I'm building my case for the argument that Europeans have something against menstruating women. At least, it seems like they want to make the entire process as difficult as possible for us. Let me offer some examples...
First, there was not a "feminine hygiene product" to be found in any of the airports I passed through on my European tour. Not any type. You could not buy them at any of the shops or newsstands, nor were there vending machines in any public bathrooms. You want liquor, perfume, or chocolate? Fine. You want olive oil in bottles the shape of flowers or fish? They've got that, too. Designer sunglasses? Check. Bath salts, massage oil, and pretty much any other type of cosmetic? No problem. Tampax? Not a chance. Might seem like a weird thing to notice at first, but consider that I spent around 20 hours on planes and in airports. What's a girl to do in that situation? You can't exactly run down to the local drugstore. And, I'd like to note that the first thing I saw when I arrived at JFK was a Hudson newsstand offering an array of tampons and pads. They had different brands, sizes, the whole shebang. And there are probably fifty Hudson stands in JFK, each with its own cache of goods. In addition, American Airlines had a supply of pads in the bathrooms on their planes for passengers to use. No such love on the Lufthansa flights!
While none of the airports offered tampons, they all did have intense amounts of equipment for disposal of used pads and tampons. Plastic bags to wrap things up in that sealed, separate trash canisters that looked like biohazard disposal units, signs explaining the proper use of said bags and canisters... I'm not sure why the regular trash would not work for this purpose, and I am also not sure why one would feel the need to vacuum pack her disposables. It's not like it's going to explode or anything. It's just a little blood.
I thought that this might just be a weird airport thing, but they had the same thing at the villa, too. There is a bathroom in every bedroom, and next to each toilet there is a unit on the wall that supplies sealable plastic bags "for the lady" (that's what the dispenser says). Think of how strange it would be to have a ziploc bag dispenser mounted on the wall in your bathroom. Keep in mind we weren't at a hotel, but just a big house in the middle of the countryside. Seems like an extreme measure and I kinda took offense to it. Not only is it totally not environmentally friendly to seal everything up in layers of plastic, but I think it infers that menstruation in dirty. And it's not. Menstruation is a glorious gift to be celebrated with brownies, backrubs, and gifts.
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Slightly off-topic but your post made me think of Gloria Steinem's "If Men Could Menstruate." I always found it funny and true:
A white minority of the world has spent centuries conning us into thinking that a white skin makes people superior - even though the only thing it really does is make the more subject to ultraviolet rays and to wrinkles. Male human beings have built whole cultures around the idea that penis envy is "natural" to women - though having such an unprotected organ might be said to make men vulnerable, and the power to give birth makes womb envy at least as logical.
In short, the characteristics of the powerful, whatever they may be, are thought to be better than the characteristics of the powerless - and logic has nothing to do with it.
What would happen, for instance, if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not?
The answer is clear - menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event:
Men would brag about how long and how much.
Boys would mark the onset of menses, that longed-for proof of manhood, with religious ritual and stag parties.
Congress would fund a National Institute of Dysmenorrhea to help stamp out monthly discomforts.
Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. (Of course, some men would still pay for the prestige of commercial brands such as John Wayne Tampons, Muhammad Ali's Rope-a-dope Pads, Joe Namath Jock Shields - "For Those Light Bachelor Days," and Robert "Baretta" Blake Maxi-Pads.)
Military men, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation ("men-struation") as proof that only men could serve in the Army ("you have to give blood to take blood"), occupy political office ("can women be aggressive without that steadfast cycle governed by the planet Mars?"), be priest and ministers ("how could a woman give her blood for our sins?") or rabbis ("without the monthly loss of impurities, women remain unclean").
Male radicals, left-wing politicians, mystics, however, would insist that women are equal, just different, and that any woman could enter their ranks if she were willing to self-inflict a major wound every month ("you MUST give blood for the revolution"), recognize the preeminence of menstrual issues, or subordinate her selfness to all men in their Cycle of Enlightenment. Street guys would brag ("I'm a three pad man") or answer praise from a buddy ("Man, you lookin' good!") by giving fives and saying, "Yeah, man, I'm on the rag!" TV shows would treat the subject at length. ("Happy Days": Richie and Potsie try to convince Fonzie that he is still "The Fonz," though he has missed two periods in a row.) So would newspapers. (SHARK SCARE THREATENS MENSTRUATING MEN. JUDGE CITES MONTHLY STRESS IN PARDONING RAPIST.) And movies. (Newman and Redford in "Blood Brothers"!)
Men would convince women that intercourse was more pleasurable at "that time of the month." Lesbians would be said to fear blood and therefore life itself - though probably only because they needed a good menstruating man.
Of course, male intellectuals would offer the most moral and logical arguments. How could a woman master any discipline that demanded a sense of time, space, mathematics, or measurement, for instance, without that in-built gift for measuring the cycles of the moon and planets - and thus for measuring anything at all? In the rarefied fields of philosophy and religion, could women compensate for missing the rhythm of the universe? Or for their lack of symbolic death-and-resurrection every month?
Liberal males in every field would try to be kind: the fact that "these people" have no gift for measuring life or connecting to the universe, the liberals would explain, should be punishment enough.
And how would women be trained to react? One can imagine traditional women agreeing to all arguments with a staunch and smiling masochism. ("The ERA would force housewives to wound themselves every month": Phyllis Schlafly. "Your husband's blood is as sacred as that of Jesus - and so sexy, too!": Marabel Morgan.) Reformers and Queen Bees would try to imitate men, and pretend to have a monthly cycle. All feminists would explain endlessly that men, too, needed to be liberated from the false idea of Martian aggressiveness, just as women needed to escape the bonds of menses envy. Radical feminist would add that the oppression of the nonmenstrual was the pattern for all other oppressions ("Vampires were our first freedom fighters!") Cultural feminists would develop a bloodless imagery in art and literature. Socialist feminists would insist that only under capitalism would men be able to monopolize menstrual blood . . . .
In fact, if men could menstruate, the power justifications could probably go on forever.
If we let them.
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