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How that time of the month may stop women getting parking tickets
STACIA BRIGGS
29 June 2009
According to new research, the vast majority of women will use their menstrual cycles in order to extricate themselves from “uncomfortable situations”.
Now that at least 50pc of you have stopped reading on the basis that I might start bleating on about “flows” and “liners” or other stuff related to, you know, DOWN THERE, I can continue without fear of putting the rest of you off your tea.
A survey by Moxie, which produces a twee range of period paraphernalia, has revealed that 72pc of women will use their menstrual cycle in order to avoid getting a speeding ticket or a parking fine.
Really? Have I been missing a trick? Should I have blamed my expired parking permit on the fact that I've got a uterus in full working order? Should I have contested the speed camera on the grounds that I was off to Sainsbury's on a desperate tampon run?
Curses: more money shelled out unnecessarily. It gets better - a life coach, one of those people you pay to tell you to say “no” every so often, make lists and think about writing a dream diary, has added her two-penneth to the debate, presumably after getting more than a few penneth from Moxie to back up its dubious findings.
“Embarrassing the parking warden into revoking your ticket with period talk could be a good strategy if they haven't already written the ticket, especially if you flummox them with talk of falling oestrogen levels affecting your pre-frontal cortex and your ability to make rational decisions,” said Jessica Chivers.
“Joking aside, some women really do find it difficult to regulate their thoughts, feelings and actions when they have their period because of the drop in oestrogen circulating the body.”
So let's get this straight: once a month our brains stop working properly and we can't make rational decisions - try that excuse with any traffic warden worth their salt and you'll be lucky to walk away with your car keys and driving licence, let alone talk your way out of a fine.
We have spent decades fighting our corner, attempting to smash our way through the glass ceiling in order to persuade men that we're just as capable as they are in the workplace, and now the sisterhood is informing them that we're the equivalent of menstrual werewolves, rendered mental once a month as we struggle to remember that we can't park on double yellow lines or do 70mph up Rampant Horse Street.
Now, Moxie's director Mila Klitas (I didn't make that name up, even though it sounds like a Greek brand of sanitary towel) is positively encouraging us all to lie on the basis that we've got a pair of ovaries.
“Periods can be troublesome as they are, let alone getting a parking fine at the same time.
“Moxie is all about making the most of a bad situation, so if we can use our feminine powers to get us out of sticky situations, why not?” she said.
Do you hear the creaking? That's Emmeline Pankhurst spinning in her grave.
The only time I've ever attempted any menstrual malarkey is when I was desperately trying to avoid having a shower after PE, on the basis that I've never been keen on stripping off in front of a hostile crowd (call me a prude if you will).
Shower avoidance was an art which took some mastering, especially if you tried to pull the same trick week after week, defying all laws of biology and rationality.
When I was eventually rumbled, and faced the streak of shame through the ghastly communal showers, I hastily contracted athlete's foot - which was thankfully never verified on account of the fact I'd made it up - and avoided an entire term of humiliation.
Outside the shower block, I've never had the, er, moxie to engage a traffic warden in a conversation about my reproductive system: I may be in the minority, but I'm not in the habit of alerting strangers to my internal timetable unless they're a gynaecologist or a midwife and they've asked for my personal flow chart.
The above nonsense was coughed out in press release form to encourage we media types to write about Moxie (and it worked - although I do have a uterus, so am possibly unable to make “rational decisions” about suitable subject matter for one week out of every four) and its range of demurely packaged sanitary products.
Convinced that we'd all celebrate periods if our tampons came in a stripy tin and not a boring box, Moxie seem to have missed the point that you really can't polish a turd.
Although I suppose a tin might come in handy if you need to club a traffic warden when they carry on writing after your “period talk” gets short shrift.
The only time any woman is pleased that Arsenal are playing at home is when she's terrified that her ill-advised night of passion with Greg from accounts after 11 snakebite and blacks might be wearing a nappy in eight months time and requiring a car seat.Otherwise, periods are a gigantic pain in the arse. Or in that region, anyway.
To be fair to Moxie, “personal care” companies have an uphill struggle persuading anyone that their products are sexy on the basis that they're just not.
Short of inventing a heat-seeking tampon which inserts itself, makes you a nice cup of tea and then buys you some flowers, I'm never going to be enthusiastic about literally just flushing my money down the drain.
Thank you to the one male reader that made it to the end of this piece. I'm now moving on to talking about living in space, so you can start breathing normally again.
A FAT AND BALD FUTURE IN SPACE
Frankly, I'm still smarting over all those lies we were told at primary school about how we'd all be living on the moon in the year 2000 and flitting about in hover cars.
It's a harsh blow, therefore, to discover that not only were my teachers big fat liars, if those uneducated predictions had been correct and we actually were all living on the moon, we'd be big and fat too. Oh, and bald.
Dr Lewis Dartnell, from University College London, has single-handedly burst the space bubble, meaning that only the terminally masochistic would consider signing up to a long period away from the earth.
"With very little effort required to move around in microgravity, future spacemen and women are likely to become pretty chubby.
“Also with no need for hair to insulate the head or eyelashes to flick dust from their eyes, future humans may become totally hairless," he said.
It's one big step for mankind that I'm not sure many astronauts would be willing to take - or able to take, once they'd halved in size.
Jetting off into the stratosphere is pretty sexy: returning as a hairless, rotund dwarf is slightly less so, even if you do have a few moon rocks in your pocket and an absolutely enormous helmet.
If we had all decamped to the moon, Gillette and Immac would have gone into administration overnight and the human race would be slowly dying because no one would be able to summon up the enthusiasm to go on the (gravitational) pull.
And it gets worse. If our future truly does lie in the skies, we're not only going to be shaven dwarves who break a hip if we brush up against a curtain thanks to our muscle and bone wastage, we're also going to have huge, swollen heads.
Dr Dartnell added: "Without gravity, fluid would float up to pool in the skull, which would cause the head to look permanently swollen and out of proportion."
Marvellous. Anything else? Will we grow horns? Or tentacles? Or start farting smoke? If this is progress, I'll have no part of it, please.
Not until you can go away, have a little think and invent a space which makes us come home thinner, better looking and richer, please.
ODE TO JACKSON
Don't blame it on the sunshine, don't blame it on the moonlight, don't blame it on anything until after a full medical investigation and a quote from Uri Geller.
I was sad to hear that Michael Jackson had died - I loved lots of his songs, apart from Earth Song, The Girl is Mine, anything he did with Janet, Heal the World… actually, I hated loads of them. But the good ones, well, sublime stuff.
I once listened to Black and White on a continuous loop on an entire journey from Liverpool to Norwich: which sounds like the kind of answer Bernard Manning might have given if asked whether or not he was a racist.
So, RIP Michael, and thanks for the role you played in the soundtrack of my life - my car stereo just wouldn't have been the same without you.
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