As usual, my women friends are dragging grouchy old badger me into modern trends. Even though I am old as dirt and stuck in my ways, I like to think I know how to modernize. For instance I was ok with giving up my keyboard phone for a touch screen (not really but here I am anyway). Then they said I should do yoga in those pants everybody wears to the grocery store. No wait… first it was Zumba, then it was Yoga. I am clearly losing track of the silly things women do to jiggle less in their leggings. I kind of stopped paying attention to any of it when they started neighborhood Mommy and Daughter pole dancing classes.

I have been a good sport and done other activities seemingly targeted to women. Candle parties, sex toy evenings, wine club with a book problem, all of it. I drew the line at the “50 Shades of Grey” fangirl club because I consider bad writing to be a crime against humanity, yet there they were: all the girls surreptitiously licking their kindles.

Now I must deal with the latest “must have” in woman land. It is about period blood. If that idea freaks you out a little, keep reading, we might be on the same team here.

A number, and I mean a statistically significant number, of my friends are avoiding the feminine products aisle and heading straight to the hippy dippy natural store to buy a cup. It is a plastic cup that they wear in their lady cave and it catches the blood. I will just let that sink in a moment. 

I can tell you, we have been having a full-on chimp style poo fling fest over this. They want me to put my environmentalist money where my mouth is by putting a blood catcher in the hole instead of disposable products. “Come to the dark side,” they said, “we are liberated and unafraid of our bodies,” they declare. 

Alright, so now rather than using menstrual products that decay over a longer period of time than it takes to break down nuclear waste, we are supposed to use blood catching dishes in our hairy beasts. I don’t know, this is all a little waterbirth and patchouli for me. 

I asked my progressive friends how they deal with it when the cup overfloweth. Well apparently you use toilet paper and wipe it out. Ok, I could see that being workable. But the next bit came from a seasoned user that didn’t exactly further her argument. She cautioned that when you are cleaning out your slippy cup in a public washroom stall, you need to make sure nobody sees your hand on the way to the sink. Murder scene apparently. 

The next issue is reliability. When it REALLY counts, can you be sure that the catch-all will perform? One of the girls was a new user, she asked the group if she could poop with it in. She was worried about the potential of a one push jettison. Unfortunately, by the time our seasoned cup using friend answered her email, newbie had already crapped her pants. Good news though, the cup stayed in, so she had that going for her. 

I am thinking summer is coming and lots of us like to wear a dress and maybe go commando. What if you are hanging with your friends (or worse your kids) and suddenly sneeze and don’t have time to cross your legs? Not only is there a high risk for pee, you might hear the tell tale “clunk” that indicates you are officially having the worst moment of your life. There it lies at your feet. Now what?

Anyway, I get that people love this idea. They rave about their Twat Tupperware like it is somehow making periods easier to bear. I love my friends, but I might just not be that free and feminist after all. I can’t face bleeding into a glorified shot glass risking catastrophic failure and losing one into the toilet. 

We ended our discussion on the topic of blood management and moved to less controversial subjects like politics, religion and vaccination. 

So if you see somebody walk to the sink in a mall bathroom hiding a hand, give her the “sisterhood of the blood catchers” secret wink, because now you know. 

Author

Our Editor-in-Chief Magnolia Ripkin is sort of like your mouthy Aunt who drinks too much and tells you how to run your life, except funny... well mostly funny... like a cold glass of water in the face. She writes a flagrantly offensive blog at Magnolia Ripkin Advice Blog answering pressing questions about business, personal development, parenting, heck even the bedroom isn't safe. She is the Editor in Chief at BluntMoms. Other places to find her: Huffington Post, The Mighty and Modern Loss. You can also check her out in two amazing compendiums of bloggers who are published in “I Just Want To Be Alone.” And most recently, Martinis and Motherhood, Tales of Wonder, Woe and WTF

43 Comments

  1. First of all, this was hilarious! Completely disgusting, but I was compelled to see it through to the bloody end. #SeeWhatIDidThere

    I will admit that I tried the cup once while I was at boarding school. We’d just had a “My Body and Me” class with a seriously hippy, dippy, extra-crunchy house monitor and I figured it was better for my lady bits and the environment.

    All of your concerns are totally valid. It was a mess to deal with and I always felt a sneeze away from disaster.

    Not worth it. #TeamTampon4Eva

    Tiffany

    • Sing it girl. Sneezing should not cause catastrophic flooding… or the squooshy popping sound of an expelled tennis ball.

    • Now I know exactly when I will come to mind for you. You will never insert without thinking of me… you are welcome.

  2. Bawhahahaha by far my favorite cup post ever! And At last a Tupperware party I can get behind!

    I have to say that rubber stays well put. You are much more likely to sneeze out a tampon. And at least with the cup, if it did happen most peeps wouldn’t know what they were looking at- not the case with our cotton tailed friends.

    Also for the first time in my life, I have fume free monthlies. Even my dog no longer comes nuzzling. (I sort of miss that).

    Of course I live in Asia where every toilet has a hand water jet…we will see what happens when I get back to the land of paper but I am pretty sure my cup and I will be living happily ever after.

    Come on Magnolia join team shot glass! Who can refuse?! Twelve hours of toxic shock syndrome free coverage! Landfills everywhere will thank you!

    Mouah lady. Keep them funnies coming!

  3. Magnolia, know that I have loved you from the moment you corrected my dangling participles, but THIS, well, this has officially put you on an entirely new level of love in my heart. Like dinosaur love, love of my child type love. I laid in bed reading this and woke my husband up from laughter. You are brilliant, hysterical, and this twat Tupperware you speak of in the most hysterically written words-well, it made my whole fucking month. I’m team cotton with you –all the way.

    • It takes a special kind of person to appreciate my perspective, so there is now you and my weird cousin Fester. I have that going for me.

      Love you back Smash.

  4. After this, nobody will dare ever inquire if you’re “the glass is half empty or half full” type. Loved this–I also like to imagine the inventor for this product appearing on Shark Tank.

    And may your cup runneth….oh never mind.

  5. Lisa Godwin Reply

    Why, why, why … in the name of all that is holy, would any sane woman want to spurt/drip/glop her menstrual goo into a sippy cup? Sometimes the environment needs to take a back seat (or back potty) to common sense and personal dignity. What’s next? Re-using your significant other’s dental floss? Communal baths with spouses, teenagers, neighbors, coworkers and pets to reduce water usage? Establishing a “squat and poop” section of your yard (save a flush!!!) for family members?

      • Amanda Neilson Reply

        Plus – it would be a free fertilizer for a back yard vegetable garden lol! Even more environmentally friendly!

  6. Twat Tupperware ®. Ah Magnolia. You are a new kind of awesome. I do not understand the cup. I have given up the cotton. I IUD. One stop shop. Environmentally sound. Fabulous on an X-ray. Put that in your sippy cup…

  7. I almost peed my pants (the old fashioned way) laughing all the way through this, awesome job! I too shall remain cup less for the momet…

  8. I couldnt stop laughing at this, so glad I no longer have to avail myself of any of these products 😀

  9. I have been a cup convert for almost 3 years.
    My cups shall forever more be called Twat Tupperware.
    HILARIOUS!

  10. There is truth in sarcasm and fear in the unknown. I admit my choice to change was more selfish than saving the planet. My guy literally went biblical and would not come near me for at least 10 days, just to be save. He would rather risk putting his boys in play around my ovulation time, than consider any play on days 1 through 10. So I saw an ad for my new monthly go to the Softcup. I researched this for probably a month because there are a few choices in the market. My choice is the only one that offers the option of intimacy during those previously forbidden days of the cycle. Please do not judge I am not saying my libido peaks during the 7 day curse of the devil juice, but especially right before and toward the end of this dreaded monthly visit, I am assured that if I choose to open Pandora’s box, there is no gross factor to it. I played the girl games and tried to “stayfree” and “always” find myself protected. I swam with the “cottontails” and still found unsightly problems in my unmentionables regardless of their “secret” or or walmart based origins. I was tired of the discomfort of the dryness and icky feelings because it was bad enough to endure the curse without added sides from the marketed products. So I gave the softcup a try about a year ago, and I will never go back to the mainstream!!!! This is not a choice for every woman, and there is still moments of the gross factor so it is not a cure by any means. The first few days require at least two cases of emptying and luckily I have never had to go public with my secret. It is wearable for up to 12 hours without epic fail, but your visitor may require more attention. I buy 1 box with 10 cups individually wrapped. Though they are recommended to be worn and then tossed, in my extensive research I read they can be rinsed and reused. Some months I will choose to toss the first one and finish the week with a fresh one depending on the looks of it. But I don’t worry about leaks anymore. It takes a bit of practice to get the placement right to insure the safety of your unmentionables, but it is our bodies and only we can figure them out. The softcup looks similar to the BC method of a diaphragm but you do not need to go for a fitting. With pads you have the mindless worries of a bulge, and with tampons the mindless discomfort of not getting insertion correct and not realizing it until you are in the middle of the masses at the bus stop or other very public places. Once it is in place it is forgotten and your body can still move and produce the natural lubricants that it is suppose to without some foreign thing absorbing them. I saw another topic about the dryness of the Sahara, my choice of cups does not add to this issue that also plagues women. I am not saying follow the tree huggers out of the feminine product aisle for the sake of the environment unless that is your calling. My new go to is found in that same aisle and is to me more cost effect and discreet than the other products. I had a professor in college that referred to the menses as yhe 28 day devil juice, and the irony of using a cup to catch it is quite hilarious. I love the illustrated comments that were used in this blog because they are sarvastic and a bit sinical but they are true too. I don’t know what your friends use or what it looks like, but the idea of a shot glass being used for more than a bedroom party trick is disturbing and funny. I took a chance to try and find some comfort in a previously uncomforting situation and I still say when I am blessed to go and meet my maker, I will thank him and give praise but afterwards I want to het an apple and if Eve is available I want to punch her in the face with it. But until then I dread the first day of my constantly renewing cycle for the discomfort and effects it has on my body. Never again with my new product will I be any more uncomfortable than my body requires me to be due to the background story of its purpose. I hope my Reader’s Digest novel has assisted with some of the unknowns, but I have found a new source of comic relief in this blog for sure.

    • I used this same product and loved it…until I had my first child. Then, I guess my configuration changed a little bit because I never could manage to get it in correctly after that. But I just had an endometrial ablation 2 weeks ago, so I hope I’m done with that problem for good!

  11. I use mostly mama cloth (organic cloth pads) but do have a cup. I’ve only tried using it a couple times. Eh, it’s ok. It will forever more be called “Twat Tupperware” though. Thank you for that!! Hahahaaa!!!!

  12. This is uterus-slapping hilarious. And I am totally a twat tupperware owner…but then I kept getting knocked up and now it might be lost down a bathroom vent or turned into a barbie hat…..

  13. Menstrual cups are amazing! I love the idea of buying something once then using it for years instead. Just my style 🙂

  14. I hated my blood cup. I was so mad about hating it, because I wanted to love it, but No. The yuck would have been tolerable, even though in Belgium where we’re living, the potty room is often not the same room as the sink-and-bathroom. So I had to bloody-handedly open two doors to clean that shit out. Even that would have been justifiable because I wanted to love it so. But it leaked constantly. Eff it.

    I hated it so much I googled “who else hates their menstrual cup?” and found this, and laughed so hard I peed my pants: https://thehairpin.com/the-best-time-a-diva-cup-suctioned-itself-to-my-cervix-90e4efae34f0#.nw9orsf5l

  15. Oh my gosh. I may have peed a little reading this article and laughing. I LOVE this post!! I have runner friends that have tried to talk me into using this contraption and I was horrified!! It’s all just a little too trend for me. And by trendy I mean stupid and disgusting.

  16. Shelly Henderson Reply

    You should try it ( for 6-12 months) before writing something so negative like this about something that keeps so much out of the landfill, and prevent so many diseases in women.
    Unless you’re a complete moron, you should know that you can watch your fingers off with toilet paper if you get a little bit of blood on them.
    It doesn’t leak when you call, sneeze, or cheering at a All-Star competition being thrown up in the air, doing flips from one side of the floor to the other, jumping up into a toe touch, falling into a hard split, etcetera.
    Also, it’s made out of medical grade silicon, it isn’t made out of regular plastic. It doesn’t cause endometriosis or TSS.Other positive things:
    *you can wear longer up to 12 hrs before emptying
    *you can swim, and do all kinds of sports,
    *most of the time you can sleep all night and not worry about leaking
    *it can help to make your period lighter, shorter, and less crampy with less clotting
    *there are many more benefits to using a cup. You should do some actual research and try it yourself.

    I am not sure if I have misinterpreted your message, but it really offended me. It may not have been so offensive if it was based on your research AND personal feedback.

    • Shelly, I would encourage you to pull out the other foreign object you keep tightly in your body, because once the pickle is out of your ass, you might not be such a pedantic prig.

      This piece was funny….people with funny bones got it.

  17. So, I’m allergic to 99% of pads and can’t use tampons at all after birthing my children.. what other options do I have but a cup? Free bleed down both my legs at a grocery store? Just stand in the shower for a week?

    • You got that this was a humor piece, right? Not a hard-hitting, documentary-style expose explaining why the Diva Cup should never ever be used. Yeesh – settle down!!!

  18. I don’t think I’m modern enough to risk using just a cup … I rejected tampons ffs …. what if the cup runneth over? … what about laying down in bed? …. would it feel as though you had a non working dildo stuck in you for 3 days or even worse, that feeling when a baby’s head is fully engaged when you’re about to give birth? .. no, sorry,
    I think in my few remaining years (?) I’ll stick to the ultra slim sanitary towel with wings, big knickers & dark clothing for the 3 days a month! ? Interesting review though!

  19. I’m a strong believer in don’t knock it til you try it! And in my case I’m a heavy and used super absorbant tampons and pads at the same Tim (even of a night) and still leaked everywhere, especially of a night, fes up of buying douvets because of stainage. I was very very dubious about CSP and cups but after asking a lot of questions about them to users I decided I’d try CSP as seemed the less grusome option as I was pretty descusted by the idea. Let me tell you there amazing, I can wear just one pad of a night and have mjnor leakage. Cleanings quick and easy and they wash fantastically. So I took the plunge and tried the cup although was unsure about it in all honesty, was awkward for first few days but my god! I’d never look back. And this is coming from someone who was like you 12 months ago! I’ve had the same douvet and sheets for going on a year now and that’s a record, leak free! And being weak down there having occasional sneeze oh shit moments cup has never moved. I don’t use them because they’re hippy and environmentally friendly at all, I use them cause they’re 10 x better in absorbancy and leak proof when used correctly, plus the money I save a month is incredible! I’d say try it first, and you may change your mind, sure it’s not for everyone but it may well suprise you like it did me! X

  20. Menstrual Cups Reply

    Reusable menstrual cup is the most comfortable and convenient to use during period. Since it is inserted, it’s like not having menstruation at all. And, it takes up to 12 hours before the cup gets full.

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