Anyone who’s ever been to Stockholm has probably gotten at least a taste of the remarkably vibrant artistic concepts that define many of the city’s subway stations. A bunch of the stations are incredibly distinctive––my favorite was the Solna Centrum station on the blue line, executed by Anders Åberg and Karl-Olov Björk in 1975. In that instance, the cavernous, rocky ceilings are painted a deep shade of red, while the walls at each exit are either green or black. (As you wander about the platform, there are plenty of odd, rustic dioramas to hold your attention.) If you Google the subway stations of Stockholm, this is the image you’re most likely to see––it is rather like a vision of hell. Other stations have geometrical patterns or motifs from science, and not all of them are by any means pleasant.

Stockholm continued its tradition of adventurous subway art when it granted a commission to a cartoonist named Liv Strömquist. Americans are most likely to have encountered Strömquist’s work as the cover art for The Knife’s 2013 album Shaking the Habitual, which necessitated the creation of a comic book called “End Extreme Wealth” that portrayed the 1% as culturally impoverished and vermin-esque. 
 

 
In 2014 Strömquist published Kunskapens frukt (Knowledge’s fruit), in which she introduced menstruation as a major theme of her work. This year, after accepting the commission to do art on the subway, Strömquist decided to present the menstruation-themed artwork in an even more public setting. Did been on display at the Slussen station, which services the green and red lines, since late September.

The enlarged felt-pen sketches, which are self-consciously simple in execution, are entirely black and white except for a noticeable streak of red strategically positioned to evoke menstruation. All of the pictures feature women doing things outdoors; only a few of them focus on menstruation. One of the images references Bob Dylan’s song “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).”

Not everyone is delighted to be confronted by images of blood-stained womanhood in the subway. The pictures have been criticized for being “disgusting” and “inappropriate”; one blogger, while acknowledging the positive aspects of a franker attitude towards menstruation, stated that she has doubts that “not sure that enormous pictures like this are what I want to be faced with on my daily commute.”

One tweet complained: “It’s not fun explaining to a four-year-old about the red between the legs.” Another read: “It is not enough to get [your period] once a month. Now you will be reminded every time you jump on the subway.”

As Strömquist commented to Sverige Radio:
 

This discussion always comes when I exhibit my art, because it’s a taboo in society and evokes strong emotions. I’ve not commented on the discussion, and it’s not my place to give judgments to my own art. I’m very excited that some people have enjoyed it.

 
“It’s weird that it’s deemed so provocative, considering it’s something that we see all the time,” she explained to the SVT television station. “I have a hard time understanding that.”

One woman who has no problem with the images is the well-known singer Neko Case, who in early October tweeted some of the images, with the message “Yep, these amazing Stockholm subway murals are by Liv Stromquist!” followed by a heart emoticon.
 
See the images after the jump….......
 

 
The generation gap isn’t taking quite the forms it once did, or so it would seem. Today’s kerfuffle involves a group of teenage girls in Sweden who didn’t see any harm in posing for a whimsical menstruation-themed group picture for the school yearbook.

Their principal didn’t see it that way.

According to TheLocal.se, students at a high school in the Stockholm area said that they thought of dressing up in fake blood, tampons, hygiene pads, and chocolate as a “fun thing” to promote free and open communication about menstruation.

The photographer hired by the school refused to take the picture, and then the principal agreed with him, banning the theme from featuring in the yearbook at all. So….. yeah. Lesson learned on the whole open communication concept, right?

Ida Pettersson, a 17-year-old student who was involved in the photograph idea, has taken to Twitter to express her irritation, tell her side of the story, and seek allies in the world at large. On Monday she tweeted, “Har fått så jävla mycket hat pga detta skolfoto men ännu mera kärlek och kärleken vinner alltid! Kampen fortsätter!!! (Has got so damn much hatred because this school picture but even more love, and love always wins! The struggle continues !!!)” (All translations come 100% unadulterated from Google Translate.)
 

Har fått så jävla mycket hat pga detta skolfoto men ännu mera kärlek och kärleken vinner alltid! Kampen fortsätter!!!

— ♀ida♀ (@idapttersson) September 21, 2015

 
The photograph went viral in Sweden after feminist television personality Clara Henry, who has long fought to break the taboos surrounding menstruation, shared it on Twitter. Many people supported the teens in their idea, but a great many also criticized the fake blood as “disgusting.” “Unfortunately we have received a lot of hatred but much, much more love from people,” said Pettersson.

The school refused the picture on the grounds of its policy that all pictures in the yearbook should be “representative and easily accessible to any beholder.” After the picture went viral, the principal told the Aftonbladet tabloid: “I wholeheartedly support what they wanted to highlight. But we have a number of opportunities to raise this issue—the school catalogue is not the right forum.”

Pettersson said, “We really did not think it would become such a big thing, but it did and it is so cool that our story has been spread so much and that we have been able to take up the space we have. We have received so much positive feedback and we are so happy about that.”

In the photo below, the teenagers are dressed quite differently, and the sign in the picture reads, “We are not allowed to have periods.” The text of the tweet translates as “So we took a class photo anyway because many changed their minds and wanted to anyway but we are still our thing and fighting.”
 

Så vi tog ett klassfoto ändå pga många ändrade sig och ville ändå men vi står fortfarande för vår grej och kämpar pic.twitter.com/ILz8fDNWDZ

— ♀ida♀ (@idapttersson) September 22, 2015

 
via Death and Taxes
 

 
The international charity WaterAid has launched a series of spoof adverts imagining what the word would be like if men had periods.

The ads are part of WaterAid’s campaign for Menstrual Hygiene Day, on May 28th, to raise awareness of the 1.25 billion women who do not have access to a toilet during their period.

Periods. There it is, right there on the screen!

How does it make you feel? Awkward? Embarrassed? Like you’d want to run from the room screaming if someone started talking about their monthly bleed?

Now imagine how you’d be feeling if men had periods instead of women.

We think it would be pretty different. Maybe periods would make you think of virility and manliness – or of those manpon adverts you’d seen on TV, that would look a bit like this:

 
More on if men had periods, after the jump….

 
Beginning in 1946 and continuing into the 1960s, Disney gave young women the “talk” about their periods with an educational animated short titled The Story of Menstruation. The 10-minute stylized animation, produced by Walt Disney Productions, was backed by the company behind tampon brand Kotex (then it was the International Cello-Cotton Company, now it’s Kimberly-Clark). Kotex boasts that it taught 105 million girls, in health education classes across the United States, about puberty and good ol’ Aunt Flo.
 

 
All these millions of girls were also given Very Personally Yours, a propagandic booklet that expands on the film’s knowledge.
 

 
The female narrator explains that this booklet “explodes that old taboo against bathing during your period.”

Not only can you bathe, you should bathe. Because during menstruation, your perspiration glands are working overtime.

 

 
These young women were also given pointers on how to suck it up when they are feeling irritable:

Don’t let it get you down. After all, you have to live with people. You have to live with yourself too. And once you stop feeling sorry for yourself and take those days in your stride, you’ll find it’s easier to keep smiling and even tempered.

And as for the old taboo against exercise, that’s nonsense. Exercise is good for you during menstruation. Just use common sense.

Darnit.

Watch it for yourself and see if you learn anything new about that time of the month.
 

 
The menstrual hut—a tradition found in many cultures throughout history—is a fascinating phenomenon. During menses, a woman is sequestered in a structure away from the rest of the village; reasons for the practice range from religious ritual to hygiene superstition to merely an attempt to keep track of a woman’s cycle. Regardless of “progressive” attitudes towards fertility and periods, I’ve met many a feminist lady who sees the appeal. One, there’s something refreshing about public acknowledgment of menstruation, so often considered a shamefully private affair. Two, while no one I know would want to be forced into a hut whilst on the rag, sometimes a quiet space away from men is exactly what you want for a couple days out of the month! But is there a modern, liberatory alternative to the menstrual hut?

Enter the Fertility Dress!

 
Artist Elizabeth Tolson is working on a futuristic fashion line called Vessel, the pieces of which monitor the female body with indiscreet technology. The Fertility Dress is an LED-rigged frock that turns blue during ovulation, red during menstruation (duh), and white or yellow “to indicate hygiene,” and the Chastity Dress has an alarm the goes off when you’re groped. Tolson envisions her work as a fascist kind of Atwoodian sartorial control over women’s bodies (check out the awesome dystopian “commercial” for Vessel below), but frankly I’m most intrigued by the positive potential of wearing a dress that screams, “Hey, I’m on my fucking period right now.” Could it be hacked to combine the alarm with the yellow and red lights to deter men? Or would that just attract guys with “filthy and menstruating” fetishes? There are details to be worked out of course, but I think this project has promise!

Also, a very cute Judy Jetson thing going on! It’s like an adorable mobile menstrual hut! What’s not to love?
 

 
Via Design Faves

 
Back in his Channel 101 days, Dan Harmon learned of the wisdom of Joseph Campbell and would preach the building blocks of storytelling constantly. This eventually led to his famous story wheel, which he uses to break down every story on his shows Community and Rick & Morty. In explaining the importance, indeed ubiquity, of story structure, Harmon cited an interesting-sounding instructional video from the Seventies:
 

[Rob] Schrab has this video we watch all the time: It’s an orientation video designed to teach mentally retarded girls about their period. The protagonist is a retarded girl. She starts asking questions about periods. She’s led into a bathroom by her older sister, and after a very uncomfortable road of trials, things take a turn for the bizarre. I won’t go into detail. Not only is the protagonist going on a journey, the audience is, too.

 
I’ve tracked down the movie, and it’s a beaut. It’s about ten-minutes long, and doesn’t have credits but must have as a title “All Women Have Periods.” In it a little girl with Down syndrome named Jill asks her mother, father, and older sister Suzy about what a period is and receives a full-blown tutorial in the bathroom from her sister.
 

 
The following must be one of the greatest dialogue exchanges in movie history:
 

“Suzy? What’s a sanitary pad?”
“Come on, Jill, I’ll show you. I’m having my period now.”

 
I’ll say this: It’s a testament to the power of repetition—everything in the movie is explained four times. The next time someone asks me what a period is, I’m going to say, “Blood from inside a woman’s body comes outside from an opening between her legs. All women have periods about every four weeks for three or four days…..” I hope no one asks me.
 

 
While Anita Sarkeesian receives death threats and rape threats for the crime of generating thoughtful, detailed critiques of the sexism in video games, as happened just a couple of weeks ago, then you know that the world of gaming sorely needs a lengthy session of sensitivity training—if its problems with women aren’t so deep-seated as to resist any improvement, that is.
 

 
Enter Andy Gonzales and Sophie Houser and their charming Flash game Tampon Run, which they designed this summer at a camp called Girls Who Code. Gonzales and Houser are both high school students in New York who wanted to attack the sexism in the gaming industry.

As Gonzales says:

“We were brainstorming what our potential feminist game would look like, and Sophie jokingly suggested a game where you could throw tampons at people. The moment she said it, we realized it was a game we could make. We did some research about the menstrual taboo and realized it was a real problem that we could legitimately address with our game.”

The game is preceded by a few splash screens in which the creators explain their purpose in designing Tampon Run:

“Although the concept of the video game may be strange, it’s stranger that our society has accepted and normalized guns and violence through video games, yet we still find tampons and menstruation unspeakable. Hopefully one day menstruation will be as normal, if not more so, than guns and violence have become in our society.”

The game itself is very simple—it emulates Mario Bros. by having a character run in a rightward direction, shooting projectiles to kill an endless succession of oncoming marauders, except the projectiles in this case are tampons. Even removing the tampons from the equation, just having the protagonist be a woman is a relative rarity in video games. You shoot the tampons at the “enemies” until you run out of ammo, but every now and then a fresh box of tampons hovers near you, and when you jump you can refresh your supply. If an enemies reaches you, you lose two tampons. The game ends when you run out of tampons. The game doesn’t exactly reward hours of playing time, but I enjoyed it well enough—in my third game I achieved a high score of 129!
 

 
via Internet Magic