using blue liquid as a stand-in for the blood that is markedly absent in both linguistic and visual representation. Words conveying the reality of menstruation – blood, clots, cramping, etc – are absent, as are visual depictions of what actually happens during a period – or the fact that females bleed, often copiously, from that most dreaded “down there” (a euphemism that, as Feministing points out, “two out of three network censors still feel icky” about).

Yet, a more realistic (and humorous) representation of periods seems to be slowly seeping into popular culture. An example is the recent U by Kotex ad, the transcript of which is as follows:

How do I feel about my period? We’re like this [crosses fingers]. I love it. I want to hold really soft things, like my cat. It makes me feel really pure. Sometimes I just want to run on the beach. I like to twirl, maybe in slow motion. And I do it in my white Spandex. And usually, by the third day, I really just want to dance. The ads on TV are really helpful, because they use that blue liquid, and I’m like, Oh! That’s what’s supposed to happen!

(To see the video clip of the ad, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRf35wCmzWw)

Though this ad avoids the v word as well any specific reference to the product itself or why one should use Kotex (as pointed out here), it’s self-mocking tone pleasantly parodies the way menstruation has been characterized in the majority of ads. Periods, it reveals, are not a time one tends to want to dance joyously in a tight-fitting sheer dress or frolic along the beach in a white bikini. While the ad does play on the idea of menstruation as “the curse,” and thus perpetuates a negative rather than a positive (or neutral) view of this female biological process, it at least admits that periods often involve pain and inconvenience (not to mention no blue liquid whatsoever).

Though the NYTimes documents that three networks rejected the original ad, which did use the v word, even this de-vaginized version uses humor to mock our cultural shock and horror surrounding menstruation, moving away from ridiculous suggestions that bleeding, bloating, cramping, and/or menstrual headaches really make women want to dance, shop, or exercise (what else, after all, do women ever want to do?). And, though we have no specific references to female genitalia, at least there is an acknowledgment that periods for many (most?) are not all that fun.

Moreover, as reported in the NYTimes, “Visitors to the Web site, UbyKotex.com, designed by the New York office of Organic, part of the Omnicom Group, are urged to sign a ‘Declaration of Real Talk,’ vowing to defy societal pressures that discourage women from speaking out about their bodies and health. …For every signer, Kotex will donate $1 to Girls for a Change, a national nonprofit based in San Jose, Calif., that pairs urban middle school and high school girls with professional women to encourage social change.”

And, while the ad had to be “sanitized” for television (or, in other words no real mention of what a sanitary napkin or tampon is for, let alone a mention of where they go, was approved), the accompanying website is far more explicit in its anatomical and functional details, including a section entitled “challenging the norm” that aims to “start a new, healthier conversation about periods and vaginal care.” Thus, not only is Kotex partnering with a organization aimed at empowering girls and women, it is actually offering REAL information about menstruation and menstrual products – what a concept!

While the tv ad’s self mockery is certainly a fun and refreshing approach to a bloody subject, I wonder when/if the mainstream media will allow ads that admit – horror of horrors – that females have vaginas and this bodily reality is not disgusting, not a curse, not even a reason to boogey-down in celebration but rather nothing more or less than a bodily reality.

I am not saying that having a vagina is not cause for celebration (I personally rather like mine), but I feel whenever the body (or part of it) is showcased as something to uncritically celebrate, the flipside – where the body is denigrated and denied – is not far behind. Instead, I would like to see wider recognition and acceptance of the fact that menstruation happens, and does so often (for too often for my taste, in fact), that the body is not all pleasure and desire but also pain, inconvenience, and monotony.

As I am currently attending the National Popular Culture Association conference where I am presenting on a panel with three other women who are also menstruating, such concerns have been foremost in my mind. After seeing each other face to face for the first time after months of email organization and discovering are bloody synchronization, one of us joked “I know women are often in sync, but are we now so technologically advanced that we can sync via email?”

Our running joke was that we would announce our panel, a feminist analysis of Twilight, via sharing “You are about to hear an analysis of male, heteronormative, white privilege from four menstruating feminists.” In our banter, Robert Pattinson’s now rather infamous claim that he is “allergic to vagina” was a recurring point of reference as well. Though I feel Pattinson meant this as a joke and is likely not the misogynist some have suggested, I feel in contrast that US culture more broadly is allergic to vagina – to the word vagina – let alone to the fleshy, bloody, and yes, toothless, bodily reality.

Alas, as Gloria Steinem wrote in her 1978 piece, if males menstruated it would likely be a sort of bragging right, a competition over who could bleed the most. Yet, as it is female’s bodies that require the use of pads, tampons, and diva cups no such celebratory bragging rituals occur. Rather, even within the self-aware mockery of the way menstruation is rendered invisible and monstrous (such as in the above Kotex tv ad) it is still something that cannot be named, let alone visually represented. This, indeed, makes me blue.

I never thought I’d find myself saying something this banal here on Girl w/Pen, but a certain double stroller has changed my life. A stylish red and black jogging stroller came into my life three weeks ago as a gift from my parents. It was a mercy gift, intended to replace the clunky Double Snap N Go babytrain I had lugged through snow and ice. Now, I can venture into stores without knocking clothing racks down! Now, I can exercise in the park! I feel giddy, the way one might when one unexpectedly finds herself the owner of a shiny red Ferrari. After all that time spent immobile, Mama’s got wheels.

But I think I’m moving too fast. Like many new mothers my generation who’ve found themselves quickly back at work, both because the work is compelling and because Daddy’s been downsized, I’m always in a rush.

The other day, while pushing the jog stroller with one hand I dropped (and shattered) my iPhone. I’ve been nagging my husband and fighting with my mother. I’ve choked more than a few times on food. Starting a company at the same time that I’ve started motherhood, I’ve been racing, a bit, through my life.

The new stroller liberated me from a prolonged state of physical frozenness. But now I want to liberate me from myself. This perpetual feeling of precarious haste–like I’m sure to get smacked by a bus if I don’t look both ways when rushing across the street–is exhausting. I thought motherhood might be a vacation from my own professional intensity or rather, my intensity as a professional. Instead, it’s only intensified the race.

So here I am, turning to this column, and to my She Writes on Fridays column over at She Writes, as a way to slow it all down. I want to savor motherhood. I want to savor the process of starting a wonderful company with a fellow mother of two little ones who is genuinely sympathetic but who is also my sister in ambition and drive. We want to do our company differently. The question is, given our own intensity, given the needs of the marketplace, will we be able to live that different dream?

Obviously, I’m not alone. As Judith Warner wrote recently in a forum about motherhood at the New York Times, my generation doesn’t revel in the new possibilities of motherhood today, largely because the promises of feminism have time and again come up against a wall of political impossibility.  In an absence of family-friendly social policies, she rightly insists, “[o]ur much-vaunted ‘choices’…have largely proven hollow.” This past month, a hard-charging woman I hold dear, someone who needs to work, quit a job she loved rather than keep her baby in daycare. It broke my heart to hear it. But truly, what choice did she have?

We have a remarkable choice and opportunity, with She Writes, a woman-owned company, to live a more manageable work/life equation. Eventually, we will get there. But in the meantime, I will bet you my new stroller that my partner and I will continue to rev it up even as we work toward slowing it all down.

Mammograms have been on my mind.  What do ya’ll think of this honkin’ YouTube video going around?!

This phrase, coined by Sharon Cameron for the title of her book about Emily Dickinson’s fascicles (the sewn bundles of folded poems found after her death) references Dickinson’s refusal to abide by the conventional poetic prosody of her time, and through her creation of the fascicles, her rejection of set sequencing of her work.

A little over a century later, New Yorker Rachel Lehmann-Haupt chronicles how contemporary women are eschewing linear expectations for family-building and creating innovative combinations of choice. The stakes couldn’t be more different, but this phrase (choosing not choosing) — about Dickinson’s deliberate resistance to restriction into categories — strangely fits as Lehmann-Haupt navigates the channels, islands, and walking-off-the-edge-of-known-territory-into-new-frontiers changes with reproductive options.

In Her Own Sweet Time: Unexpected Adventures in Finding Love, Commitment, and Motherhood recounts Lehmann-Haupt’s reach toward motherhood.  She details her relationships, some pulsing with hope they will lead to a walk down the aisle, some clearly just had for fun, but all viewed through the lens of wanting a child and cognizant of her likely decline in ability and aching increase in awareness of these limits.  She interweaves personal narrative with factual research and first-hand interviews as she educates herself about freezing her eggs, freezing embryos, single motherhood, donor eggs, donor sperm, and the attendant issues each topic brings – ethical, scientific, financial – and how this clashes with the still-longed-for- “dream.” She explores the consequences of creating an “insta-family” as women (and some men interviewed) grapple with dating and mating under the pressures of time.

Her voice is engaging, although some of the boyfriends grow tiresome. Lehmann-Haupt thinks so too, hence the succession as she also winnows down to what she most wants.  I found the book most rewarding when she’s not recounting the quirks of her dates or her busy, jetsetting life, but rather working hard to compress the vagaries of all the reproductive options now available.  I wished she would linger longer on the knottier topics that these choices generate.

There is “Luc” who thoughtfully donates sperm and is thrilled to meet the woman who will receive it, yet who becomes far less enchanted when he learns she plans to offer up extra frozen embryos for “adoption” to other families he won’t have the chance to know.  Or the doctor who suggests that while reproductive technology can extend the fertility shelf life for many women (at great price), why not work to undermine the system that tells women they should focus on their careers and delay childbearing in sync with their male counterparts?  Or the 46-year-old woman who has twins through donor sperm and donor egg but admits she could have been just as happy never having kids.  I hoped Lehmann-Haupt would dig deeper into these contradictions, but the book skates back to her dating life and internal wrestling with risk, reality, and wistfulness.  When the scientific facts square off with ethics and are then pressed through the powerful feelings her interviewees express, Lehmann-Haupt’s acuity is at its best.

“I don’t like not getting what I want,” says one woman interviewed by Lehmann-Haupt about her decision to become a single mother by choice.  And she realizes she feels the same way too.  While “choice” has become a highly charged word for women, “options” and wanting to keep them open, seems far less loaded.  Lehmann-Haupt ultimately decides to freeze her eggs to keep her reproductive potential likely available for longer into the future, despite knowing the success rates with pregnancy from frozen eggs are still quite variable.  In this thoughtful book, Lehmann-Haupt grapples with what “having it all”– or at least trying to – means when modern technology can make the path to motherhood wider or longer, and realizes glad as she is for this, she also really wants a partner to travel beside her. “But nature, in the end, will decide whether I have children or not; science can go only so far,” she writes towards the book’s end.   Her story starts when Lehmann-Haupt is in her early 30s; she finishes it on the cusp of 40, older, wiser, and leavened with the sobering sagacity more knowledge often brings.

Yesterday I participated in a Women’s Studies Quarterly Symposium on their recent Mother issue. Among the many excellent talks and readings, I was particularly struck by a talk given by Tamara Mose Brown, a sociologist at Brooklyn College and author of the forthcoming book Raising Brooklyn: Nannies, Childcare, and Caribbeans Creating Community (NYU Press, Dec. 2010). Dr. Brown discussed her own experiences as a graduate student and mother of West Indian decent researching West Indian childcare providers in Brooklyn’s public parks (as well as some of the reflections of her WSQ co-author, Erynn Masi de Casanova). In her talk, she reflected on how her subjects defined motherhood, and how they viewed her–she was clearly identified as a mother, since she often brought her son with her to the parks–as well as how she tried to deal with their expectations of how she should be mothering.

Because many of these childcare workers were also mothers, they viewed themselves as “expert” mothers and frequently gave her “lessons” about good West Indian mothering. As she writes in her WSQ article, these lessons included ideas about what was “expected behavior for a boy”–such as the expectation that boys should not play with strollers or wear dresses. Although she herself did not subscribe to this view of gender roles, she found herself watching her son more closely when she was doing research at the park, to make sure he did not wander over to a stroller. Subconsciously, she found herself seeking the approval of her subjects.

Her story resonated with me, a working mother who relies upon a Latina babysitter, L., to care for her children when my husband and I are at work. I like to think that in most ways I consider L. a co-parent as well as an employee. After all, I trust her with my kids; I trust her judgment and her ability to help us raise our children. Her daughter is much older than my kids (now in the dreaded teen years!) and L. has worked in a school, so she is “ahead” of me in this mothering job and thus an expert in ways that I’m not. And yet, I don’t consult her about certain ways that we’re raising our kids that may differ from what she herself has done. She’s very discreet, but I wonder what she thinks about some things.

For example, I’ve frequently wondered what L., a devout Catholic, thinks about the fact that we are raising our kids as non-baptized, non-Communion-participating Unitarian Universalists. Or what she thinks about the fact that my 3-year-old son loves to play with princesses more than my 6-year-old daughter. In general, I suspect she’s OK with all this; she’s tolerant to the core. And yet, precisely because she cares deeply for our kids, I do sometimes wonder whether she sometimes views our parenting choices as ones that aren’t quite right for our children.

I suspect that we might get a free pass on these issues; but I also wonder what L. thinks of the fact that I work. Dr. Brown noted that the West Indian childcare workers had very definite ideas about what defines a good mother and had this to say about their employers:

Motherhood means that you feed your children, you bathe your children, and you spend time with your children. These mothers go to work and don’t do anything for their children and then want the sitters or nannies to do everything; that’s not motherhood. See, you want to be with your children, feed them, give them a bath to be with them; that is a good mother.

— Child care provider in Brooklyn, New York, 2007 (Mose Brown and Masi de Casanova, “Mothers in the Field,” WSQ 37.3, 4)

When I heard this quote yesterday, it struck to the core of my anxieties! I don’t bathe and feed my children every day; most days, yes, but certainly not every day. It brought up the ages-old guilt about working, as well as the familiar anger: why do mothers still carry this burden? Why do they carry it alone? Why don’t we question the fatherhood of fathers when they are at work? For that matter, why don’t we question the absence of flexible work-life policies, not to mention childcare, at many of our workplaces? the absence of a national response to working families that might go a long way toward enabling mothers and fathers to work and parent? the frequent absence of childcare workers and their own families in these debates about work and family?

After all these anxieties subsided, I began to think about the historical, invisible, and yet very real forces that have created generations of West Indian nannies, caring for white children; and I began to think that one response, one way of finding self-empowerment and agency if you find yourself in this situation, might be to embrace the identity of expert mother who spends time with the children. There is some truth, after all, in what that West Indian childcare provider says. Not the idea that working mothers aren’t mothers, but the fact that there are probably some employers who ask a lot from their nannies. I am speaking here from experience: when you have a demanding job, and you have a babysitter, it’s hard not to ask. There are days when, exhausted from teaching and meetings all day, I really don’t want to come home and be a mother. On these days, while I am grateful to all that L. has already done, and even though I know that it’s my turn, I wish that she could stay. But L. has her own family to go home to, no doubt exhausted from mothering my kids, and perhaps even sometimes reluctant, herself, to contemplate the evening’s work ahead at her house.

More often than not, this is when the TV seduces me with its nearly impossible-to-refuse offer: Kids entertained! Peace and quiet! No 1,001 demands while I’m trying to make dinner!

But sometimes, too, I start talking with my kids, and they tell me about the adventures of their day, and they blow me away with their ideas, and they make me laugh with their wacky and idiosyncratic knock-knock jokes–and I realize that this is the best moment of my day.

As I write this, I also realize that having the resources to hire a nanny, babysitter, or other childcare worker is just that–a privilege–and while this relationship is quite accurately described as employer and employee, it’s simultaneously a unique kind of relationship whereby the employee can become part of the family. And with family, as we all know, comes opinions and ideas about how we should live our lives and how we should parent, not always reflecting the deeply-held decisions we’ve forged for ourselves and our kids.

I recently blogged about hooking up at the newly launched Ms. Magazine Blog. I end the piece by saying that when it comes to sex:

Reducing sexual harms like assault, coercion, and slut shaming means maximizing sexual pleasure. Let’s kick forced power disparities and nonconsensual objectification out of our everyday lives in the bed and beyond. That’s when the girls will really go wild. On our own terms.

Writer-artist Karen Henninger wrote me to say she’d love to share some insights, experiences, and history about hooking up. It seems Karen and I don’t quite see eye to eye on the issue of casual sex among consenting adults. So, in keeping with the theme, I thought it would be cool to — yes — hook-up across blogs to keep the conversation lively. With that, I introduce our Girl W/Pen guest blogger who writes the following:

Are you aware that the Women’s Movement at the turn of the 20th century started with the idea of Free Love?

Free Love goes beyond “sex without commitment.” In the late-1800s the issue included marriage, women’s lives, and freedom from government control. Since the 1950s, especially, there has been success moving toward free love rather than forced love. But we won’t even know what is possible until we are given political freedom to live as we choose when it comes to sexuality and love.

I am for Free Love and Free Sexuality but this requires treating people without harm. I watch others go down the same old patriarchal road in their relationships over and over while I scratch my head thinking, Wow, there’s another way that is so much better for everyone.

No only is love free, but it is abundant. Love can’t really exist if it isn’t free. What makes hooking up harmful is the way it is done. The same goes for marriage and everything in between. Harm comes from the abuse of power and control. Love is simply freedom from harm. Yet harm is so entrenched in our everyday lives that we see it as normal. And then activism becomes necessary to experience something different.

Karen Henninger is a visionary visual artist, writer, and independent scholar. She holds a degree in Letters, Arts and Sciences from Penn State University and a Related Arts degree with concentrations in English and Women’s Studies from Kutztown University.

One of my  favorite new websites is www.sweetonbooks.com.  Founded, written, and edited by two book-loving moms who live in my hometown of Larchmont, New York, Sweet On Books offers children’s book recommendations for kids at all literacy levels, from picture books and short chapter readers to novels for middle-schoolers and beyond.  This appealing, user-friendly website is ideal for anyone on the lookout for top-notch children’s lit:  parents and kids obviously, but also teachers, librarians, grandparents, relatives, and friends.

As described by co-founders Melissa Young and Melissa Gaynor, the website guides visitors through an annotated “virtual bookstore” showcasing books that might not be on a reader’s immediate radar or that they might not pick up on their own. The editors write all of the entries themselves, and they add new content every week.  While it’s hardly a comprehensive database, their lively reviews embody the principle of quality over quantity.  Beyond plot summary, each review offers an overall sense of the book’s quality and tone, and points out issues that could potentially arouse fear or anxiety in young readers. On a lighter note, each book is ranked on a “laugh meter” ranging from “not a comedy” to “giggles” to “can’t stop laughing.”

The site is especially remarkable because it refuses to trade in the all-too-prevalent gender stereotypes that dominate children’s book publishing today.  When designing the site, Ms. Young and Ms. Gaynor chose a palette of light blue, chocolate brown, and burnt orange—and selected “gender-neutral” icons and images that would appeal to readers of both sexes. “We definitely wanted to avoid being perceived as a ‘girly site’ or a site that only boys or only girls would want to visit,” explains Ms. Young.  Occasionally, a review might mention a book’s potential appeal to “reluctant boy readers,” but in its basic structure, the site does not presume that readers for particular books will divide neatly along male-female lines.  (Ms. Young’s own kids, perhaps, have encouraged her to disregard conventional marketing wisdom.  In her household, 8-year-old Hannah has devoured all the books in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, while 4-year-old Sam can’t get enough of Fancy Nancy.)

In conversations with fellow parents and teachers, they discovered that many elementary-school kids seldom discriminate between “boy books” and “girl books,” and are “equally happy to read from both ends of the spectrum.”  As Ms. Gaynor elaborated, “We try to recommend books that don’t follow typical stereotypes often found in children’s literature:  for example, books that have strong, positive relationships between boys and girls (Melonhead); non-traditional roles for boys and girls (Falling for Rapunzel, Keeping Score); and books with a main character that will appeal to both sexes (Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing).”

Of course, one website alone can’t change the gendered face of children’s publishing, but for now I’m pleased to report on a cultural space in which sex distinctions aren’t being mined, magnified, and marketed to sell things to kids.  On my own parenting “smile meter,” that scores a big grin indeed.

Here’s what I had to say in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

I confess: I dread this time of year. It might sound strange coming from the executive director of the National Women’s Studies Association, but Women’s History Month reminds me of our education system’s failures.

I hope you’ll read the full op-ed, and especially my ideas for solutions, and let me know your hopes for this time next year.

Attention all GwPenners with a book idea: I strongly encourage you to take the She Writes webinar with Christina Baker Kline this Wednesday!

Christina is an experienced book proposal consultant to both nonfiction and fiction writers, and every one of the 22 book proposals she has written or edited has sold to a major publisher. I’ve become a huge fan of her blog, A Writing Life: Notes on Craft and the Creative Process. You can learn more about her consulting services here.  Details about her webinar:

Write a Nonfiction Book Proposal that SELLS Wed, Mar 31, 1-2 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
Do you have a great idea for a book, but no idea how to pitch it to agents and publishers? Or have you written a book proposal that isn’t selling? In this marketplace, it’s not enough to have a great idea for a book. You must create a flawless book proposal to sell it. But the skills and knowledge it takes to write a great book proposal aren’t always the same ones it takes to write a great book. You must be able to sell you idea, and yourself, assertively and persuasively. You must convince a publisher that not only is your idea a brilliant one, but that you—and only you!—can write this book.

In Christina’s webinar, you’ll gain the tools you need to write a book proposal that sells, including:

• the essential elements of every successful book proposal
• how to craft an attention-getting query letter
• the most effective ways to differentiate yourself from similar projects
• the bells and whistles to avoid
• how to write a persuasive three-to-five page pitch
• the 10 things you can do to make your proposal stand out

Register for the live event or order the download here.

(You can also check out Kamy’s interview with Christina on She Writes Radio right here).

Wishing everyone a year of true freedom, however you define it!

My own little “Exodus” story of going through divorce and infertility and coming out the other side inspired my dear friend the talented filmmaker Ilana Trachtman (of Praying with Lior fame) to make a little movie as part of the Projecting Freedom Project, sponsored by the Skirball Foundation. For this project, different filmmakers were commissioned to do a cinematic interpretation of a specific aspect of the Hagaddah. Here are Ilana’s, below (starring Marco, Anya, and Teo!)

Rachatza:

Nirtza: