See the fax tampon and the almost
identical tampon Nunap sold probably about the
same time, both probably made of Cellucotton,
the component of Kotex.
See other marketing
devices: Ad-design contest for menstrual
products in the United Kingdom; B-ettes tampon
counter-display box and proposal to dealers,
with contract; (U.S.A., donated by Procter &
Gamble, 2001); "Your Image
is Your Fortune!," Modess sales-hints
booklet for stores, 1967 (U.S.A., donated by
Tambrands, 1997)
See a Modess True or
False? ad in The American Girl magazine,
January 1947, and actress Carol
Lynley in "How Shall I Tell My Daughter"
booklet ad (1955) - Modess
. . . . because ads (many dates).
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THE MUSEUM OF MENSTRUATION AND WOMEN'S HEALTH
Cutting
to the chase: Another reason I started
the museum
On March
23 and 1 April, 2007, a neighbor
killed two cats and threw them into my
yard. He had injected poison into one,
my cat, Wix,
and cut open the throat and stomach of
a stray. I cried and cried and wore
dark glasses in public for weeks.
Although the police know this, and
more, I didn't feel safe. So I decided
to tell you a story from my teenage
years in case I don't have the
opportunity again. The story sheds
light on why I started this museum.
When I was 15 I cut my arms and
torso over a hundred times with a
razor blade and piece of broken
glass
(photo at the bottom of this page).
In the several months before I had
poured photographic acid down my
back and onto my hand - I still have
faint scars, 50 years later - as
well as swallowed dozens of aspirins
and overdosed on barbiturates.
I was desperately trying to escape a
family where I felt trapped by a
brother dying with muscular dystrophy,
and by his beleaguered caretakers, our
parents (photos below). An ironically
titled book brilliantly describes this
situation: Dr. Jeanne Safer's The
Normal One: Life with a Difficult or
Damaged Sibling. The Normal One
was not-so-normal me. As she writes,
Dr. Safer was also - is? - not so
normal.
Cutting myself (which required 31
stitches) propelled me out of the
family and sophomore year in high
school and into the Army's psychiatric
ward on Okinawa, the Japanese island
where my father was in charge of
military construction. After a couple
weeks in a locked ward I spent a few
more in the Army's locked psychiatric
ward in Tokyo. From there I flew to
Hawaii (for only three days,
unfortunately!) and finished my locked
ward career with two months in San
Francisco, in the now closed Letterman
Army Hospital. After a month I
graduated from its locked to, yes, an
unlocked ward.
For the first time in my life I
felt free. But it took me decades to
somewhat overcome my shyness, the
desire to be always agreeable, and
my goody-goody-ness, which Safer
lists as characteristics of the
Normal One: Children don't want to
give suffering parents and the sick
child even more grief. Until I
opened this museum in my house in
1994 (here)
I had never rebelled, a word a
museum visitor used that had never
occurred to me. But she was right.
And I still would not have done it
had my parents been alive. It was
not so rebellious an act as it might
seem.
(In 2011 the New York Times ran an
article about borderline
personality disorder and a
woman, Dr. Marsha Linehan, who has
created a new treatment for it - she
had the illness herself. It
described symptoms that matched
mine. I never knew what my diagnosis
was but I suspect this was it.)
What was it like in the psychiatric
wards? I was always the youngest,
surrounded by sick soldiers and their
sick spouses. I never felt mistreated.
I drew a pencil portrait of a
bent-over soldier who had shot himself
in the stomach with a rifle (he pulled
the trigger with his toe); he did one
of me that turned out to be Mickey
Mouse. At night I sometimes heard
screams from the padded cell of a
friendly and funny fellow who cycled
into and out of sanity. And once at
breakfast I remember a woman sitting
stiffly, staring straight ahead, with
an ear-to-ear scar across her throat.
A gay soldier unsuccessfully tried to
convince my mother to let me visit him
after he was released - he told me
(but not my mother!) he had a bed that
sloped toward the center. Only later
did I realize what that meant; I was
naive and anyway not of that
persuasion - er, genetic disposition.
Looking through that ward's windows I
drew some scenes of Tokyo and some
still lifes in the ward in San
Francisco, prefiguring my life as a
artist later on. Life was not bad.
In the San Francisco hospital I
tried to catch up with school by
getting geometry and English books out
of the hospital's library. I asked my
psychiatrist for help with geometry
problems. He would stare at the page,
puff on his pipe and ask the
psychiatric social worker. Both looked
baffled by theorems and triangles.
The social worker, an Army
lieutenant colonel, once called me
into his office and asked, "Do you
masturbate?" "No," I said, even though
I wasn't sure what he meant. He said,
"Ninety-nine out of a hundred boys say
they masturbate and the other one's a
liar!" He later asked the same
question and got mad when I gave him
the same answer.
After I got out - the doctors
advised against it but I wanted to get
back into regular life - I returned to
school, having missed the first half
of my sophomore year but somehow was
never required to make it up. The next
year I had the highest grades of the
junior class - and the highest in
geometry the second semester of my
sophomore year. I was on a
decades-long difficult trek to
recovery.
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Above:
Colonel Joyce and his
family, one of my father's
employees, lived in the
house at top center. It was
identical to ours; you see
our patio wall in the
foreground. Houses had to be
flat to endure the several
typhoons - hurricanes - that
thumped the island every
year. Okinawa has more
people one hundred years old
and older per capita than
any other "country" in spite
of the wind and heat and
humidity. (Photo: Harry
Finley with a Ricohflex
camera my parents gave me
for Christmas.)
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Above:
Eight months after I got out of the
hospital and back into school someone,
maybe my father, took this picture in
our house at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia.
Jim, my brother with muscular
dystrophy, sits at left. He had
trouble walking because of the
disease. Then you see my older
brother, George, Jr.; me; and our
mother. My father had a weakness for
Currier & Ives prints, on the
wall. I have no idea what the
Life-Like Landscape Mat was, or why I
was squinting (maybe I was
anticipating the camera flash). Mom's
head was not really that big; she was
just 4'11" tall. And the photographer
might have had one too many, listing
to one side.
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Above:
Eight years later Jim is
much worse and in a
wheelchair. Look at his
arms. He couldn't straighten
his legs. He would die three
years later of a heart
attack (while my father was
giving him a bath), typical
for muscular dystrophy
sufferers, at 21. My mother,
second from right, followed
him five years later, from
grief. A doctor told her she
had passed the faulty
muscular dystrophy gene to
her son, as in "It's your
fault." That's my brother
George, Jr., second from
left (he does have pupils);
me; and my father - Pop - at
far right. The picture shows
a room in our house in
Satellite Beach, Florida,
when Pop was in charge of
construction at the Cape
Canaveral launch site for
NASA. Jim was intelligent,
funny, and seemed cheerful
to the end. I never talked
about his illness with him -
isn't that incredible? - and
I doubt that my brother had.
(Photographer unknown)
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These cuts and others - my
other arm also looks like
this as well as my sides
- landed me a three
months' stay in four
hospitals and ruined Pop's
Army career. He had to give
up his best job to accompany
his family back to the
States. This is how my left
arm looked in 2007. I was so
ashamed of having cut myself
that I told the doctors and
my family that some unknown
person had done it. But the
direction of the cuts told
them it was me. After I left
the hospital my family and I
never discussed the incident
or its cause. All of us were
probably embarrassed by it.
(Photo: Harry Finley)
Go to a short bio or
see some of my art
and the museum
in my house. Cats
of this museum and feline
felicities.
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© 2007 Harry Finley. It is illegal to
reproduce or distribute
work on this Web site in any manner or medium
without
written permission of the author. Please report
suspected
violations to hfinley@mum.org
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