Cycle Celebration Kit for She-Who-Cycles

Cycle Celebration Kit for She-Who-Cycles, containing: The Little Cycle Celebration Book; She Who Cycles Greeting Card; The PMS Self-Help Booklet; instructions and materials for creating soft doll; 'Magic, Mystery & Celebration' kit, a New Cycle Product, The Menstrual Health Foundation, Santa Rosa, California, 1991-1999

The Menstrual Health Foundation was founded in 1984 by Tamara Slayton (1950-2003), a Californian menstrual activist and feminist spiritualist. It was a non-profit educational corporation that sought to create a new way of thinking about menarche, menstruation and menopause that challenged the dominant culture of menstrual shame, secrecy and silence. Slayton and her contemporaries reframed menstruation as a source of female power and spirituality that should be celebrated.

The Cycle Celebration Kit was created to commemorate menarche (the first period). Slayton believed that the event should be a source of pride, marked with celebratory rituals and gifts. Alongside a greetings card, PMS (premenstrual syndrome) self-help guide and materials for making a doll, the kit would have originally included a ‘Petal Pad’; a cotton flannel and terry cloth insert for absorbing menstrual flow.

The floral-patterned garment was part of a range of reusable pads that Slayton sold through her company New Cycle (later WomanKind) to support “female well-being” and “the ecology of our planet.” Slayton opposed the use of tampons because of the chemicals used in them. She called the products “a weapon against women” and believed that they kept people from fully experiencing menstruation. The mail-order company also sold ‘moon bowls’ in which to soak bloodied pads with a spout enabling the water to be poured over plants as fertiliser. This ritual was part of Slayton's conception of menstruation as connecting women to the earth.