Category Archives: Vagina

July 10, 2012 · 5:30 pm

The first time I used a moon cup

I bought it at the Wellness warehouse and it came in a nice white box with silver sparkles on. There were no sizes, so I assumed that these would all be reasonable and fit most vaginas. Walking out of the shop I felt excited about a life soon to be free of tampons and their associated leaks, stupid cotton strings in hospital colours, and the expense of paying R8 per day to bleed.

Image from the Menstrual Cups Galore pinterest boardI got to the bus stop, and excitedly opened the box. Inside were some instructions and the moon cup. It was about the size of an egg cup. Big I thought, but I figured if a penis could fit inside, so could this silicone cup. And it would so that I could completely boycott bleached cotton plugs up my vagina.

It told me I had to boil the cup, which was made of silicone, before use, and after my period finished. Then I had to place it in the bag provided. I looked in the box again. No bag. Someone must have opened the box and taken it out. And touched my mooncup.

The last bus home was just arriving but it was either go back now and swap the cup, or wait another month to use it. I grumpily got up and walked past my ride home back into the store.

The security guard wanted me to explain. “I just bought this, and its supposed to come with a bag, but when I opened it the bag was gone. So I want to swap it for one with a bag.” “But what is it?” He asked. I began to blush, damning myself for blushing. “It’s a moon cup” I said with as much defiance as possible, and stormed past him into the shop.

I began opening all the other boxes and found that they too had had their bags removed. A syndicate carrying their treasures in small bags? At the back of the shelf was a last box, still sealed. I opened it and it contained a pretty blue and green bag. I made the exchange at the till and rushed down to the train station to catch the next one home.

At home, and ready to get going, I boiled my silicone cup in my egg pot for the required 5 minutes, and then one more minute for luck. I went to the bathroom, instructions in one hand, silicone cup in the other.

I sat down. The instructions told me to fold the circular cup in half until it made a sort of smiley face. I did so. It still looked huge. Then, I had to insert it using almost my whole hand, and when it was in far enough, release it. When it opened inside, I should feel if it had made a circular seal. The tiny silicone tip (which replaced the string you’d normally have on a tampon) was only short, and wouldn’t stick out much. The guide recommended lube to help you get it in the first time. I dutifully lubed up the rim of the cup.

First try: I squeezed the cup hard to fold it, the silicone not as bendy as I would have hoped. As I lowered it down and was about to get to putting it in, it unfolded and jumped out of my lubed fingers and into the air. I reached up and caught it before it fell down.

Second try: I squeezed it harder this time, using two fingers to keep it in the smiley face that would then unfold. I used two fingers to put it in, and held my other hand beneath it in case it fell in the loo. It went in. But, it wasn’t unfolding. I had to reach in and twist it slightly according to the booklet, so I spent about five minutes rummaging around my vagina, trying to hold onto the tiny silicone ‘string’ long enough to twist it. Finally it turned and I felt a little suction. Pleased with myself and with fingers covered in lube and blood I stood to wash my hands. Immediately I felt that tiny silicone string begin to stab the side wall of my vagina.

Now, I was feeling quite deflated at this stage. What was supposed to be my liberation from the boringness of tampons, had taken up a sizeable amount of my time and was stabbing me. This was not what I had expected. I walked around for a while, but then couldn’t take it any more.

So I decided to take it out. The instructions said put your finger in and press lightly against the side whilst turning the almost non-existent silicone string. Yes. That’s right. Put your whole hand inside your vagina to take this bugger out.

I sat back on the loo, after washing my hands for what felt like the gazillionth time that day. I put one finger in, and tried to manuovre it as I was supposed to. No joy. Two went in. When I got a grip on the silicone string, I forgot all about the twisting in my delight, and pulled. ERROR!

I felt like I was vacuuming out my brain. I’m convinced that some of my womb moved a little further down by body so strong was the suction from the moon cup. After recovering my senses and screaming ‘fuck fuck fuck’ into my clenched fist I took a deep breath. Relax, I told myself. Relax and breathe.

I tried again, two fingers and twists and succesfully heard a ‘pop’ sound from my vagina. The seal had broken. I was free. Inside my mooncup was about one drop of dark red blood.

I cooked the mooncup again, and put it safely in its cutesy blue and green bag. I have never been as happy to have a tampon in me as I was that day.

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November 21, 2011 · 12:19 pm

The first time I used a menstrual cup

I first heard about the m-cup (menstrual/moon cups) last year over dinner conversation. I was enthralled by the idea of environmentally friendly and safer methods of menstrual health and I seriously started wondering about all the waste products such as tampons and pads…where do they all go? It also made me wonder about women’s menstrual health and how warped it is considering the adverts on TV (especially for women who cannot afford the expense of tampons and pads).

So I went and bought a moon cup soon after the conversation. I Googled more information and read anything and everything. Like most women growing up in conservative families with a mother who taught me “cleanliness is next to Godliness” and all things about sexuality were makings of the devil, my vagina was mostly invisible. The biology lessons at school (with male teachers) showed me cross-sections of tubes and balls that made little sense to me except when I had to label the image during a test. Apart from the monthly bleed and gevoevelling with curious boys in my teens, I knew little about my vagina. And I decided to abstain from sex when I was 15 which meant the vagina was officially silenced.

Watching the Vagina Monologues is where it all began. I hate to be so typical but until that point, I couldn’t really say the word vagina aloud. And to say it in isiXhosa was close to blasphemy. Friends and I tried to find Xhosa words for vagina: usisi, igusha, isinene/inenene, ikuku (sister, sheep, no translation, cookie respectively). But I still couldn’t say much about the vagina. Watching the monologues I realised I related with “My vagina is angry…pissed off!” and much to my dismay, I also related with the old woman who spoke about “down there”.

So when I finally heard about the moon cup and decided to buy it, my mind and heart had to make peace with the fact that my vagina is a real part of my body. When talking about menstrual health and vaginas the conversation mostly becomes about sexuality. I have no regrets about abstaining from sex, but this has meant that I have experienced my vagina as purely a biological process and a no go zone at any other time thus far in my life (which is a conversation for another day). And yes, conversations with girlfriends who are comfortable with their sex lives are becoming a tad awkward because as a growing woman of 24 I’m an anomaly.

And so the day of reckoning arrived when I was going to trial the m-cup. My body balked. Nothing seemed to work and I didn’t seem to know what I was trying to do. Instead I ended up in pain and exasperated. The websites I read seemed to assume that every woman wanting to use the cup has a sense of what the vagina was REALLY like. And I realised I didn’t and I wasn’t keen to have a conversation with my vagina at the time. So I put the cup away and much to my chagrin, returned to the hard, bleached cotton wool: tampons.

Fast foward: a year later and I decided to revisit the idea of using my m-cup. Part of the motivation has been watching the price of tampons and pads escalate every time I buy them. Not only has this been denting my budget, but again, the thought about the environment surfaced (I have similar questions about disposable nappies, where do they go?). Conversations with more friends who have been evangelising the gospel of the m-cup also helped so the process didn’t seem so daunting anymore. And this time I had a conversation with my vagina every time I had a bath before my cycle began.

It wasn’t dirty or disgusting, but a simple feeling for what it really means to have a vagina. I’m not surprised people who KNOW vaginas love them. They’re soft, warm, welcoming and great muscles. So when I used the cup, it was a simple process and my instant reaction was “WOW!”. When I told a friend, her response included the word “intense”. It doesn’t have to be. Vaginas and women’s sexuality are a beautiful thing and I wish we allowed ourselves more time to appreciate our bodies for what they are not purely as a means to an end for sex, but for the pleasure of what they are…beautiful and blossoming.

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September 15, 2010 · 12:48 pm

The First Time Someone Touched My Vagina

I’d always been aware of my vagina as a growing girl in spite of the few words available in isiXhosa to refer to it in a pleasant way—usisi, inhenhenhe,ikuku,umphantsi. It was functional insofar as my menstrual cycle and all other biological functions and I was happy with that. It took a boy’s curious hands to help me understand what my vagina is really about.

I was in my early teens and had been experimenting with boys in a mickey mouse kind of way, kisses and maybe touching of breasts but nothing below the waistline or anything that involved taking clothes off. In Grade 9, our Bible Education teacher at school went through the whole process and implications of exploring sexuality with boys. It was never overtly communicated, but the message was that we should never let boys use us for their gratification because males are physical and females are emotional and that is how we respond to sex. The prospect of ever enjoying what happens between a boy and a girl was simply not an option lest one should risk being labelled as “loose”(the question of homosexuality wasn’t even addressed).

It was also in my early teens that I had a chronic case of what my friends and I called “The disease to please”. Symptoms of this illness meant that the girl (me) was incapable of asserting herself at the advances of boys so any boy that showed an interest in me and made advances on me was bound to get the answer he was looking for. There had been a radical shift from the primary school girl who had been labelled as “playing hard to get” and I can’t explain how this happened. Partly curiosity and partly searching for some attention at that point in my life. This also meant I was a very early bloomer in relation to some of my friends.

I had heard about people talking of “being fingered” (in the crudest form), but no-one went into the details of how and when etc. So when the encounter happened with the boy I was somewhat shocked and unprepared. It seems dirty describing the process but dare I say, it was somewhat a pleasant surprise. The feeling of being touched and enjoying the experience meant I was one of “those girls”. I don’t remember if the boy was my “official boyfriend” or not at the time, we had met at a rugby match and I thought he was cute so I gave him my number. He called and whenever we went out we ended up kissing. He didn’t talk much which is why I’m not sure if he was my boyfriend or not.

The next step from kissing to touching was not communicated, it just happened. While we were kissing his hands managed to find their way to my vagina and I remember sitting in a position that made it easy for him to venture “down there”(reference from Vagina Monologues). Later he ventured to kissing my vagina, an even more pleasant surprise. I never realised that my vagina, that had been so insignificant before these encounters, had the possibility of evoking a good feeling. I had never been scared of what was “down there”, but the experience with this boy (and a few others later down the line) meant that I became acquainted with the silence around sexuality: the prospect that it is not infact dirty, but something that can be enjoyable.

The somewhat unsettling part about these experiences is that when girls “let” boys touch them it is a bad thing which means one is a bad girl. Seeing as I didn’t want to be a bad girl for the rest of my teenage years, my experiences with being touched were short lived and I soon learned to restrain myself, mostly by not being with boys (now men) I find remotely attractive lest they should venture “down there” and release a flood of emotion and sensations and this is taking a lot of work undoing because the reality is, I am a woman  with desires that I shouldn’t be afraid of.

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