Lunapads

We know that we said that the cutoff for our video contest was March 31st, but we are getting a slew of last-minute entries as well as requests for a bit more time to finish up. So for any of you who were thinking about it but didn’t think that you had time, good news: now you do! Just imagine your own personal shopping spree of $250 at Lunapads.com - you could get pads for all your friends, co-workers, roommates, sisters, etc. - think of how much more they all will love you, or just keep it all for your fantastically creative self!

To recap the entry process: create an ad for Lunapads.com and put it up at YouTube with “Lunapads” as a keyword. Deadline for entries will be extended to April 30, 2007, at which point the staff here at Lunapads will vote on their favorite. The winner will receive $250 worth of their choice of Lunapads.com products.

We’ll also highlight the top 10 videos that we receive and ask customers to vote for their favorites, the top 3 of which will each receive $100 worth of Lunapads.com products.

For resources on uploading your videos to YouTube click here.

Be creative, have fun, and drop us a line at info@lunapads.com when you’ve put your entry up so we’re sure not to miss it!

I’ve always had a bit of a problem understanding the meaning of “feminism.” I spent the majority of my childhood coercing my male cousins into playing Barbies with me, having the Ken doll staying at home with the kids while the Mom, always a dark-haired barbie, went to work. I suppose that in some ways, this was a direct result of the fact that my father worked freelance, and so he always stayed home with me and was there to pick me up from school while my mother went to work. This instilled the fact that men and women are nearly equal from an early age, and I was surprised that most of my classmates were picked up by their mothers. While my father would carry me out to the classroom on rainy days, I’d see only mothers dropping their kids off at the curb, and I would wonder why their daddies didn’t carry them out as well. As I got older, I wondered why my father and uncle always did the cleaning and my mom and aunt cooked, and in other families, the mom did everything.

As I got into high school, I tended to shy away from the self-labeled feminists: they tended to open their own doors, but would not hold them open for the men, and felt insulted when a man tried to help them with their chair or coat, snapping at them that she could do it herself, whereas I felt appreciative of the help that I recieved from my male friends. Similarly, I never refused them a favor, and more often than not these favors came in the form of sewing a rip in a pair of jeans. I was perfectly capable of performing heavy manual labor (most times, in a skirt and barefoot), but I would not refuse if a guy offered to help me, or to simply take over.

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Feminism, to be honest, is a loaded word. It has so many connotations – and not all of them positive. Some would say that feminists are angry militant women who want to be treated, act, and even look like men; with the same one set of values. That is a stereotype, and nothing could be farther from the truth.

My style of feminism is very different from the stereotype. I celebrate being a woman and being feminine. I firmly believe myself to be worthy of just as much respect and value as any other human being.

As a woman, I respect my body, its processes, its unique abilities, and its limitations. I would not allow anyone – including myself to use my body for selfish pleasure. I respect my body’s natural rhythms and choose to better understand them and celebrate them rather than suppress them as if a disease. My monthly period is a sign that my ovaries are active. Other signs that we (my husband and I) chart on my cyclical Sympto-Thermal chart indicate that I ovulate, and have periods of fertility and infertility in my cycle. I have the awesome privilege as a fertile woman to be able to carry new life within me, and then nourish that child with milk uniquely tailored to his or her needs. I believe that my role as mother is one to be respected by our society – whether I choose to stay at home and raise and maybe even educate our children myself, or if I choose to leave our children in the care of someone we trust while I go to work.

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To really answer that question, I need to share with you some of my personal history.

When I was in high school, I was an athlete on the fencing team. Now, if you are new to the sport, allow me to tell you a bit about it so you can understand the impact of what happened to me. There are three different styles of fencing associated with the weapon: sabre, foil and epee. Sabre is fought by hitting the opponent with either the side or the point of the blade anywhere above the waist, including the head. Foil fencers use only the tip of their weapon to score points in a region covered by a stupid vest. And, epee is a bit of a free-for-all, hitting anywhere on the body, using just the tip of the weapon.

Traditionally (and at that time—the 1980s), women were primarily fencing foil, with the handful or two fencing epee. But it was the rare girl/woman who took on the sabre because it meant that she would be competing against men.

I enjoyed everything about the sport, even if it meant coming home with red, throbbing welts on my legs because some boys decided to hit me “off target” to teach me a lesson. But, my male teammates and the coach were supportive and kept at it with me because they believed that I could do it. I also spent weekends hauling my 20 lbs of equipment on the bus into New York City to learn from and compete with athletes from the New York Fencers Club (home of some Olympic fencers including medalist Peter Westbrook). However, I did know that I was an oddity because there weren’t many opportunities to compete against other women.

In my junior year, right after the fencing season started, one of our competing teams discovered that there was a girl on the sabre team. We were already one match into the season, and I had just earned my position on the varsity sabre squad. This team refused to let me fence their boys, except in a humiliating “exhibition” bout. I won that bout, and word spread that I could fence, but wasn’t going to be allowed to compete.

The state of New Jersey argued that since there was an “equivalent” girls’ team (they meant the girls’ foil team), that I should not be competing on the sabre team. I tried to educate the state officials on the differences between sabre and foil, but they turned a deaf ear to my pleas.

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I grew up surrounded by strong, intelligent women. And by men who loved and respected them. It’s hard to come out of that kind of upbringing without a profound sense that women are capable, worthy, autonomous human beings.

I remember a very telling exchange I had with my mother many years ago. I was quite young, probably in elementary school. I don’t remember much of the conversation, or how we got on the topic, but I do remember saying that I wouldn’t really have to worry about finding a good job when I grew up because I could rely on a man to find one, and to presumably support me and our family.

At which point my mother gently said something to the effect of, “Why couldn’t you have your own job and support yourself?”

I obviously don’t remember her exact words, but I never lost the lesson: I am smart. I am capable. I can support myself just as well as any man could support me. And I think it’s a testament to how well I learned that lesson that I absolutely balk at the thing I said all those years ago.

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Happy International Women’s Day!

In our last e-newsletter we announced that we are looking for guest blog entries about our feminist journeys, so here’s mine (at least the beginning!)

I have a million thoughts and memories around this topic, as some of my most important growth experiences in life have been in uniquely feminine and feminist contexts. It all started round about 1986. At the end of my first year university English 101 class my professor announced her regret that we hadn’t studied a single work by a woman writer the entire year. I don’t know what devastated me more: the fact itself or that I hadn’t noticed - either way, something shifted for me in a way that I had never felt before - I was angry, not personally, but as a woman (even though at age 19 I didn’t quite yet think of myself as a woman, as you will soon see!) At the beginning of my second year it came to my attention that there was a budding Women’s Studies department, so it seemed logical to head over thataways in search of my missing women writers. Off I went, and never looked back - here were not only the missing books, names, stories and information, but further an eminently sensible framework that when applied to pretty much anything, brought it into clear, if often painful, relief: feminism.

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