Read the influential 1945 report favoring tampons over pads.
See all tampons, pads, belts, sponges, washable pads & cups on this site
HOMEPAGE
CONTRIBUTE to Humor, Words and expressions about menstruation and Would you stop menstruating if you could?
Some MUM site links:
HOMEPAGE |
LIST OF ALL TOPICS |
MUM address & What does MUM mean? |
Email the museum |
Privacy on this site |
Who runs this museum?? |
Amazing women! |
Art of menstruation |
Artists (non-menstrual) |
Asbestos |
Belts |
Bidets |
Founder bio |
Bly, Nellie |
MUM board |
Books: menstruation and menopause (and reviews) |
Cats |
Company booklets for girls (mostly) directory |
Contraception and religion |
Costumes |
Menstrual cups |
Cup usage |
Dispensers |
Douches, pain, sprays |
Essay directory |
Extraction |
Facts-of-life booklets for girls |
Famous women in menstrual hygiene ads |
FAQ |
Founder/director biography |
Gynecological topics by Dr. Soucasaux |
Humor |
Huts |
Links |
Masturbation |
Media coverage of MUM |
Menarche booklets for girls and parents |
Miscellaneous |
Museum future |
Norwegian menstruation exhibit |
Odor |
Olor |
Pad directory |
Patent medicine |
Poetry directory |
Products, some current |
Puberty booklets for girls and parents|
Religion |
Religión y menstruación |
Your remedies for menstrual discomfort |
Menstrual products safety |
Seguridad de productos para la menstruación |
Science |
Shame |
Slapping, menstrual |
Sponges |
Synchrony |
Tampon directory |
Early tampons |
Teen ads directory |
Tour of the former museum (video) |
Underpants & panties directory |
Videos, films directory |
Words and expressions about menstruation |
Would you stop menstruating if you could? |
What did women do about menstruation in the past? |
Washable pads |
Read 10 years (1996-2006) of articles and Letters to Your MUM on this site.
Leer la versión en español de los siguientes temas: Anticoncepción y religión, Breve reseña - Olor - Religión y menstruación - Seguridad de productos para la menstruación.

MUSEUM OF MENSTRUATION AND WOMEN'S HEALTH

New this week (in addition to the letters, etc., below):

The Arts of Menstruation: Petra Paul (menstrual blood paintings) and Tamara Wyndham (performance and vulva prints) - "The breasts: some morphological aspects," by Dr. Nelson Soucasaux, Brazilian gynecologist - Humor

Would you stop menstruating if you could? (New contributions)
Words and expressions about menstruation: Britain: on; Nigeria: Doing time, clock; U.S.A.: Charlie, girl flu, having your pixies (or, the pixies have come), I have my full stop, I'm bleeding all over western North Carolina, injured reserves, monthly issue, smoking a White Owl

What did women do about menstruation in the past?

PREVIOUS NEWS


Migrane study at Emory University needs online participants

Researchers at the Emory University School of Nursing are conducting an Internet-based study looking at the experience of migraines in women between the ages of 40 and 55. The study includes completion of online questionnaires and participation in an online discussion group with other women who also have headaches. For more information, please visit the study Web site at http://www.sph.emory.edu/migraine, or call the research phone line at 404-712-8558.

Thanks so much.

Peggy Moloney


Conference for menstrual educators: Weaving the Red Web

Greetings,

This is a reminder of the upcoming conference: Weaving the Red Web: Creating Community, Collaboration and Economic Well-Being among Bay Area (and beyond) Menstrual Educators. The conference will be held on Friday, April 11th and Saturday, April 12th, 2003 at the Women's Building in San Francisco. The registration fee is $50. If you have not already registered, please do so as soon as possible - space is limited!

You can register and get more information about the conference at www.theredweb.org. We now have online registration and credit card payment capability.

Please help us by passing this email on to any woman you know who may be interested in attending or becoming part of our Web.

Blessings to you all,

Kelly Rose Mason, Anna Yang, Helynna Brooke and Tamara Slayton, Women of The Red Web Project


Article about menstrual cups in the New York Times

 
 
Illustration © 2000 Harry Finley

The excellent "Menstrual Cups, at Age 66, Begin to Make Up for Lost Time," by Donald G. McNeil Jr., appeared in the Science Times section of the February 4, 2003 newspaper. [You can retrieve the article from the Times Web site.]

I liked seeing an authoritative, main-stream publication write about this important help for women; they seldom do. The article, which discusses The Keeper and Instead, quotes menstrual products safety expert Dr. Philip Tierno, Jr., who is a MUM board member, and others (including me), and basically is very positive about cups.

But contrary to the photo cut line, the picture of The Keeper cup in the article sure looks as if it came from this MUM site (here), not from Health Keeper Inc.

Read a short and incomplete history of menstrual cups here.

Buy Instead at http://www.softcup.com and at some drug stores in the U.S.A., and The Keeper at http://www.thekeeperinc.com, among many Web sites. And there is now the silicone (British) Mooncup, similar in shape to the Keeper, at http://www.mooncup.co.uk

 


Letters to your MUM

Can you help these children?

Hello. I work with "low income" and "at risk" youth in Sacramento, California. Recently we've been made aware of an issue with our girls - they aren't being educated or supported about the changes going on in their bodies. Additionally, they are coming to school without the necessary products to take care of themselves. I am just hoping you may have some resources that our nonprofit would be able to take advantage of. Of course, like any nonprofit, we have very little money but a great need to educate and equip our girls during this important and delicate time in their lives. Thanks so much!

Liz Sterba

Coordinator

Tahoe/Colonial Collaborative for Healthy Children

5959 8th Avenue

Sacramento, CA 95820

916.732.2055.Office

916.277.7147.Fax

916.224.2332.Cell

www.tcc4healthykids.org

"When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion" - African Proverb

Manufacturers! Make "Sneeze Pads"!

There are literally millions of us older American women who need a "sneeze/cough" pad. Due to dropped bladders which affects so many older women it is a real problem when you cough or sneeze and wet yourself. It is uncontrollable. We need a pad a little longer than a panty liner but thicker to keep our outer clothes dry when this occurs. It should be like a panty liner to adhere to the panty yet approximately a half inch thick for comfort as it is different from menstruation where 24 hour protection is needed as with our problem it is a "may/may not" need situation. The production of this product would be a godsend to millions of elderly women.

This is the only e-mail site I found to make my suggestion. Hopefully, you have the connections to get to the proper manufacturers. I suggest you call it "Sneeze Pad" as that tells it all to women with the problem.

What do the Japanese use?

[This Canadian writer contributed an opinion to the Would you stop menstruating if you could? page - it begins with "Of course not" - and I asked her about Japanese usage, since her address was in Japan. Here's her reply.]

I have never heard or read about any use of menstrual cups in Japan, but this may just due to my lack of knowledge on the subject.

I found some information on the percentage of tampon usage in Japan. According to Unicharm, one of the major tampon manufacturers in Japan, out of all tampon users represent 30 percent all tampon and pad users, about half of the percentage of users in the U.S.A. They attribute this to (1) the lack of information on tampons and a resistance to placing something inside the body, (2) distrust based on failed attempts at usage such as when the body is too tense and therefore the tampon cannot be inserted or when the user has not been able to insert the tampon into its correct position

This information is available in Japanese only on Unicharm's home page: http://www.unicharm.co.jp/company/news/2000/00feb-2.html

As you note in your e-mail, tampon usage is far less common in Japan (and I imagine the same holds true for much of Asia). Drug stores here carry a wide array of pads, but only one or two brands of tampons. Some bulletin boards I came across claimed that Japanese pads (called "napkins") were the most functional in the world and featured complaints about North American pads. Japanese pads can certainly claim to be the most varied, with options including day/night, heavy/light (absorbency), winged, gathered, and ones with paper undies attached. Someone has catalogued many of the different brands in a Sanitary Napkin Library: http://anzu.sakura.ne.jp/~nap/napkin/library.htm

[See a Japanese tampon with finger cots included, on this site.]

She was a test subject for, probably, Rely tampon

 
 

Rely tampon - part of box, at left - was a very absorbent tampon that appeared in the late 1970s in America and was associated with deaths and illness from toxic shock syndrome - as have been other tampons. This TSS tragedy inspired changes in the way tampons were made, used and advertised. Read more.

In my college days, I lived in a household of nurses and nursing students. We learned of a way to earn some extra money: a medical study of a new brand of tampon. We went to our indoctrination sessions, received our diaries, learned how to chart them, used our issued "pads only" for two months. Had two internals [vaginal examinations] every month on specific days of our cycles (I think day 4-7, preferably not menstruating; and maybe day 17-20).

We were to keep examiners ignorant of what product we were using. We were divided into two groups and after about four months switched to the other group. The tampons came in plain boxes and wrappers, but one in our group for the first session obviously had a basic non-deodorant tampon. Yes, we pledged to faithfully record the use of each tampon, time/date/hour/minute of insertion/comfort of insertion/date/time of removal/comfort/leakage/cramps, etc. But before we tried one of the obviously newfangled ones we decided to observe one - and fudge one diary just a little. We were honest, but not total fools, we thought. We filled a (probably six-ounce) Dixie [paper] cup with water and let the tampon take a dive. After a short time we lifted it out; it contained all of the water and did not drip.

It looked like a good thing to us, but we did decide to follow the advice that the dispensers gave us and used a regular absorbency tampon instead of a super as we were accustomed too.

Mostly nurses participated in the program, and participants were found by word of mouth, so many of the women went to school, work, lived and or spent time together. One time I went in for an internal and the clinical and diary investigators were exhausted.

Something like 90 percent of the participants were being seen for the two internals during two five-day time periods per month. That's when I came to understand menstrual drift - or synchrony. I once had a boyfriend who told me he thought all girls had their period at the same time; all the girls from the local girls college did. I laughed at him at the time, but in retrospect . . . . [The expression menstrual drift is new to me; I had only heard of synchrony. Read more about synchrony here. Drift reminds me of the expression menstrual wave, and both are monosyllabic words of Anglo-Saxon origin, in contrast to the classical origins of "synchrony," which makes it more "scientific"; read more about "menstrual wave" here.]

A couple of years later I started hearing radio spots about women dying from using Rely tampon. I was really frightened. I had signed my rights away. I have not been so free to use my body for science since then.

One of my former roommates ran out and bought cases of Rely before it was pulled from the shelves. We knew that a plus absorbency could only be used when the Hoover dam was breaking. And that you wanted the tampon full enough not to stick when withdrawing. The general public was not at all trained how to use it. And we are better off without it.

I am environment-and public-health oriented. I gave up absorbent crystal "thin"pads and diapers, and dioxin tampons. I use sea sponges [examples here], a water resistant (PUL) holder that wraps around underwear and holds cloth pads under a strip of clear elastic. I find cheese cloth washes and dries quickly and I only need about four 1/2-1 yard lengths. My teenage daughter thinks this is really gross, and laughs because I buy her "veggie" pads and tampons. I don't want her to have all the years of dioxin and chemical exposure I have had.

Back in my college days I was fitted for a diaphragm by my roommate (the one who bought cases of Rely) and told to use it to control menses during sex - and anytime I wanted real security. I found It dislodged whenever I had a BM [bowel movement], and in later years it blocked my urinary tract causing recurrent kidney infections. "Today Sponge" worked better for BC [birth control] and for sex without kidney infections. Instructions said not to use it during menses, but I figured that just meant don't leave it in eight hours or you may get TSS. I didn't need to leave it in eight hours if I was menstruating. I guess it went off the market in USA but may return soon. I hope so.

[After I asked her some questions, she added the following.]

I'm sure it was Rely (small crystal-filled "stay-dry liner," squishy gel beads upon Dixie cup saturation). The research took place at Albany Medical Center. [One of the early public test areas for the commercial tampon - maybe the only test area - was Rochester, also in the state of New York.] The study could have started in summer, 1977. I think I remember going to the "Altamont Fair" during one of the beginning "pad-only months" which were used to allow our vaginal area to recover from whatever product we previously used. I don't think I have retained any paperwork regarding the study, but I think there were approximately 250 subjects. Most of the nurses worked at AMCH; two of my roommates did, one in an obstetrics-related clinic. "Menstrual drift" was the term I heard at the time and therefore have always used. Synchrony seems to express the thought well, but I like the idea of "drift," allowing some individual effect of cycle length and life events [I like the word, too]. I am a person with very regular 28-day cycles, have birthed fraternal twins, and have been told I would probably be one of the 1 percent failure rate for birth control pills.

Friends with histories of irregular cycles become regular when spending time with me and have irregular cycles needing a physician's intervention when relocated to another city. [!]

New Web site address for artist

Dear MUM,

I was wondering if you would take a moment of your time to review the paintings displayed on my site. The focus of my work is to celebrate, inspire, heal and empower women. Through my works, I attempt to redefine Western femininity by reinterpreting and revitalizing aspects of female embodiment to give them new positive meaning. My philosophical outlook is Humanist/Womanist. I emphasize the personal worth of the individual through her beauty, intellect, strength, emotional, instinctual and intuitive qualities, as the central importance of human values, as opposed to specific religious or cultural beliefs. Through my images I create a new dialogue about female sexuality, reproduction and self worth. The figures are iconographic, representing an all inclusive, universal woman. My work contains a wealth of information about feminism, women's issues, health, psychology, history, legend, myth and spiritual beliefs, all of which have been interpreted by and created from the perspective of a female artist in the 21st century. However, this said, I feel the impact and intention of my art is reduced by being spoken -- what my art expresses cannot be translated into mere words. I hope you will stop by for a visit to see for yourself and hopefully consider adding my site to your Links section. I plan to add a link to your site as soon as my web tech gets in gear. My site is still a work in progress - I am adding a lot more written information that I think could be very inspirational and useful to your viewers. One example of this is the information I plan to include about Endometriosis in the Hysterikos Gallery which is a series of paintings based on the Uterus. Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Amy E. Fraser

E-Mail: Amy@aefraser.com

Website: http://www.aefraser.com

Website Description: Amy E. Fraser's provocative, colorful images evoke intense emotion. These powerful paintings boldly express intimate and often painful views of the female experience. Ancient iconography is re-envisioned to depict modern womanhood from a fresh feminist perspective. The focus of the work is to celebrate, inspire and empower women.


Men! You can't live with them, you can't live without them

I was viewing your site and wondered if you had any information on men wearing maxi pads to show empathy for their significant other while on their period?

[Anybody have information?]

She disagrees with some information about the Wiccan religion on this site

Dear Harry,

Continuing my browsing of your fascinating site, I came across your page [here] with the Celtic religion letters, and would like to add my two cents.

I agree with Ms. Nicholson [below] that Joanne's commentary [below] (though I believe is largely quoting D.J. Conway) is not substantially accurate. I am a long time follower of Wicca, and readily acknowledge that it is a modern religion.

What neither Joanne nor Ms. Nicholson comment on is that Wiccan practices today (particularly among Dianic Wiccans) include a focus on menstruation. A woman's menstrual cycle is considered to echo the cycle of the moon, tying women's energy closely to the Maiden/Mother/Crone cycle of the Goddess. A wide of variety of practices have sprung up around this connection, to celebrate and honor it.

For example, some Wiccan women practice a voluntary seclusion at the time of menses, seeing it as a time for inward contemplation and self focus, to focus on renewal for the coming month. Others mark the occasion with special rituals, often including releasing regrets of the past month or workings for what one wishes to see born in one's life in the next cycle.

A girl's first menses is celebrated in many traditions, often with the presentation of a bracelet or necklace with beads that can be moved to track her cycle. Some of these pieces of jewelry are quite remarkable, with crimson crystals to mark the days of menses, and often a blue or green bead to mark the likely time of ovulation. Depending on the tradition, ritual tools may be gifted at first menses, such as chalices and cauldrons, which represent the woman's genitals and womb.

Menopause is similarly honored, seen as marking a woman's ascent to Crone-hood, the age of wisdom from experience. The Crone aspect of the Goddess is seen as the keeper of knowledge, the guardian of secrets and the bringer of the death without which there could be no rebirth. Depending on the woman, Cronings may range from symbolic funerals for one's fertility to ecstatic celebrations of the freedom that experience brings from social and mental bonds.

In addition, there are many beliefs regarding menses that Wiccans consider on a regular basis - a woman on her Moondays is often thought to be better at magicks of divination and closure, while at the time of ovulation women have a greater power for the energies of creation and summoning. Wiccan women who garden will often take their cycle into account when planning planting and harvesting, or may consider it inappropriate to harvest certain plants thought to have magickal properties at the opposing point in their cycle.

Indeed, one of the challenges faced by Wicca today is how to develop traditions and practices of coming of age for men, since the cycle of a man's life is so less clearly defined and tied to the Goddess and God.

Anna Ault

"Let's get One Thong Straight"

Hi. Thought you might appreciate this. I liked your table at Vaginapalooza at University of Delaware a couple of years ago. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15065

Peace,

****

[I just again had a table there last week, something I always enjoy.]



 Actress in menstrual products ad?

 

Somewhere I saw an old magazine ad (early 1980s) for Maxi Thins. The model was now actress Jamie Gertz [at left, who debuted with Tom Cruise in Endless Love, 1981]. I think I found the ad in a book. I bet you can find it in one of the books you list. [See some books about menstruation in English and German.]

****

[See other well-known people in menstrual advertising.]


 

The PMS & PMDD Web site

Hello,

I am the owner/author of a new Web site called The PMS & PMDD Website

While browsing the internet doing some research, I happened across your site.

I was very impressed with the content on your site and did not hesitate to add a Web link on my splash page to mum.org. If you are interested in linking to my site, please feel free to check it out. If you decide not to link, this is ok anyway, your site is great! :) Thank you for the different, informative and humorous angle to an age-old female malady.

Sincerely,

Anthea

PREVIOUS MUM NEWS


 
© 2008 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute any of the work on
this Web site in any manner or medium without written permission of the
author. Please report suspected violations to hfinley@mum.org
 


Canadian site for women's health news and information

Hi

I am writing to tell you about an important online women's health resource that I think would be an appropriate link for your site.

The Canadian Women's Health Network (www.cwhn.ca) is a national non-profit organization. Our Web site is one of the premier Canadian portals to resources, news, and information about women's health.

Our site offers:

· Breaking women's health news

· Thousands of heath articles and information organized by subject

· Links to women's health resources around the globe

· National and International conference and event listings

· Access to women's health resources through our searchable database of more than 1600 organizations, 2400 published resources, 250 specialists, and 200 projects.

· Much, much more!

Most of the information and links on our site are suitable for health consumers in both Canada and the U.S. Our site includes Frequently Asked Questions on a wide range of sexual health topics, including this one about talking with daughters about menstruation http://www.cwhn.ca/resources/faq/periods.html.

I also encourage you to post a link to our sister organization, The Centres of Excellence for Women's Health (www.centres.ca). Their Web site provides online access to many publications and research bulletins about women,s health.

Thank you for your help in keeping the Women's Health Movement connected and strong.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

Julia P. Allen

Resource Clerk

Canadian Women's Health Network


Gloria Steinem's "If men Could Menstruate" - in Spanish

[A Spanish teacher of English in Spain challenged her students to translate Gloria Steinem's famous and funny essay - here, in English - into Spanish.]

Hello, Harry!

Thanks for including the link!

There's an address change:

http://www.mujerpalabra.com/secundaria/pages/lecturas/mens_truacion.htm

Here you get directly to the translation and there's a link to the English version. People asked if I did the translation, and as I wrote what things I didn't know (cultural bits) some peeps have sent some information, like people from Znet in Spanish.

The exercise I proposed students and teachers was imitating the writing and adapting to the Spanish context. Nobody has sent anything yet, mostly because G.S.'s text is SO GOOD!

:)

See ya!

Naturopathic physician in Irvine, California

Dear Sir,

I am a naturopathic physician in Irvine, California and 75 percent of my patients are those with female problems. I wonder if you could be good enough to check me out on

www.simplyhealingclinic.com and link my Web page to your Web site for the benefit of the wide female audience.

Thanks in advance,

Alex Strande, ND, Ph.D.


Canadian TV film about menstruation Under Wraps now called Menstruation: Breaking the Silence and for sale

Read more about it - it includes this museum (when it was in my house) and many interesting people associated publically with menstruation. Individual Americans can buy the video by contacting

Films for the Humanities
P.O. Box 2053
Princeton, NJ 08543-2053

Tel: 609-275-1400
Fax: 609-275-3767
Toll free order line: 1-800-257-5126

Canadians purchase it through the National Film Board of Canada.


Did your mother slap you when you had your first period?

If so, Lana Thompson wants to hear from you.

The approximately 4000 items of this museum will go to Australia's largest museum . . .

if I die before establishing the Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health as a permanent public display in the United States (read more of my plans here). I have had coronary angioplasty; I have heart disease related to that which killed all six of my parents and grandparents (some when young), according to the foremost Johns Hopkins lipids specialist. The professor told me I would be a "very sick person" if I were not a vegetarian since I cannot tolerate any of the medications available. Almost two years ago I debated the concept of the museum on American national television ("Moral Court," Fox Network) and MUM board member Miki Walsh (see the board), who was in the audience at Warner Brothers studios in Hollywood, said I looked like a zombie - it was the insomnia-inducing effect of the cholesterol medication.

And almost two years ago Megan Hicks, curator of medicine at Australia's Powerhouse Museum, the country's largest, in Sydney, visited MUM (see her and read about the visit). She described her creation of an exhibit about the history of contraception that traveled Australia; because of the subject many people had objected to it before it started and predicted its failure. But it was a great success!

The museum would have a good home.

I'm trying to establish myself as a painter (see some of my paintings) in order to retire from my present job to give myself the time to get this museum into a public place and on display permanently (at least much of it); it's impossible to do now because of the time my present job requires.

An Australian e-mailed me about this:

Wow, the response to the museum, if it were set up in Australia, would be so varied. You'd have some people rejoicing about it and others totally opposing it (we have some yobbos here who think menstruation is "dirty" and all that other rubbish). I reckon it would be great to have it here. Imagine all the school projects! It might make a lot of younger women happier about menstruating, too. I'd go check it out (and take my boyfriend too) :)

Hey, are you related to Karen Finley, the performance artist?? [Not that I know of, and she hasn't claimed me!]


Don't eliminate the ten Regional Offices of the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor

The Bush Administration is planning to propose, in next year's budget, to eliminate the ten Regional Offices of the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor. This decision signals the Administration's intent to dismantle the only federal agency specifically mandated to represent the needs of women in the paid work force.

Established in 1920, the Women's Bureau plays a critical function in helping women become aware of their legal rights in the workplace and guiding them to appropriate enforcement agencies for help. The Regional Offices take the lead on the issues that working women care about the most - training for higher paying jobs and non-traditional employment, enforcing laws against pay discrimination, and helping businesses create successful child-care and other family-friendly policies, to name only a few initiatives.

The Regional Offices have achieved real results for wage-earning women for eighty-one years, especially for those who have low incomes or language barriers. The one-on-one assistance provided at the Regional Offices cannot be replaced by a Web site or an electronic voice mail system maintained in Washington.

You can take action on this issue today! Go to http://capwiz.com/nwlc/home/ to write to Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao and tell her you care about keeping the Regional Offices of the Women's Bureau in operation. You can also let E. Mitchell Daniels, Jr., Director of the Office of Management and Budget, know how you feel about this. You can write a letter of your own or use one we've prepared for you.

If you find this information useful, be sure to forward this alert to your friends and colleagues and encourage them to sign up to receive Email Action Alerts from the National Women's Law Center at www.nwlc.org/email.

Thank you!

I'm decreasing the frequency of the updates to make time for figuring out how to earn an income

I can retire from my graphics job in July, 2002, and I must if I want to continue developing the site and museum, because of the time involved. But I can't live on the retirement income, so I must find a way to earn enough to support myself. I'm working on some ideas now, and I need the only spare time I have, the time I do these updates on weekends. So, starting December 2001, I will update this site once a month rather than weekly.

Book about menstruation published in Spain
 

The Spanish journalist who contributed some words for menstruation to this site last year and wrote about this museum (MUM) in the Madrid newspaper "El País" just co-authored with her daughter a book about menstruation (cover at left).

She writes, in part,

Dear Harry Finley,

As I told you, my daughter (Clara de Cominges) and I have written a book (called "El tabú") about menstruation, which is the first one to be published in Spain about that subject. The book - it talks about the MUM - is coming out at the end of March and I just said to the publisher, Editorial Planeta, to contact you and send you some pages from it and the cover as well. I'm sure that it will be interesting to you to have some information about the book that I hope has enough sense of humour to be understood anywhere. Thank you for your interest and help.

If you need anything else, please let me know.

Best wishes,

Margarita Rivière

Belen Lopez, the editor of nonfiction at Planeta, adds that "Margarita, more than 50 years old, and Clara, 20, expose their own experiences about menstruation with a sensational sense of humour." (publisher's site)

My guess is that Spaniards will regard the cover as risqué, as many Americans would. And the book, too. But, let's celebrate!

I earlier mentioned that Procter & Gamble was trying to change attitudes in the Spanish-speaking Americas to get more women to use tampons, specifically Tampax - a hard sell.

Compare this cover with the box cover for the Canadian television video about menstruation, Under Wraps, and the second The Curse.

An American network is now developing a program about menstruation for a popular cable channel; some folks from the network visited me recently to borrow material.

And this museum lent historical tampons and ads for a television program in Spain last year.

Now, if I could only read Spanish! (I'm a former German teacher.)



Money and this site

I, Harry Finley, creator of the museum and site and the "I" of the narrative here, receive no money for any products or services on this site. Sometimes people donate items to the museum.

All expenses for the site come out of my pocket, where my salary from my job as a graphic designer is deposited.


Privacy

What happens when you visit this site?

For now, a search engine service will tell me who visits this site, although I don't know in what detail yet. I am not taking names - it's something that comes with the service, which I'm testing to see if it makes it easier for you to locate information on this large site.

In any case, I'm not giving away or selling names of visitors and you won't receive anything from me; you won't get a "cookie." I feel the same way most of you do when you visit a site: I want to be anonymous! Leave me alone!


Help Wanted: This Museum Needs a Public Official For Its Board of Directors

Your MUM is doing the paper work necessary to become eligible to receive support from foundations as a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation. To achieve this status, it helps to have a American public official - an elected or appointed official of the government, federal, state or local - on its board of directors.

What public official out there will support a museum for the worldwide culture of women's health and menstruation?

Read about my ideas for the museum. What are yours?

Eventually I would also like to entice people experienced in the law, finances and fund raising to the board.

Any suggestions?


Do You Have Irregular Menses?

If so, you may have polycystic ovary syndrome [and here's a support association for it].

Jane Newman, Clinical Research Coordinator at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard University School of Medicine, asked me to tell you that

Irregular menses identify women at high risk for polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which exists in 6-10% of women of reproductive age. PCOS is a major cause of infertility and is linked to diabetes.

Learn more about current research on PCOS at Brigham and Women's Hospital, the University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania State University - or contact Jane Newman.

If you have fewer than six periods a year, you may be eligible to participate in the study!

See more medical and scientific information about menstruation.