#menstrual rites

[haggishlyhagging]

Royalty could not touch themselves, nor could ordinary folk touch them, as is still true of the queen of England today; Princess Diana was considered radical for breaking the taboo in the 1980s by shaking hands without wearing gloves. The traditions that grew up around royal menstrual taboos created the absolute formality and self-control of the traditional aristocracy. They often had to be fed and dressed by others all their lives; their hair and nails had to be especially protected so no one could steal them for magical purposes and do harm. Every substance of their bodies was imbued with extreme power; every part of their bodies had significance. A class of attendants developed around them for the primary purpose of caring for their dangerous, life-sustaining bodies: hairdressers, cosmeticians, tailors, body servants, handmaidens, kingsmen, emissaries, spokesmen, ladies of the bedchamber.

Like menstruants, royalty in many cultures could not touch the ground. They were carried everywhere on the shoulders of special servants, just as menstruants had once been carried on their grandmother's shoulders:

Formerly neither the kings of Uganda, nor their mothers, nor their queens might walk on foot outside the spacious enclosures in which they lived. Whenever they went forth they were carried on the shoulders of men of the Buffalo clan, several of whom accompanied any of these royal personages on a journey and took it in turn to bear the burden. The king sat astride the bearer's neck with a leg over each shoulder and his feet tucked under the bearer's arms. When one of these royal carriers grew tired he shot the king onto the shoulders of a second man without allowing the royal feet to touch the ground.

In other cultures, royalty would be carried in litters and divan chairs, completely covered so no one could see them—just as menstruants were carried in covered sledges on the North American continent, and as brides of north Africa went home from their weddings completely draped from head to foot, in tents atop their camels, unseen by strangers.

The men of the royal class also inherited the menstrual and bithing thrones, the shoes, gloves, hats and long capes, and the bridal divans of women. The footwear of royalty provided ritual protection for both king and people: "According to ancient Brahmanic ritual a king at his inauguration trod on a tiger's skin and a golden plate; he was shod with shoes of boar's skin, and so long as he lived thereafter he might not stand on the earth with his bare feet." The holy man of the Dogon is required to wear sandals, for otherwise his feet will burn the earth; the sandals cool him. In his sandals, he impersonates the sun, which for the Dogon is in the female domain. Among other restrictions, he is not allowed to sweat, and no one is allowed to touch him.

Style of dressing, of movement, and of gesture would form the bodies of royal and holy persons just as it did those of women in general. The royal hands, like the hands of menstruants, were particularly dangerous, so they could not touch themselves or do ordinary work. Consequently, their gestures became very controlled, turned slightly outward, away from the body, in what came to be called "elegance," "delicacy," and "refinement"—and also, and of course historically accurately, "effeminate."

-Judy Grahn, Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World

[haggishlyhagging]

Among the plaited objects in the menstruant's hut, one of the first may have been her rug. Since she was forbidden to touch the ground with any part of her body, leaves were spread for her, banana leaves, broad pandanus leaves, pine boughs, or bark. Later the floor covering would be woven or fitted together—mats, sticks of bamboo, slats of wood. From this practice, it seems reasonable to suppose, people may have developed the habit of putting wooden floors in their houses.

During her seclusions she would have also acquired the wooden chair and stool as a matter of course, because her vulva could not touch the earth: "Among the Yabim and Bukaua, two neighbouring and kindred tribes on the coast of Northern New Guinea, a girl at puberty is secluded for some five or six weeks in an inner part of the house; but she may not sit on the floor, lest her uncleanliness should cleave to it, so a log of wood is placed for her to squat on." The menstruant squatted on special materials that kept her safely raised: slabs of wood, slabs of leather, woven mats, and in clothmaking cultures, pillows. Rachel, in Genesis, sat upon a special "camel chair" seat to menstruate.

The menstruant was propped up with logs or branches on three sides and underneath, to keep her contained and to keep her from lying down or from falling asleep. This form of her sitting body, outlined in wood, needed only to have its parts lashed together to become what we know as a chair. Men of course acquired the right to sit in chairs, just as they acquired clothing. My father and mother each had a designated chair, and they rarely sat anywhere else; chairs now belong to both genders. But as with all cosmetikos, the ideology for and the source of the form chair belong to the menstrual seclusion rites.

From the nakedness of the primal ancestress in her elemental hut, to the menstruant's emergence in full public ceremony at the end of her seclusion, women enacted and communicated fundamental mysteries by dressing in metaforms. The menstruant's paraphernalia piled up around her —her bowls, her straws, her mats, and her plates. They were hers alone; no one else could use them without being harmed. If she didn't break them, they had to be stored in special places, kept away from others in what would eventually become trunks, boxes, baskets, closets, cupboards—and my mother's red cedar chest. Her utensils would be carefully wrapped and cleaned, kept, like her, in the dark. She would become the one with the overflowing purse, the trunks of clothing, the hatboxes, the rolls of rugs and blankets, and the shelves of household "goods" that formed the basis, not only for family and village life, but for all technological measurement. The woman would carry her paraphernalia with her. She would become the gender who—around the world—carries the largest burdens.

-Judy Grahn, Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World

[haggishlyhagging]

Lipstick, then, may be considered the first cosmetic: "Among the Dieri and other Australian tribes, menstruating women were marked with red paint round the mouth, while among the tribes of Victoria a menstruating woman is painted red from the waist up. Among Tapuga tribes of Brazil and on the Gold Coast of Africa, she is also painted red." Among the Cheyenne, at her first menstruation a girl was painted red all over her body and secluded for four days in a special little lodge. In China, formerly, a woman customarily put a red mark in the middle of her forehead to signal that she was menstruating, and also as a cosmetic.

Pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing were also special states designated with red paint. The Kaffir and many other tribal women painted their bodies with red ocher when they were pregnant. Pregnancy and childbirth are numinous phases of life, but it was because of the creative/decreative powers specifically accruing to women's blood that the use of red signaling during pregnancy and lactation gave women enormous powers of restraint over men and the spacing of childbearing. In some tribes, by using paint women might signal "no sex" for six or seven years at a time, while they continued nursing. More usual was the period of three years used by Nigerian women of the eighteenth century, who kept their bodies smeared with red earth throughout the entire period as a public announcement that they were bearing, nursing, or weaning a child.

One meaning of the blood signals was surely reassurance: "It's safe to look at me now," or "I'm old enough to bleed, but I'm not doing it right now," or "Now I'm available for sex or marriage." Among other peoples the red marks meant danger, keep away, not sexually available at this time: "Don't look at me." Mouth marking and paint was a display not only of the female power to bleed, but of a range of complex signals meaning "come here" or "stay away".

All the earliest cosmetics—menstrual blood, slashed blood, and tattoos of blue or red lines suggestive of blood on the face—must have enabled women to free themselves from some of the severest world-forming taboos. Most of the complex taboos would have remained intact in the initial major rite of menarche, but more minor ones would mark all the menstrual periods after the first. Western reporters noticed that the strict seclusions of the menstruant were being replaced in the nineteenth century by milder menstrual signals, such as a brightly colored scarf, face paint, a special apron or ring, or even a smoking pipe clenched in her teeth.

Whole peoples in older times studied the color red through body use. Some completely painted their bodies red (the "Red Clay People" of the eastern United States). They tattooed themselves from head to foot (Scotland, Canada, Borneo). They plastered their hair with ocher and grease, with thick red clay (South America, Africa), or stained their teeth red (Southeast Asia, South Pacific, South America), or painted and dyed their hair, hands, and feet with henna (India, Middle East, North Africa, Europe). Even now, when menstrual rite has largely vanished, women continue to paint their cheeks and lips red to impart vitality, health, sexual desirability, and self respect.

-Judy Grahn, Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World