Women, Vaginas and Blood: Menstruate With Pride
In an unfailingly mischievous manner, Sarah Maple uses narrative artwork to challenge traditional notions of religion, identity and the societal role of women. Her artwork never fails to shock; her latest piece Menstruate With Pride (right) is no exception. Surrounded by a horrified and disgusted crowd, Maple stands centre stage, a proud woman menstruating in public. It’s an interesting and bold statement; clearly Maple is an incendiary feminist. But the painting also airs a deep societal secret that menstruation is – and must remain – taboo.
What better way to understand the meaning behind Maple’s artwork than to ask the artist herself? “Initially I didn’t want to make work about menstruation because I thought it was a bit of a cliché. But as I was looking more into the idea of women and shame, I felt like I couldn’t avoid it!” Maple laughs. “I think there’s a phenomenal burden of shame on women from word go. When I started my period I was absolutely horrified, I felt it was humiliating. I didn’t tell my mother for 3 years, I felt I was letting her down. I think this may have been a cultural thing,” she says.
Interestingly, Maple considers her culture to be partly responsible for her shameful feelings — she’s the daughter of an Iranian mother and a Kentish father. Some cultures and religions, including Orthodox Judaism, Christianity and Islam, isolate menstruating women by excluding them from prayer, physical intimacy and even household chores. Maple’s artwork transgresses these taboos by exposing and mocking them, almost satirically. “I like laughing at things for being taboo; this is what I wanted to do in the painting. I wanted to create a drama about it, like in the classic religious paintings, hence the triptych format of a religious altar. Everyone is looking so outraged and shocked and you end up laughing at them, laughing at their outrage,” says Maple.
Rules are attached to menstruating women according to Simone de Beauvoir, feminist and author of The Second Sex, because they are viewed as impure, repulsive and dangerous, particularly to men. She explains that men repress women’s sexuality because they fear and are in awe of women’s monthly bleeding, a biological power gifted only to women to enable them to produce the next generation.
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/04/13/women-vaginas-and-blood-menstruate-with-pride-breaking-taboos-with-artist-and-provocative-feminist-sarah-maple/
= new reply since forum marked as read
but....
I've never been ashamed of menstruation, but given the horrific menstrual migraines, nauseating PMS and inexplicable exhaustion that came along with the "show", I wouldn't feel much like celebrating (?) it in this manner. 
Perhaps there are other ways to accomplish the same goal?
To design an entire narrative art exhibit around the issue, is to celebrate it. Perhaps the little "shock" value alone is not a bad thing. Complacency, after all, never allows for change.
No woman should feel shame from what is a very normal biological function. But, I think there are many many many girls and women who were very poorly treated by a medical system that had--for all too many years-- given lip service to some of the more serious health issues surrounding women's hormonal cycles. I suffered for nearly two decades from the worst and most debilitating migraines needlessly largely because of institutional disregard for women's specific health issues. SO, if i had my druthers, that is where I'd direct my time and attention.
I agree. I know that most docs that I have seen are not very understanding of the pain that can come with menstruation.
Very good point!
There's so much shame about it. It seems to me that we see at least comic references to bodily functions all the time, but that one less so. Haven't done any research of course, just an impression.
That one makes people feel uncomfortable for some reason. The only time it's openly discussed is when it's used as a silencing tactic against another (justifiably, most likely) angry woman.
And the blood itself is treated like toxic waste. Washing diapers is no big deal, but re-usable pads?! Shock! Horror! Revulsion! 
I was probably confirmed a few years before you. My stumbling block at the time was not believing in hell. Our minister, a reformed Baptist (the United Church of Canada, my then church, is about the most theologically liberal / socially progressive Christian church in the world) pondered, and said well, he had a minister friend who was a missionary who didn't believe in hell, so that would be okay he guessed.
That parable of the talents, though, I rejected that from first reading way before confirmation, and I don't know how the UCC makes it peace with that one.
