Of course I clicked when this tweet from Glamour came across my timeline.
The article mentions the following four products: washable period underwear, washable pads, menstrual cups, and sea sponges. The first three are great, but menstrual sponges are not.
This is what Glamour said about sponges:
Yup, you can stop your period before it exits the premises by putting a sponge up there. Menstrual sponges like those that Jade & Pearl and Jam Sponge offer actually look a lot like bath sponges, and they work the same way. The only disadvantage is that they may be a bit cumbersome and messy to get out. But they are good for the environment and your wallet, since you only have to change them every six to 12 months.
This is dangerous advice.
Sea sponges aren’t “like” bath sponges they ARE bath sponges. Some people promote them as “natural” alternatives to menstrual tampons, except they are untested and potentially very unsafe. Oh yeah, they are also filled with dirt.
According to the Food and Drug Administration, twelve “menstrual sponges” were tested at the University of Iowa in the 1980s and they and contained sand, grit, bacteria, and “various other materials.” Another batch was tested by the Baltimore district laboratory and in addition to the sand, grit and bacteria they also found yeast and mold. One sample contained Staphylococcus aureus (the bacteria that causes toxic shock syndrome). As the FDA notes there is least one case of toxic shock syndrome associated with the sea sponge and another possible one.
The grossness of a debris and “various other materials” containing vaginal sponge aside there are real potential safety concerns. Bits could break off and become a nidus for bacteria, the sponge itself could have harmful bacteria, sponges may change the vaginal ecosystem promoting the growth of good bacteria, the inability to clean them adequately between uses may reintroduce potentially harmful bacteria that was breeding in the wet sponge sat drying beside the sink, and the sponge may cause abrasions during insertion and/or removal.
Menstrual products, sea sponges included, are regarded by the FDA as “significant risk devices requiring premarket approval under Section 515.” Basically, you have to study any products that is new and prove it is safe.The concerns about sponges were so significant the FDA contacted the manufacturers of menstrual sponges to warn them of the risks and to require they stop marketing and selling the products. Some closed down, others relabeled their products for “cosmetic” use. By they way there weren’t just a few businesses selling sponges, the FDA visited forty-one businesses that packaged sponges as well as 500 retail establishments.
One of the companies suggested as a source of menstrual sponges by Glamour is Jade & Pearl who received a warning letter from the FDA in 2014 about marketing menstrual sponges (if you read the full letter you’ll see that Jade & Pearl actually had a whole list of FDA violations).
This is how Jade & Pearl advertises their sponges right now, but it’s pretty genius marketing to get Glamour to tell everyone that your product is potentially not just for cosmetic uses! See FDA, it’s “just a sponge.”
Sea sponges are potentially very unsafe.
Really, I can’t emphasize that enough. There are lots of very biologically plausible ways they could harm women andGlamour magazine should be ashamed for including them without the most basic of research. It makes you wonder if Google was just not working the day the piece was written or if it was sourced only from press releases.
I’m the expert and I say women should not use sea sponges in their vagina. They are potentially very dangerous. They don’t even have the most basic of safety testing. Glamour should know better and I urge them to print a correction and remove the offending paragraph.
Reblogging because im very sure i reblogged the video of that review and want ppl to know
Is this a trend now? Please don’t insert sea creatures in your vagina. It’s not a good idea.
So somebody on my Facebook posted this. And I’ve seen sooooo many memes like it. Images of a canvas with nothing but a slash cut into it, or a giant blurry square of color, or a black circle on a white canvas. There are always hundreds of comments about how anyone could do that and it isn’t really art, or stories of the time someone dropped a glove on the floor of a museum and people started discussing the meaning of the piece, assuming it was an abstract found-objects type of sculpture.
The painting on the left is a bay or lake or harbor with mountains in the background and some people going about their day in the foreground. It’s very pretty and it is skillfully painted. It’s a nice piece of art. It’s also just a landscape. I don’t recognize a signature style, the subject matter is far too common to narrow it down. I have no idea who painted that image.
The painting on the right I recognized immediately. When I was studying abstraction and non-representational art, I didn’t study this painter in depth, but I remember the day we learned about him and specifically about this series of paintings. His name was Ad Reinhart, and this is one painting from a series he called the ultimate paintings. (Not ultimate as in the best, but ultimate as in last.)
The day that my art history teacher showed us Ad Reinhart’s paintings, one guy in the class scoffed and made a comment that it was a scam, that Reinhart had slapped some black paint on the canvas and pretentious people who wanted to look smart gave him money for it. My teacher shut him down immediately. She told him that this is not a canvas that someone just painted black. It isn’t easy to tell from this photo, but there are groups of color, usually squares of very very very dark blue or red or green or brown. They are so dark that, if you saw them on their own, you would call each of them black. But when they are side by side their differences are apparent. Initially you stare at the piece thinking that THAT corner of the canvas is TRUE black. Then you begin to wonder if it is a deep green that only appears black because the area next to it is a deep, deep red. Or perhaps the “blue” is the true black and that red is actually brown. Or perhaps the blue is violet and the color next to it is the true black. The piece challenges the viewer’s perception. By the time you move on to the next painting, you’re left to wonder if maybe there have been other instances in which you believe something to be true but your perception is warped by some outside factor. And then you wonder if ANY of the colors were truly black. How can anything be cut and dry, black and white, when even black itself isn’t as absolute as you thought it was?
People need to understand that not all art is about portraying a realistic image, and that technical skills (like the ability to paint a scene that looks as though it may have been photographed) are not the only kind of artistic skills. Some art is meant to be pretty or look like something. Other art is meant to carry a message or an idea, to provoke thought.
Reinhart’s art is utterly genius.
“But anyone could have done that! It doesn’t take any special skill! I could have done that!”
Ok. Maybe you could have. But you didn’t.
Give abstract art some respect. It’s more important than you realize.
I think my biggest “huh” moment with respect to gender roles is when it was pointed out to me that your typical “geek” is just as hypermasculine as your typical “jock” when you look at it from the right angle.
As male geeks, a great deal of our identity is built on the notion that male geeks are, in some sense, gender-nonconformant, insofar as we’re unwilling or unable to live up to certain physical ideals about what a man “should” be. Indeed, many of us take pride in how putatively unmanly we are.
Viewed from an historical perspective, however, the virtues of the ideal geek are essentially those of the ideal aristocrat: a cultured polymath with expertise in a vast array of subjects; rarefied or eccentric taste in food, clothing, music, etc.; identity politics that revolve around one’s hobbies or pastimes; open disdain for physical labour and those who perform it; a sense of natural entitlement to positions of authority (“you should be flipping my burgers!”); and so forth.
And the thing about that aristocratic ideal? It’s intensely masculine. It may seem more welcoming to women on the surface, but - as recent events will readily illustrate - this is a facade: we pretend to be egalitarian because it suits our refined self-image, but that affectation falls away in a heartbeat when challenged.
Basically, the whole “geeks versus jocks” thing that gets drilled into us by media and the educational system isn’t about degrees of masculinity at all. It’s just two different flavours of the same toxic bullshit: the ideal geek is the alpha-male-as-philosopher-king, as opposed to the ideal jock’s alpha-male-as-warrior-king. It’s still a big dick-measuring contest - we’re just using different rulers.
It’s just two different flavours of the same toxic bullshit: the ideal
geek is the alpha-male-as-philosopher-king, as opposed to the ideal
jock’s alpha-male-as-warrior-king.
On Tuesday, at the United State of Women Summit in Washington D.C., first lady Michelle Obama sat down with Oprah Winfrey for a wide ranging chat. When the topic turned to what men can do for equality, Obama had two repeating words, “Be better.” She also doled out advice for women and the confusion about “bravery.”
I don’t recall a First Lady in my lifetime who was anywhere close to as inspirational and amazing as Michelle Obama.
