The advertising geniuses over at Stayfree, a Johnson & Johnson Company, have come up with the “unique” idea of hawking maxi pads via soft core porn.  Okay, so I am exaggerating—a little.  It’s not really porn; it’s more along the lines of the really terrible romance novels that can be found in someone’s grandma’s guest bedroom.  Think thumping bare chests and terrible pick-up lines.  Oh, and swooning.  Lots of swooning.

They fine folks over at Stayfree have launched their new ad campaign online. The ads, featuring three hard bodied men, are called “A Date With Stayfree.”  In each of the three videos, the men Brad, Ryan, and Trevor, find a reason to remove their shirts and do a highly creepy absorbency test on three different …

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Every twenty-eight days, I curse Eve from the bottom of my soul. “I hope that freaking apple was delicious, you selfish jerk!” is about the nicest thing that comes out of my mouth. While menstruation has become everything from an art medium to a convenient excuse for men to write off the “misbehavior” of women, it’s still a subject that tends to skeeve people out.

And I’m one of them. It’s bad enough to have horrible cramps (abdomen, back, and legs), stained underwear, violent diarrhea at the onset, bloating, a headache that lasts throughout, the inconvenience of sanitary napkins and tampons (I am seriously looking into the diva cup), the impact on your sex life (I had a memorable and utterly humiliating experience once where my period was done … but then somehow restarted again while in a compromising position—I don’t think I’ve ever been more embarrassed in my life), being aware of the smell, food cravings, and I could go on but I’m sure you get the point.

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I like art as much as the next person. In fact, one of my favorite non-English courses in college was, rather surprisingly, an art history course that I only took because I could schedule it with a friend (a notable downside was Duchamp’s Fountain, which is in fact kind of relevant here). However, there’s a new trend in art—using menstrual fluid to create, um, paintings. And yes, I’m serious.

Painter/photographer Lani Beloso suffers from a condition called menorrhagia, which results in her having an exceptionally heavy and painful period. That sucks for her, seriously. However, I’m not sure I’m thrilled about the direction she took to, uh, go with the flow.

From Eden Fantasys:

“One day,” [Beloso] says, “I thought: I’m gonna sit over something and I’m going to see exactly how much comes out of me—because I thought it was a gallon. I thought I was bleeding to death every month. I wanted to actually see the amount…I’m just going to sit over great a canvas and make a painting out of it while I’m at it.”

That was the beginning of “The Period Piece,” a project in which Beloso, already a painter/photographer, created 13 canvases with her own menstrual blood, representing a year’s worth of cycles. She wasn’t making a statement—she was just wanted to make the pain worth something.

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The uterus is perhaps the penultimate female organ. I mean, besides the vagina, of course, if your thinking takes a sexual bend. The thing is, though, the uterus goes through a lot with advances in modern medicine. Procedures such as hysterectomy (the surgical removal of the uterus), D&C (scraping the uterine walls), and ablation (burning off areas of the uterus with a laser) are rather invasive. Is it possible for the uterus to be “mothered” back to health through a more holistic approach?

Consider these statistics collected from the Hysterectomy Association and the HERS Foundation by www.alternativesurgery.com.

• Over 650,000 hysterectomies are performed in the United States annually. 80% are for benign conditions.
• 660 women will die due to complications from the surgery.
• 37% of ALL women will undergo a hysterectomy by age 60.
• 58% of all women who had the surgery are unable to return to previous work activities and 43% are unable to return to work at all.
• Every 10 minutes, 12 hysterectomies are performed in the United States.
• According to a recently published report by Obstetrics and Gynecology, the symptoms for nine of the 12 hysterectomies did not meet the guidelines set out by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists for requiring the procedure.
• Traditional medicine in the United States supports performing hysterectomies on younger and younger women… twice as many women in their 20s and 30s are having their uterus removed as compared to women in their 50s and 60s.
• Of all hysterectomies performed, 55% were performed on women aged 35-49 years old.
• Hormone imbalance and diminished hormone levels cause 75% of women post-hysterectomy to lose sexual desire,
66% to lose sexual arousal, 54% to lose sexual sensation and
53% to have suicidal thoughts associated with post hysterectomy depression.
• “If a woman undergoes a hysterectomy that leaves her ovaries in place, she has a 50% chance of suffering ovarian failure within 5 years of surgery.” – The Hysterectomy Association.
• Studies have shown that even when the ovaries are spared, over 50% of women will experience menopause-like symptoms such as hot flashes, mood swings and dry vagina post hysterectomy, necessitating hormone replacement therapy.

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According to etiquette-challenged Jon Hochschartner (and isn’t that a name that’d just want to roll off your tongue during sex, anyhow) who is a staff writer of the Plattsburgh (NY) State University’s newspaper, Cardinal Points, states that having sex with a woman who’s on the rag has got to be, like, the most disgusting thing, like, ever of all time, right?

The fratboy-eque Hochschartner retells a story regarding a “chick” he had bedded via a drunken escapade the prior night and his next-morning awakening which left him covered in blood from his “chest” to his “dick.”  So classy.  Hochs goes on to explain how utterly mortified he is and blah, blah, blah “anything that can bleed for seven days and not die has got to be evil” hooha.

Kind of reminds me of that scene in Super Bad, where the chunky kid finds menstrual blood on his jeans after dancing with a female school mate.  You know, that utterly infantile, asinine movie where it’s all about tits and ass and the perversions of creepy little male high school students?  Yeah, that one.

Hochs goes on to offer “better” alternatives to sex when his female coitus partners are on the rag.  His first suggestion?  Try anal.  Psst.  She might like it.  His second?  The sad excuse for foreplay: fellatio.  Hochs states that she may not be “down” with the second suggestion, citing not feeling “generous” enough, but there is a sure-fire remedy is to “stuff her full of cramp-reducing chocolate” and she then might “see the light.”

If this guy even remotely had a clue about the benefits (for both) of sex on the rag instead of being so pig-headed that the previous night’s sex was “icky” and “gross” because of a little extra lube when he probably couldn’t even remember it to begin with, he might take a bit of a different stance instead of crying like a little girl who skinned their knee for the first time and shed their own blood.

He claims that female suggestion of learning to like the natural lubrication falls on deaf ears; in fact, Hochs threw up in his mouth a little bit at the mere thought.

I’d like to meet this guy in a dark place and pull a Carrie on him.  Pig wouldn’t know it’s own blood from that of a woman anyway, right?

In her song,”Pull Over,” Trina raps:

Who got more ass than the average bitch?
You know it’s the baddest bitch
Number ten in the face, slim in the waist
Fat in the ass, do you want a taste?

Though Trina was likely referring to herself, scientists have come one step closer to identifying who got more ass than the average bitch. Researchers have recently identified two genes that predict the age at which girls start getting their period. And wouldn’t you know it, the genes are located next to the height and weight genes. Girls who are short and squat tend to get their periods earlier. Sing it, sister.

But while bodacious breastaculars and bubble butts may be all the rage in rap, early onset of puberty is linked with a host of problems later on in life, including breast cancer and osteoporosis. Early developers are apparently also at risk for other, more immediate problems.  Says a researcher:

“Girls maturing earlier are more likely to become depressed, delinquent, aggressive, socially withdrawn, suffer sleep problems drinking, smoking, drug abuse, lower self-esteem and suicide attempts.

They’re also more likely to exhibit poor academic performance in high school than on-time or later maturing peers.”

That makes sense to me. Where I went to school, the girls who developed earlier were cooler and more popular than the rest of us late developers. They drank and smoked pot in Rob’s parents’ basement, while the rest of us prepubescent nerds studied for AP Bio. Who’s laughing now?