Girls, come on!

I was just looking through about 15 pages of Google images of Lady GaGa, nobigdeal, when I came across a picture of GaGa squatting down singing and there's a tiny indication of a tampon string emerging from her leotard thing and the writer of the blog where the picture was from was using words like "nasty" and saying sentences to the effect of "you should tuck those strings back before you show us your crotch, GaGa!" etc. I am outraged, and I'll tell you why:

1) when you're a performer of the magnitude of Lady GaGa, pictures are taken of you constantly. Girls, if you weren't paying attention in health class, spend 1/5 of our fucking LIVES bleeding out the crotch! There's gonna be a picture with a tampon string if you are a famous girl performer and you wear crotch-cutting leotards. Deal with it!

2) being a female and calling another female nasty for an accidental tamp-slip is terrible! You should be kicked out of the girlclub right now. How the hell can you fault someone for having a period and still daring to put on a kick-ass show?

How the hell can you point fingers at a woman who's doing what she wants and making a living being subversive and interesting? She is on her period and she's not compromising her regular crotch-baring-singing-crouch OR her outfit. She's, like women on the Tampax commercials, swimming and biking and wearing white pants. We should show this picture in our blogs with applause...not criticism! You go girl, having your period and still rawking the leotard and letting it all hang out.

I'm not gonna post it because GaGa is a very intentional performer, but this shot wasn't. Also, it could have been photoshopped, which is even worse that someone would fabricate this just to make fun of someone. That's gross. Way grosser than tampons!

Deodorant.

I have long been a user of Teen Spirit and other $2 antiperspirants and had no shame about it. I am okay with my pits smelling like chemically strawberry as long as sweat is not dripping down my arms skankin' up the place.

A few weeks ago I decided to try making my own deodorant. I found a recipe that is one part witch hazel, one part water, one part aloe vera gel and a 1/2 tsp of grapeseed oil with whatever essential oils you want for spicyness. I used it for about 2 and a half weeks. I had coworkers smell me and call me musky and earthy on a day when a) I had JUST started my period and my B.O. was KICKIN', b) I had just gone for a long walk before work and did NOT shower afterwards, c) it was day one of the new computer system at the 'brary and I was nervously sweating and d) I was wearing an airy shirt that was the perfect vehicle for wafting. This experiment isn't working all that well. I have been smelling myself and it has not smelled like teen spirit. At all. Especially during my period. That night I made a drastic decision to go ahead and BUY some hippy deodorant. The store-bought kind will work better than my own homemade, right? I chose one that had the scent of grapefruit and ginger. It's usually a good idea to go with citrus + earthy in these types of situations. I wore it all weekend, working both days and even going out to get sweaty karaoke drunk Saturday night. And apart from the ten minutes or so after applying the deo, I did NOT smell like ginger and grapefruit.

For the past two and a half weeks I've been spritzing my pits several times a day with my homemade deo, essential oils, perfume, whatever I could get my hands on that didn't reek of pits, but the sweat is abundant! I've had to wash sweaters after one use! I've been clamping my arms to my sides so as not to waft. I didn't even fist-pump during my rendition of "The Distance" last night!!

Well, big surprise, hippy deo does not work very well. That aluminum has done right by me for years, so tonight I officially resign my exclusive use of hippy deo. I have decided that during my period and during stressful times wherein I may sweat extra muchly, I'm wearin' that tried and true teen spirit with good old aluminum! On days off from work and days nowhere near my period, I'll go with the homemade or storebought hippy deo. I'm happy I did this experiment as I now know how bad going without deo can get (and it's not THAT bad, as on the worst possible day a lot of people smelled me and didn't seem terribly disgusted by me). And I now know how to make my own deo which actually smells nice and fares better than some $6 deo I got at Pricecutter (pictured in middle).

Man, I can't tell you how happy I was to come home from a stinky day of work to apply my trusty Just Dance deo. Gonna have to go with chemicals on this one, but at least I know I can cut back.