Film on polycystic ovary syndrome
Harry!
Many apologies for being so out of touch. I think of you often and wonder how everything is going for you.
I wanted to let you know that "Scrambled," my documentary about PCOS, has been getting lots of attention lately. The section about the museum is often people's favorite part of the video and I'm so thankful to you! [Randi filmed MUM before it closed.]
I hope all is well with you and I hope to see you whenever I arrange to have a screening in your neck of the woods.
Take care and thanks again,
Randi
http://www.scrambledthewebsite.com
Recent/upcoming screenings Info:
SEE SCRAMBLED ON TV, ON THE BIG SCREEN, AND AT THE PCOS CONFERENCE!
Scrambled; A Journey Through Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome is a chronicle of my experience living with PCOS, a complex medical condition which is the leading cause of female infertility and affects 5%-10% of all women.
The 40-minute documentary sheds light on the challenges of living with PCOS and seeks to engage a general audience in an honest exploration of the complex relationships we all have with our bodies and with cultural conceptions of gender, beauty, and identity. And it's entertaining too!
Please visit http://www.scrambledthewebsite.com to learn more about the video and to see how your support can help it reach a wider audience.
I hope you can catch one of the following screenings and I look forward to your feedback! [Too late, now that I'm updating every other week rather than weekly, but . . . .]
(New York City) CUNY-TV Cinematheque
Cable Channel 75 at 9 p.m., Sunday 5/27 and midnight, Friday 6/1
City College Professor Jerry Carlson highlights work from the MFA in Media Arts Production Program including TWO PERCENT FACT (Doc.) by Jason Benjamin, STACCATO (Fiction) by Teocarlo Pulgar and SCRAMBLED: A JOURNEY THROUGH POLYCYSTIC OVARIAN SYNDROME (Doc.) For more information:
http://www.cuny.tv/films/index.htm
(New York City) THE NEW FESTIVAL
Wednesday, June 6, 5:30 p.m., at The NYU Cantor Film Center: 36 East 8th Street (at University Place)
Nearest trains: 8th Street: N, RWest 4th Street: A, C, E, B, D, Q, F
For more information:
http://www.newfestival.org/cgi-bin/iowa/event.html
(Philadelphia area) THE POLYCYSTIC OVARIAN SYNDROME ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE
(ALL WELCOME!)
Thursday June 7, 8 p.m., at the Valley Forge Hilton
For more information and directions:
http://www.pcosupport.org/conference/index.html
Portuguese 16-year-old talks about menstruation in her country
She also contributed to the "words for menstruation" page and wrote her opinion about stopping menstruation
I'd like to suggest to you one thing: why don't you create a section on your site where contributors around the word tell how menstruation is seen in their own countries? [Good idea! Start writing, folks!]
I'm from Portugal and here no one has problems in talking about menstruation. Everyone faces menstruation like a normal bodily function (which it is, in fact). There have been some soap operas which have talked about menarche and both girls and boys are aware of what's going to happen.
But there're some old ideas still alive in rural areas (I believe my grandmother's mother would not let her wash her hair or something) but everyone has an open mind in general (some days ago, I watched a girl friend of mine explain to a boy friend of mine how to put in a tampon - he was quite interested [!]).
There are no cups or belts to wear in Portugal (as far as I know). There're only tampons and disposable napkins (which are very thin and comfortable).
Australian woman remembers high-sided toilet stalls, burning pads in school and running from the ashes of someone else's "Fred"!
The contributor of many pidgin terms used in New Guinea, and the Australian term "Fred,"meaning "menstruation," to the words-for-menstruation page, adds:
Harry, another thing,
I remember in primary school in Australia, as late as about 1976, having our first "birds and bees" talk, the teacher held up a belted pad as THE example of what we would be wearing once we reached puberty. There were no tampons, but adhesive pads were offered as an "alternative." They were enormous; we used to call them surfboards. In primary school there was one toilet stall with high sides (the ordinary ones could be looked over if you stood on the seat). In the high-sided toilet stall there was an incinerator for pads.
Later, the toilet blocks in high school all had incinerators. They were out on the wall by the basins, so you had to wrap your pad in loo paper, leave your toilet stall, and incinerate it in front of everybody. Quite embarrassing. Of course the class wag would shove in two or three whole rolls of loo paper and the thing would go "woosh" and this huge plume of smoke and burning paper would rocket out of the chimney. People would run screaming because they didn't want ash from someone else's Fred to land on them.
Remembering Lydia Pinkham and her vegetable compound
Dear Mr. Finley:
A co-worker recently attended a funeral wake at the Pinkham Estates Funeral Home. She told all the girls at work about Lydia Pinkham home and of it's exceptional beauty.
Well, one discussion led to another about Lydia. All the girls remembered the building in Lynn that produced the famous remedy but none of the girls had my memory of the Lydia E Pinkham Clinic in Salem, Massachusetts. We were a family of six children and our family physician had referred my mom to the clinic for our childhood immunizations. I also recall receiving cough medicine there. I wonder if it was Lydia's compound.
Sincerely,
Book about menstruation published in Spain
The Spanish journalist who contributed some words for menstruation to this site last year and wrote about this museum (MUM) in the Madrid newspaper "El País" just co-authored with her daughter a book about menstruation (cover at left).
She writes, in part,
Dear Harry Finley,
As I told you, my daughter (Clara de Cominges) and I have written a book (called "El tabú") about menstruation, which is the first one to be published in Spain about that subject. The book - it talks about the MUM - is coming out at the end of March and I just said to the publisher, Editorial Planeta, to contact you and send you some pages from it and the cover as well. I'm sure that it will be interesting to you to have some information about the book that I hope has enough sense of humour to be understood anywhere. Thank you for your interest and help.
If you need anything else, please let me know.
Best wishes,
Margarita Rivière
Belen Lopez, the editor of nonfiction at Planeta, adds that "Margarita, more than 50 years old, and Clara, 20, expose their own experiences about menstruation with a sensational sense of humour." (Later this month more information will appear on the publisher's site, in Spanish.)
My guess is that Spaniards will regard the cover as risqué, as many Americans would. And the book, too. But, let's celebrate!
Two weeks ago I mentioned that Procter & Gamble was trying to change attitudes in the Spanish-speaking Americas to get more women to use tampons, specifically Tampax - a hard sell.
Compare this cover with the box cover for the Canadian television video about menstruation, Under Wraps, and the second The Curse.
An American network is now developing a program about menstruation for a popular cable channel; some folks from the network visited me recently to borrow material.
And this museum lent historical tampons and ads for a television program in Spain last year.
Now, if I could only read Spanish! (I'm a former German teacher.)
Irregular menses identify women at high risk for polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which exists in 6-10% of women of reproductive age. PCOS is a major cause of infertility and is linked to diabetes.
