Good morning team,

I bet you didn’t know that what you wanted in your life was a history of tampons. This is so interesting you guys.

“What’s happened is instead of genuine advancements in terms of new products, the industry has put its research efforts into just beefing up the existing products and creating a need for additional products,” said Karen Houppert, a writer and author of The Curse, a book about the sanitary protection industry. “It’s an effort to repackage the old as new and continue to alarm women about the prospect of anyone knowing that they bleed. That’s their stock and trade.”

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why-are-tampons-still-a-thing

Enjoy also this analysis of periods classic, Carrie:

While men in the ’70s felt threatened by the unprecedented numbers of women standing up for themselves and attempting such radical social changes as being recognized as equal under the law, women themselves must have felt some anxiety that the obstacles to fully realizing themselves might be too big to conquer. The story therefore resonates with men in terms of the fear of (metaphorical) castration prompted by changing gender roles, and with women in terms of the fear that no matter how powerful we become, social forces are still so aligned against us that fighting back might destroy not just the patriarchy but ourselves.

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/10/28/a-feminist-guide-to-horror-movies-part-5-the-blood-of-carrie/

I will be away next week but I am delighted to announce that you will have a guest editor in the form of the excellent E Saxey. Enjoy!

Alex.