Sure, North Carolinians are angrily divided in a heated battle over who should use which bathroom, but this hasn’t stopped the City of Raleigh from trying to broaden understanding of women’s plight in coping with their periods. It seems the City’s Parks and Rec department has teamed up with Wake County Human Services to provide new interactive playground equipment for anyone wanting (or needing) to learn about the realities of menstruation: The Menstrual Misery Simulator (MMS), a menstrual cup shaped whirligig.
As you can see, the MMS is installed askew so that as soon as the participant sits down, it begins to spin. The harder one tries to stop the faster it whirls, inducing nausea, dizziness, headache, and a general sense of perturbation. The centrifugal force thus created also encourages swelling of the hands, feet, and ankles. According to a City of Oaks employee I recently accosted, installation of the MMS is a multi-phase project. Phase Two will include the implementation of a hinged sledgehammer which delivers irregularly timed blows to the abdomen of the participant. The Menstrual Misery Simulator will be finalized with a drip irrigation system rigged with a randomizer which may or may not douse the seat of the participant with fake blood.
The Simulator’s clever menstrual cup design was chosen not only for its innate ability to cause the participant to immediately assume a fetal position, but also as a way of subliminally encouraging greener hygiene practices. It seems the average woman will discard roughly 9,600 tampons in her life time. In contrast, menstrual cups are economical, reusable, and practical. The popular Diva Cup, for example, promises twelve hours of discrete protection that won’t interfere with one’s plans for extreme sports or travel–because women who are suffering incapacitating cramps and Jabba-the-Hutt-level bloating want to do nothing so much as fly to the Amazon in order to go piranha spear fishing clad only in native garb.
Menstrual cup debate aside, I do think that since Menstrual Misery Simulators are available in nearly every playground in the city, their use as teaching aids should be compulsory. Girls ages 7-menarche should have to participate twice a year. Boys, ages 7-impotence, however, should be required to experience the MMS at least monthly. While this may not engender comprehensive understanding of the misery that is the menstrual cycle, at least the women of Raleigh can say they gave it a whirl.
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