Menses for the Senses
The Museum of Menstruation Draws the Curious
Story & Photos by Kara J. West
Located since August of 1994 in the basement of a ’50s-era, suburban Maryland home, MUM is undoubtedly the most earnest collection of menstrual history on earth. This man (Harry Finley) is very sincere. He is an academic and his subject of study just happens to be menstruation. There’s nothing weird about him. He readily admits he could easily be mistaken for a prototype of perverseness. He’s a government-employed, 50-ish, never-married bachelor who has a bunch of historic tampons in his basement. Maybe that’s why a Village Voice reporter was impelled to write that his sink had no hair in it and his walls held no family photos.
"The more you conceal something, the more it becomes interesting," says Harry Finley. Finley is open to anything. He wants to explore, educate and expand the mystery of monthly female bleeding. He’s even open to exploring the drinking of menstrual blood and other rites. "If I got enough information about it, I would exhibit the drinking of menstrual blood and placenta ceremonies to open a dialogue about it." He would invite neo-pagan women to contribute to his academic pursuit.
You may ask, "How does a man reach the point in his life where he welcomes freely bleeding women into his home?" While living in Germany, Finley worked as art director of a little magazine. In researching other publications, he became interested in advertising. And while "ripping my way through hundreds of magazines from England to Japan, I noticed that ads for tampons and pads differed tremendously from one country to the next." "Adverteasing," as Finley calls it, remains a large focus of his museum. One display is devoted entirely to vintage Kotex advertising that was donated by a someone in Minnesota whose father was a Kotex ad man. Kotex, as some of you may know, started out as a bandage during WWI but the female nurses soon found a personal use for the highly absorbent, cellulose pads.
Another display portrays a timeline of feminine hygiene products. It details ancient Egyptian and Greek references to tampon-like devices made of plant fibers that were used as contraceptives and the obscure (Thank God!) "Menstrual Blood Extractor" which enjoyed a short (Thank God again!) life in 1977. Apparently the purpose of the plunger-like apparatus was to suck the contents of the uterus out, thereby fooling mother nature and reducing the monthly curse to one day. The names of other products in the museum speak for themselves. There are washable cotton pads called "Glad Rags" and a menstrual cup with a 10-year life span called "The Keeper." A variety of vintage tampons are displayed with names like "Fax," "Wix," and "Fibs." Finley is working on a theory about the shortness and connotations of tampon names. And don’t forget the tampon-like, interlabial pad, "Padettes." This little beauty was intended to be put between the lips of the vagina rather than being inserted. I’m not clear on how it was supposed to remain in its carefully placed position.
Other exhibits include "What is Menstruation?" and a Halloween costume made of pads and tampons. There are also several mannequin trunks suspended from the ceiling sporting a variety of maxi pads and belts and underwear designed especially to hold pads. One trunk wears a prototype of a turn-of-the-century sanitary apron and attached menstrual pad that Finley commissioned one of his neighbors to sew. Regardless of how it all started, I think Harry Finley is on to something.
He certainly wants to be on to something. He is oddly proud of the attention he’s gotten, from Sassy magazine’s rebuke, "Stick to jock-itch products, buddy!" to very sincere academic inquires from international graduate students and medical personnel. One corner of the museum is donated to all of the press MUM has received since its opening -- and it’s a lot. The BBC, Comedy Central, The Washington Post, Village Voice, Sassy, The Baltimore and Washington City Papers, The Chicago Tribune and now Throttle have all written about Finley’s MUM. Howard Stern even called, but Finley decided he wasn’t quite ready for that yet.
The man has vision. He sees a free-standing, publicly accessible building, housing not only a permanent collection but also a gift\bookstore, cafe, garden, and a research library. He’s looking into various funding sources. Anyone interested in helping make this vision come true can contact Finley at hfinley@mum.org.
A sense of humor is essential to any successful endeavor and the MUM man certainly has that. His cat is named Max C. Pad. He laughs a lot. In fact, he believes humor is invaluable when dealing with sensitive or taboo subjects such as menstruation. Finley points out that whenever men and women engage in discussion about menstruation it’s almost always in a joking manner. It’s a safe way to have a dialogue and a safe starting point. Finley wants to use humor as a starting point for education and demystification of menstruation and all of its attending rituals.
Personally, I was fascinated and learned a lot, the most valuable information being highly personal. Did you know that O.B. tampons were developed by a female German physician and the initials stand for "ohne binde" or "without a belt or pad"? Guess what tampons I use?
