Screw You, I Want It In A Brown Paper Bag

In honor of Women's History month, I have a bone to pick with pad and tampon companies.

DISCLAIMER: If you cannot tell from the aforesaid statement, I am about to rant on periods. Icky, yes. I warned you.

Yesterday, I was watching some admittedly stupid show online; thank the higher being for Hulu. One of the best features of online television is the dramatic reduction in commercials. I love it. I hate commercials- I'm sorry, but I can't buy beer, I don't want Doritos, I don't have any real credit score to speak of, and I can't afford cable, dish, or Direct TV. Ads are not effective.

However, they are plenty effective at making me cranky.

As I was watching telly on my computer, a commercial came on for Carefree's new thinner pads- "Looks like a liner but absorbs like a pad!"

The commercial made me want to punch something.

I hate it that on every box of tampons I buy, on every package of pads I see, there are flowers, and swirly things, and pastels. They advertise these things like they're marketing towards five year old girls.

I don't like pink. I resent the fact that it is associated with my gender. I don't like this notion of girly happiness when it comes to menstruation. Periods suck. I get horrible cramps, I feel like choking people, and it's messy. I want my tampons to come in a nondescript brown paper bag, not some frilly packaging that should be around a Barbie doll.

And that slogan- "Have a happy period!" All I have to say to that is fuck you, Always Brand.

This is why some men still don't respect women. After all this time, we still use pink as our identifying color. We use the slogan "Girl Power" and make everything sparkle-y.

Some women might like pink. Some might be into all that stuff. But I'm not. And every time I see that goddamned pad commercial, I am reminded how un-girly I really am. I like knives. I collect Hot Wheels. I swear like a sailor and I like fast cars with large engines. I have a pet lizard.

Things like those damned ads alienate me from my own gender. And, I suspect, they alienate a lot of other women. Advertising periods as being something flowery and pretty makes most women I've talked to want to attack that company's marketing team.

And how about the fact that after all of these years of "women's rights," the devices we use to stop blood flow are still crude bits of cotton? If men had periods, they would have over-engineered that shit ages ago. But no, we get string, cotton, and adhesive that comes in swirl-covered wrappers. It's 2010, people. We have computers the size of your hand and cars the size of your house. If we can do all of that, we should be able to come up with an easier way to deal with periods. Fuck Aunt Flo.

The problem, at least from what I've seen, is that women are nervous about talking about this stuff openly. Sure, it's easy when you're with your female friends or your mom, but can you rant about this in front of your mayor, your governor, or the president? Probably not.

But isn't that part of the wall blocking the advancement of women? Men certainly talk about their penises enough. That pathetic show "The Doctors" recently featured a "sperm facial" and didn't get flagged by anyone. I mean, the Washington Monument, considered one of our most iconic statues in Washington DC, is little more than a giant stone phallus. If we can openly display that, how come we can't find a better way to deal with our "Time Of The Month?" We put a man on the frigging moon, people. We've created elements that don't even exist in the natural world. So why is this such a big request?

Maybe scientists are just squeamish. Don't like the thought of menstruation, gentlemen? Grow the fuck up. I'm tired of there being such huge divisions in society about what's "manly" and "feminine." Periods should not be associated with pink and frills. It shouldn't be a big deal one way or the other in this day and age. We shouldn't have to stand awkwardly across from the pimply cashier at the store and watch him smirk as he rings up that goddamned pastel-colored box. Nor should we sweep it under the rug and pretend it doesn't happen. My attitude is "Yeah, I have periods, so what? I can also kick your ass."

I applaud Katherine Bigelow for shying away from being heralded as the first woman to win Best Director. I'm tired of hearing about how amazing it is that a woman could achieve something. We shouldn't be making that distinction, because it is just as sexist as saying women belong in the kitchen.

And it all boils down, in my opinion, to these freaking tampon/pad ads. No more girly crap, please. It's an inconvenience, not a fun-filled several days. It's not flowery and swirly and awesome. It sucks. It's awkward. And I know there are women out there who celebrate it. Fine. Celebrate it. But we need to stop acting like it's some cute, childish thing. We need to stop with the "I'm a Barbie Girl"/"I am Woman, Hear Me Roar" crap. Let's just be humans; no better, no worse, then men. Let's all have the same opportunities. I'm tired of this "Battle of the Sexes" bullhonky. It's immature and it just reinforces sexist divisions. I know plenty of men who are decent, sensitive guys and I know guys who are total assholes. I know women who are thoughtful and compassionate and I know women who are whiny-ass bitches that I'd love to slap. Give up this whole schema of "If you're a boy, you act differently than a girl." Says who? Our culture? Culture changes, people. It's not static. Boys are allowed to like pink and girls are allowed to collect Hot Wheels.

So just give me my damned tampons flower-free and go away, Tampax.

Let's Educate Education

Public education failed me.

As a side-note, I love the teachers I had while in public education. A special shout-out to my sixth-grade teacher, Michelle Fluckiger, my French teacher, Sally Husted, my eleventh-grade English teacher, Kim Brydges, and my AP Government teacher, Steve Mendive. They stand out in particular as teachers who were helpful, encouraging, and actually liked their students. They weren't teaching just because it was a job. They were teaching because they felt they had something to teach.

But the public education system failed me completely. My senior year of high school was definitely my most successful year because most of my classes were correspondence, rather than a part of the system. When I went in and proposed doing my senior year as I did, my school counselor was quite unwilling to be helpful at first. This was not because she didn't like me; this was because the system is resistant to people who do not want to be coerced.

And in my case, I am quite unwilling to be coerced. I am stubborn to a fault.

Ever heard the expression, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink?"

In my case, you can't even lead this horse to the water.

And I know all kinds of other people who are highly intelligent, but did poorly in school. Again, the education system failed them.

It is a system where pace is set by the people at the bottom of the class, not at the top. This would be alright if we didn't have the same requirements across the board.

Health class has the potential to be useful to some people, but it wasn't to me. I did the entire class online in about three days. Clearly, not very useful.

And too many standardized tests. We've established that I am smart, alright? So stop making me take them again, and again, and again, and.... you get the point.

And my experience with public education was better than most. Here at Portland State, most freshmen cannot even write a remotely coherent essay. They have never heard of ethos, pathos, and logos. They cannot cite sources, and they don't know how to handle homework, or how to study for finals.

But the biggest thing that rubbed me the wrong way about the public education system was this insane emphasis on math and science. Massive cuts are being made to art programs across the nation, just so that math and science requirements can be met.

This is absurd. Not everybody needs calculus. Not everyone gets to be a banker or a scientist. We are going to need electricians, and artists, and musicians. We need writers. We REALLY need some real journalists. And so, for those of us (Anthropology) who are not interested in trigonometry, stop forcing it upon us. Math and science are good for those who like those subjects.

And, unfortunately, I am going to need some math, because I am also studying archaeology, which is a science. However, I have friends who are English majors. And Art majors. And they don't care about y=mx+b.

Science is important. Math is important. But they are not everything. Long before we were figuring out the area of a circle, we were painting on walls. And our society gives math and science too much importance. They are certainly subjects of knowledge, but there are other kinds of knowledge besides these two.

Our education system does not care about its students. Most of the teachers care, and most of the parents care, but public education, as a whole, does not care about the student. If it claims it does, do not buy it. Because I am one of the students it tried, and failed, to force through the system.

I say all of this because I was listening to someone talk about Asperger's Syndrome being a learning disability. I disagree with this concept of "learning disabilities" because education should be able to change to fit whatever the student's learning style is. It has no right to be classifying people as "learning disabled." If the education system was genuinely interested in educating students, it would do whatever it could to make sure everyone has the opportunity to learn the same things, regardless of how they learn.

But if public education is not invested in educating everyone, in what is it interested? Instead of suggesting that the students who fail have something "wrong" with them, why is the system not questioning what is wrong with itself? The system should be required to change to fit the student, rather than trying to change the student to fit the system. They have no right to try to change me, or anyone else, and what's more, they didn't manage to change me. I graduated, even if it was on my own terms.

I changed the system to fit me, and it was hard as hell, and finally, I succeeded.