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Toxic Protection / Confidence Shock / Tampon Alert / Marilyn Monroe |
keen1 (ken), adj. 1.
sharp, or so shaped as to cut or pierce substances readily: a keen blade...4. having or showing great mental
penetration or acumen: keen
reasoning. [ME kene, OE cene,
c. G kuhn bold]
keen2 (ken), Irish. –n. 1.
to wail in lamentation for the dead [t. Irish: m caoine, der. caoinim I lament]
but from here on
I want more crazy
mourning, more howl, more keening
-- “A
woman Dead In Her Forties,” Adrienne Rich, 1974-1977
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Over a four-year
period, 1974-1977, Adrienne Rich completed “A Woman Dead In Her
Forties.” In this poem, the speaker
laments a friend’s death from breast cancer, as well as their failure to deal
openly with what was happening: We stayed mute and
disloyal because we were
afraid I would have touched
my fingers to where your
breasts had been but we never did
such things -- Adrienne Rich |
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From breastcancersource.com, photo showing bilateral mastectomy scars |
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Within the same
time frame as the writing of Rich’s poem, manufacture and test marketing of
the Rely tampon had begun. Although P&G claimed they had chosen
Rochester, New York, as a test market
because “it’s...got such representative demographics,” an “advertising
agency” countered that “...The Rochester market is definitely skewed to the
rich.” We may not
know the financial status of tampon-related toxic shock victims (TR-TSS);
however, most victims (although not all) have been white women. In her poem, Rich
alludes to the race of her dying friend indirectly, suggesting that her
attitude toward death was shaped by the values of her “tribe”: since in your
neo-protestant tribe the void was supposed not to
exist except as a
fashionable concept you had no traffic
with -- Adrienne
Rich The silence
of TR-TSS survivors may be due, in part, to their status as white women who
have “no traffic with” “the fashionable concept” of “the void” – or for that
matter, concepts such as toxicity, shock, and menstrual taboo – not to
mention, corporate and governmental accountability. |
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From “Toxic Shock
Syndrome” by Brian R. Shmaefsky, 2004:
“Figure 1.2 Today, toxic shock syndrome is most common in white women between
the ages of 15 and 65, as can be seen on the three graphs here. Toxic shock
syndrome occurs more frequently in women as it has been linked to tampon
use.” |
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Adrienne Rich did
not reveal the identity of the friend in her poem. Andy Warhol, however, could not help doing so, in his 1962 silk
screens of Marilyn Monroe. Interestingly,
Warhol became famous because of another series of images he created, that of
ordinary Campbell soup cans. Why did Warhol
choose to silk screen Monroe’s face, rather than prescription pill bottles?
Such bottles might have been more evocative of her death by overdose. |
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Multiple silk
screens of cropped publicity photo from film “Niagra,” Andy Warhol, 1962 |
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In Judy Grahn’s 1971 poem, “I Have Come To Claim Marilyn
Monroe’s Body,” she literally digs deeper, attempting a posthumous
integration of body and mind, by imagining bones as poems: “I will
carry your bones in this paper sack And
write on it the poems of Marilyn Monroe” -- Judy Grahn The bones/poems are
then transformed into weapons, to be used against “male reporters”: “and
then I shall beat them with your skull. -- Judy
Grahn Listen to Angabel read Grahn’s poem
on youtube.com.
Could a similar poem be written about victims of breast cancer, or
toxic shock? |
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Angabel, 2006, youtube.com videographer, reads Grahn’s poem aloud. Click here to listen. |
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Jenny Kilvert created
the four graphics to the left, by adding text balloons to a photo of her
daughter Alice, who died of TR-TSS at the age of 15. The graphics were
used on flyers for National Tampon Alert Week, June 6-12, 2005. The flyers were printed on a variety of
eye-catching colored papers. Does it make sense
to consider the text balloons Alice Kilvert’s ‘posthumous poems’? |
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Marilyn
Monroe started out life as Norma Jean Baker, going from one foster home to the
next, never knowing her father. There
was also a history of mental illness on her mother’s side of the family. Then, she
entered a business focused on women’s appearance, rather than acting ability
or intelligence. Do you think “toxic”
and “shocking” are good words to describe some of the experiences she must
have had? Write Marilyn
Monroe’s posthumous poems, by filling in the text balloons to the right. |
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TOXIC PROTECTION / CONFIDENCE SHOCK DIRECTORY
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From Protection to Expression: The Future of Menstrual
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Menovulography:
the years from puberty to menopause, told as a story with pictures
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