the crimson tide
Now that I seem to have some readers, I feel like I ought to try to make my posts a bit more interesting and well-written. But instead I'm going to talk about my period. Today was the first day of my period, which I was actually kind of glad about, because I'm going on vacation in a week. Nothing puts a damper on your vacation like Nature's cold hand tightening around your uterus. Ok, actually, there are probably lots of things that can put more of a damper on your vacation than that. (Turkish prison guards, plane crashes, the general suffering and injustice of the world around us, etc.) But my point was supposed to be that having your period is no walk in the park. Well, I guess it kind of is, for your uterine lining. (ba-dum-bump.) Sorry, this has degenerated even faster than I thought it would.
Anyway, all of this got me thinking about the day in elementary school when the boys were sent outside to play dodgeball while the girls stayed inside to watch The Video About Becoming A Woman. Our video was called Growing Up on Broadway. The full cast list on IMDB cracked me up:
Anyway, in the video, the actress who plays Annie on Broadway and her little orphan friends chat backstage about how Broadway stars get their period, just like regular girls do. I remember feeling somewhat gypped that it was the Broadway Annie and not the movie Annie. We also got a manilla envelope containing a Kotex pad and a pamphlet with a reproductive system diagram, some Kotex propaganda, and lots of scary warnings about Toxic Shock Syndrome that have made me neurotic to this day. I remember the teacher asked us if we had any questions, and no one raised their hand. I was secretly wondering about whether you could still pee if you were wearing a tampon, but I was afraid I'd sound stupid if I asked about that. As far as I know, the boys never had to watch a video. I don't know what the boys' equivalent would be; maybe a video of Chunk from The Goonies talking about nocturnal emissions?
An English guy on Sepia Mutiny was talking about how he had a friend who, when she was getting her period, would say, "My chums are coming." I like that; it just sounds so British. It makes me picture George and Timmy and the rest of the Famous Five sitting around, having a secret picnic under some gorse bushes next to her cervix. I was debating whether to leave a comment for the guy describing how one of my friends likes to refer to her period (She likes to scream, "I'M BLEEDING FROM MY CROTCH!" as loudly as possible), but I was worried that it would be inappropriate. Between that and my last comment about crotches on Sepia Mutiny, I was afraid of coming across as some kind of crotch-obsessed lunatic. Not that this post is doing much to improve my image.
Anyway, all of this got me thinking about the day in elementary school when the boys were sent outside to play dodgeball while the girls stayed inside to watch The Video About Becoming A Woman. Our video was called Growing Up on Broadway. The full cast list on IMDB cracked me up:
| Shelley Bruce | .... | Host |
| Diana Barrows | .... | Menstruating Girl |
| Dara Brown | .... | Menstruating Girl |
| Nicole Francis | .... | Menstruating Girl |
| Kia Goodwin | .... | Menstruating Girl |
| Alyson Kirk | .... | Menstruating Girl |
| April Lerman | .... | Menstruating Girl |
| Sarah Navin | .... | Menstruating Girl |
| Nancy Deering | .... | Menstruating Girl |
Anyway, in the video, the actress who plays Annie on Broadway and her little orphan friends chat backstage about how Broadway stars get their period, just like regular girls do. I remember feeling somewhat gypped that it was the Broadway Annie and not the movie Annie. We also got a manilla envelope containing a Kotex pad and a pamphlet with a reproductive system diagram, some Kotex propaganda, and lots of scary warnings about Toxic Shock Syndrome that have made me neurotic to this day. I remember the teacher asked us if we had any questions, and no one raised their hand. I was secretly wondering about whether you could still pee if you were wearing a tampon, but I was afraid I'd sound stupid if I asked about that. As far as I know, the boys never had to watch a video. I don't know what the boys' equivalent would be; maybe a video of Chunk from The Goonies talking about nocturnal emissions?
An English guy on Sepia Mutiny was talking about how he had a friend who, when she was getting her period, would say, "My chums are coming." I like that; it just sounds so British. It makes me picture George and Timmy and the rest of the Famous Five sitting around, having a secret picnic under some gorse bushes next to her cervix. I was debating whether to leave a comment for the guy describing how one of my friends likes to refer to her period (She likes to scream, "I'M BLEEDING FROM MY CROTCH!" as loudly as possible), but I was worried that it would be inappropriate. Between that and my last comment about crotches on Sepia Mutiny, I was afraid of coming across as some kind of crotch-obsessed lunatic. Not that this post is doing much to improve my image.
posted by ads at 7:12 PM
13 Comments:
I think the boys should have to watch "Girls on Broadway" too. I was recently v. v. annoyed with a guy I know - we were all talking about ads (um, advertisements - not you) and I said that if tampon/pad commercials make it seem like women on their period just twirl endlessly in white, filmy dresses on beaches. Guy was so freaked out that he LEFT THE TABLE, came back later, and asked if we had changed the subject.
(1) Periodicity was NOT the subject
(2) He's 37 years old
Ick.
i'm in awe that you still remember the video. mine was different. all i remember is a girl running around and hangin' out with a diverse group of friends (read: one black woman, no asians, no latinas, rest white). some how i was supposed to connect with that video.
what i did connect with is the character's diary. the "dear diary" thing totally worked for me back in sixth grade.
bow down to the woman who still remembers titles of movies that tortured us.
Excuse me, but some of us were reading your blog before- I just didn't have clever comments to leave. This comment is actually a good example of that problem.
brimful,
Sorry, I didn't mean to diminish your loyal readership! It's mainly thanks to you that I'm up to 5(!) readers a day. All the attention has clearly gone to my head.
maisnon,
I think having the boys watch the girls' video and having the girls watch the boys' video would have been an excellent idea. God knows I had only the vaguest inkling of what was going on with the boys at that age. Actually, that's still true.
chai,
I don't think I noticed the lack of diversity so much in the Annie Gets Her Period video, but I remember that the same year we watched it (5th grade) we also had to do this Valentine's Day matchmaking thing "for fun" in class. It was like a low-tech version of match.com where we had to fill out a survey with questions about our favorite color, interests, what we wanted our match to look like, etc. At the end of the week the teacher would announce who matched up with whom in front of the entire grade, while the couple stood around at the front of the class and everyone laughed at them. (In retrospect, I'm not really sure who decided this was an appropriate educational activity.) We were supposed to write down what celebrity we most resembled, and I remember being like, "What the hell am I supposed to write?" I ended up writing down "Tempestt Bledsoe" (Vanessa from the Cosby Show) despite the fact that she is black and looks nothing whatsoever like me. Needless to say, I wasn't matched with any boys (The whole thing was rather heteronormative, what with the lack of a same-sex matching option), but that was more of a relief than a disappointment.
LOL. Being aged a bit off, I missed all the video business, and actually got the lecture in my super serious biology class at a girls school. From a man. So it was all very clinical and scientific, especially b/c it was, at that point, a bit late for most of the girls in the class. But not me! And boy was I horrified. I had no idea before that.
(1) Periodicity was NOT the subject
(2) He's 37 years ol
It still amazes me how good as a topic it is for driving men off. I remember getting into this extremely nasty argument with an extremeley nasty guy right before a Linear Algebra exam, sophomore year of class. We were arguing about the need or lack therof to explain the Heisenberg principle in freshman mechanics, and I was incensed b/c he was insulting all my favorite professors and grad students. But when I finally realized he was really just being ultra nasty, I couldn't get him to go away. Down swooped the girl squad in rescue. "I'm bleeding so much!" "Saheli, give me advil quick!" etc.. He evaporated like so much mist. Physics got a little harder to manage as more girls dropped out.
ads, I hope you know I was joking- I always worry that my sense of humor does not translate well on the blogs. :)
That V-day story of yours is eerie, because we had to do the match-up thing as well. It was really pretty traumatic, because I never paid attention to boys until then. All of a sudden, this survey spits out that there are 3 boys I matched- EWWW. And then, of course, I proceeded to have crushes on them for the next six years. I should have known better than to trust a Commodore64.
Don't worry, I figured you were joking, just thought I should acknowledge the oversight anyway. So what celebrity did you say you resembled in the match-up thing? Or did you not have to answer that question? (Just wondering if there might have been a better answer than "Tempestt Bledsoe.")
goddamit woman where have you been? I'm assuming you're the same ads we used to know in days of well.. yore ?
and thanks to you I'm now going to spend the rest of the morning trying to decide whether to adopt "My chums are coming" or "I'M BLEEDING FROM MY CROTCH!" henceforth. hilarious post.
Hey! Yup, that's me. Nice to hear from you! From what I can tell, Blogland seems to be treating you well...
Oh, and I think you should adopt, "I'M BLEEDING FROM MY CROTCH!"
In my opinion, "My chums are coming" only really works when accompanied by the visual of the Famous Five having a picnic in your uterus.
Is it possible that if I read blogs by women, that the pheromones will seep through my monitor? Just wondering...
ads and brimful- i am so sorry you had to deal with that type of torture. so bizarre what elementary school teachers do, but i can imagine the work is hard and the pay is little. so torturing little kids is fun for them!
oodles- i often think the same thing...
this post (especially the final five sentences) was ridonkulously funny. and just so you know, i might like you even more if you were obsessed with crotch. you'd be in good company-- my german shepherd Rani is too. ;)
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