How Do You Feel About Your Friend?

(I got sick of terrible webcam images, so now there are slightly better ones!)

By Chella Quint and Sarah Thomasin
www.chartyourcycle.co.uk

Sometimes I wonder about why there seem to be so many zines about menstration. But I've realized that one of the reasons is probably because there isn't much discussion of these things in most mainstream media, so people have to make their own stuff in order to have people actually talk about it.

And yes I said "it" instead of an actual term because this is a zine about menstrual euphamisms and I thought it would be kind of ironic (gah, is it?) to refer to it as such. The zine talks about how menstration is often seen as embarassing or shameful, and the need for other terms to use while discussing it with people. Yet, the zine continues, most of these euphamisms are now seen as "negative and potentially opressive" and raises the idea of creating 'newphemisms' for menstration.

That's a totally rad, and probably amusing, idea, but unfortunately isn't really followed through in the rest of the zine. Instead we get colouring pages to try and visualize existing terms like "Aunt Flo is visiting" and "surfing the crimson wave". There's also a text piece that says that the word "curse" is only used to mean swearing in America and I'm pretty sure that's not true.

This really seems more like an activity book you would use in a workshop. I think if you had a bunch of people answering these questions, doing the activities, and discussing stuff you could have some really good conversations. But (as a male) sitting by myself in my bedroom I guess I didn't get as much out of it as I could have.