Mooncup
by Bethany Lamont
Mooncup: Getting up close and personal with the Mooncup, the greenest way to have your period. We love the mooncup - but one poor mooky pioneer was left wailing "I think I broke my uterus"...
Whilst ascending the escalators on my tube journey home through deepest, darkest North London I was faced with the words "Fru Fru" in a cartoonish purple furry font. They were emblazoned on a six foot poster, urging nonplussed passersby to "Love your Vagina". In stunned curiosity I decided to check out what this was all about, mainly out of concern at what simpering, lisping moron insists on referring to their vagina as a "Fru Fru". I mean, seriously, who does that?
Well, it turns out this is the current advertising campaign of The Mooncup, an innovative alternative to tampons and sanitary towels. It is quite literally, a rubber cup like, ahem...implement that is inserted into the vagina during your period. Priced at around £20, only one is needed throughout your life, in contrast to the average woman's use of 12,000 sanitary products in her life. All in all, the website paints it as an all round greener, safer and cheaper option, with countless testimonials raving with enthusiastic punctuation that it "CHANGED MY LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!! THE BEST THING ABOUT MY PERIOD!!!!!!"
Sold, I send off for one. The mooncup arrives packaged in a charming, discreet cotton bag with a graphic image of a woman cheerily leaping in the corner. It also includes a set of promotional stickers, which I vow to paste, renegade like, onto the inside of public toilets.
"I'm like a 21st century Germaine Greer!" I declare to myself.
I mooch around, wallowing in delusional self righteousness before actually getting round to applying the thing.
I think it is at this point that my idealised hopes begin to crumble, because upon taking it out of its packaging the mooncup is undeniably massive. Also, rather disturbingly, I am faced with the prospect of boiling the wretched thing in a saucepan in the kitchen of my family home. It floats to the top in a rather unsavoury manner. I pray my Grandfather doesn't wander in.
Following this ordeal I now have to apply the damn thing, which is becoming an increasingly ominous prospect. Resembling a giant suction cup, the whole thing looks rather medical and I'm becoming convinced that upon taking it out I may sucker out an ovary and perhaps a vital internal organ or two. I have a feeling I won't be leaping cheerily around like the woman on the bag once I've finished with this thing.
I attempt the folding techniques laid out in the pamphlet but the thick rubber insists on springing out before I get a chance to insert it. Forty five minutes and some potentially long lasting internal damage later, I still can't get The Mooncup in and I admit defeat.
Dismissing my misfortunes as sheer incompetence on my part I asked a rather more sensible friend, for her take on The Mooncup. Reassuringly, her dalliance with it culminated with her lying on her back, screaming at her bewildered boyfriend, "I think I broke my uterus!"
The conclusion? A great idea which is definitely worth a go, but, despite the glowing reports it's not everyone's cup of tea. Sorry about that.
USEFUL MOONCUP LINKS
Mookychick interview with Kath from the Mooncup team
Irresistably funny account of wearing a mooncup for the first time from Ampnet.co.uk...
HOW TO INSERT YOUR MOONCUP
More Interviews with female icons
Mission statement
Mookychick believes that climbing trees and riding giant turtles is more fun and girly than worrying about make-up. But if you want to worry about make-up instead of turtles? Fine by us. Be you feminist, kitten, punk, emo, indie, goth, witch, vegan, horror junky, intellectual, christian goth, corset queen, geek, unicorn, sea monkey... be you into alternative style, alternative health, spirituality, comics, manga, j-pop, harajuku or jock culture... we will always love you.
