A Reproductive Reubens, a Cervical Cezanne, a Womb Warhol, a Monthly Matisse, an Ovarian O’Keefe, a Fallopian Fragonard, a Tampon Tintoretto. Here’s how my menstrual masterpiece pans out during one whole cycle:
Days 7-11
I’m unstoppable like Boudica, Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Njinga Mbande, Catherine the Great or Dowager Empress Cixi. I haven’t walked over the slain bodies of hundreds of dead men yet though, but there’s time…
Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading The People, 1830
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Days 11-14
Now I am super confident. I am amazing. My hair is extra bouncy – I walk along the street like I’m Erin fuckin’ Brockovich.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing, 1767
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Days 14-16
Super sexy time, when I can make the babies. A time when Gene Wilder in any movie just does it for me.
Tamara de Lempicka, The Convalescent, 1932
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Days 16-19
When I eat everything in sight and gain 50lbs. My stomach is a pit like the one at Jabba’s Palace in The Return of the Jedi, with an angry, hungry creature hiding in the bottom waiting to attack anyone or anything that falls in. Once I ate jam straight out of the jar with a spoon. Like a jam lollipop.
Vincenzo Campi, Fruit Seller, c.1580
Bartholomeus van der Helst, Gerard Andriesz Bicke, c.1640-1652
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Days 19-23
‘I’m so ugly wah wah wah’ – that’s me crying about how ugly I feel during days 19-23.
Quentin Matsys, The Ugly Duchess, c.1513
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Days 23-26
I hate everyone with a ferocious passion. It engulfs everyone around me like hormonal napalm.
Michelangelo Caravaggio, Judith Beheading Holofernes, c.1588-1589
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Days 26- 28
Internal dialogue for these days:
“Where am I going with my life? What’s the point of anything I do? I just put my cup of tea down somewhere and now I can’t find it. Nobody cares about me. Nobody cares about how they are making me feel. I have so many feelings and I have been so strong and I just need to cry, why won’t the world just let me cry.”
Pablo Picasso, Weeping Woman, 1937
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Days 1-5
Period arrives. I am dying. Nobody understands this pain. I need everyone’s full attention and any man who says I’m overreacting just needs to get the hell out of my sight. I am glued to a hot water bottle and my day is arranged around 4 hour intervals when I can take more painkillers.
Pablo Picasso, Science and Charity, 1897
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Days 5- 7
End of period serenity.
Claude Monet, Woman With Umbrella, c.1875
ART.CULTURE.SPAM 