GladRags Gab

I was recently made aware of this new site, sponsored by Procter and Gamble, to market the Gillette Venus Breeze, a razor for women.  They call the site, the manquarium.  The premise of the site is as follows: you are a girl and you want to find a man.  The manquarium website will help you build the perfect man.  The site asks you to pick a body of a guy in swim trunks (animated of course).  You can scroll through man "types", like the geeky but cute one with glasses, or the person of color with corn rows.  Ok, so now that we have picked our man, we answer some questions about ourselves, like where we want to go on a date or what the best compliment would be.  We put all of this into the site and what we get back is an animation of our man swimming telling us things that the Proctor and Gamble team thinks we want to hear.  Like if you input that you want him to think you are smart, your man will tell you something like your intelligence is hot.

Ok P and G, what are we saying here?  I glean from this website the following…

• women should be looking for a man

• they should pick a man based on how he looks

• clearly we need to shave to find a man 

I mean, that is the bottom line.  This is an ad for a razor.  So we are all heterosexual women who need to snag a man.  

Shame on you procter and gamble.  Shame on you… 

Most of us have a drawer of plastic bags in our kitchen.  In fact, when I was in college there was a space between the refrigerator and where the counter and cabinets ended.  We would shove our shopping bags in there, in the thoughts that we would reuse them.  Alas, 2 years later when we moved out, we had hundreds of plastic bags.  I have gotten a little better and do reuse them and also try and use canvas bags.  

But what to do with those pesky bags that we always somehow end up with.  Well, we here at GladRags are all about reusing and recycling.  And I am all about the crafts.  So my new project for this winter is to create items from my plastic bag stores.   I have found various crafting opportunities for plastic bags.  The most obvious (to me at least) is needle crafts.  Knitting and crocheting can be done with just about any material that can be cut into strips.  Make a recycled plastic bag purse! You can also buy these sorts of plastic bag purses from other people who had too many plastic bags on craft sites like Etsy.  Want some more ideas?  This blog post on Craftzine.com has a whole slew of instructions for plastic bag crafts!  

And yes, that is a plastic bag rooster!

-jodi 

My sister always comes to me with science questions, as I was a scientist in a previous life.  At the beginning of her pregnancy, she asked me about chord blood banking, what I knew, what I had heard.  At the time, I didnt know much, so I looked it up.  The idea is that you can cryogenically freeze umbilical cord blood for potential use in the future if your child need something like bone marrow to cure a disease.  I stress potential, because nobody actually knows if this works yet.

Enter C'elle .

Cryto-Cell has introduced a product/service called C'elle.  The product freezes down menstrual blood and endomentrial tissue.  They claim that these cells have the same characteristics as stem cell and that they should be saved for future use for the client.  Personalized medicine, I believe it is often called.  So for only $500 dollars and then an annual fee of $99 you too can protect yourself against future maladies.  I am not so sure I am buying into this one…

GladRags has always offered a variety of different colors and patterns to chose from.  This fall, we are proud to present 3 new color styles to chose from!

Here is how it works.  The new colors come in the regular cotton day pads, whether in 1 pack , 3 pack or kit form.  When placing an order, upon checkout, please specify in the comments section if you have a preference as to which pattern group you want.  You can pick from marbled rainbow colors, various fun patterns including frogs, pink camo, and bowling balls, or a green camo print.  

We here at GladRags are excited to be able to offer new colors and patterns.  We are also excited to be able to give you, our customer, more control of the products that you order!

Thanks and happy shopping!

-Jodi

Not sure what to do with all those old plastic bags?

Have a pile of old magazine in the corner of your closet?

Or maybe a lot of empty Diet Coke bottles?

Well now is your chance to make all this trash into wearable art in the Junk to Funk fashion show.  Entries are being accepted until October 17th, so get to it!

This is another installation of how rad Portland is.  I love seeing events where people come together over not only their love for art, but also appreciation for the environment, sustainable living and recycled goods.  Nice work.

The actual event is at the Wonder Ballroom on November 17th.  Check them out: www.junktofunk.org  

-jodi nan 

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals (my former employer of years gone by) has recently developed Lybrel, an oral contraceptive.  What makes Lybrel different from other combination estrogen and progesterone oral contraceptives is that Lybrel is taken 365 days a year.  No more of those sugar pills that give your body the necessary break from the outside hormones that it needs to have a monthly period.  Lybrel stops menstruation from occurring at all, which according to many doctors is a perfectly safe option.  According to Dr. Kurt Barnhart, Associate Professor and Director of Clinical Research for the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at UPENN in regards to Lybrel clinical trials, "It is our hope that based on these findings physicians will begin to more readily initiate dialogue with their female patients about continuous therapy — helping to eliminate the misconception that periods are a medical necessity and to emphasize the safety and viability of menstrual suppression."  Wyeth contends that women experience an increased quality of life due to not menstruating.  You can read an article about lybrel here: article

Wow.  Every day I am floored by the growing disconnect between the average woman and her body.  The natural cycles, which seem to have been working for the female body for thousands of years is all of a sudden deemed unnecessary by the medical elite.  We all know why we menstruate.  In the typical situation, each month the body prepares for the possibility of pregnancy by delivering an egg from the ovary to the uterus.  In preparation for the egg, the uterus builds up a nutrient rich lining.  When the egg is not fertilized, the lining sheds, hence menstruation.  It is a natural cycle, the ebbing and flowing of hormones.  Personally, I become suspect when medicine attempts to eliminate a natural function that serves its place in the balance of our bodies.  If it ain't broke, why fix it?

In addition, I wonder about the motivation behind the new drug.  Bleeding is gross and bad and we should feel bad about it right, so let's just make it not happen?  Are we going to get to a time when all women who are not trying to get pregnant medicate themselves so that they don't menstruate?  Will it become even more of a taboo to be a bleeding person?  I mean, it is already something that people have a hard time talking about and most of us do it.  What happens when most women don't?  Will those that chose to still bleed become ostracized and will menstruation become even more of a shameful activity? 

-Jodi Nan 

I have to admit, I have never been a kid person.  I never really saw myself as a parent, most of my friends didn’t consciously chose to have kids, and I am the youngest of the majority of my extended family.  I enjoy being the baby and have never felt like that needed to change.

So my sister has a bun in the oven.  As well as 2 of my close friends, added to another close friend who had a kid less than a year ago, and another who is trying.  All of a sudden, I am surround by breeding.  To say the least, it is freaking me out.

Now, as a consumer, a responsible one at that, with this new baby craze sweeping through my world, I am inspired to research new green baby products.  I love to shop, I admit it.  And this is giving me something new to shop for.  Let me correct that, I love to research products, yet rarely buy them.  I am an e-commerce analytics tease (many abandoned shopping carts).  Back to the main issue here, eco baby products.  Adorable.

Here are a few links to get started with:
GreatGreenBaby
EVO
allthingsgreen.net  

And don’t forget that Gladrags Night Pads can be used for post-partum!

There are tons of other companies out there making amazing new responsible baby products.  Comment if you find more!  I will pass them on to the sister…

-Jodi

I had a “remember when” moment today. Remember when the gym teacher came into the classroom and took all the boys with him (he was invariably a man) and the school nurse came and took all the girls with her (the school nurse was invariably a woman). Ooooh! We were going to learn about our bodies! Woohoo!

This experience was somewhat mortifying for a youngster who was raised in our sexually repressed society. I mean, why else would they make the girls and boys be separate? Obviously there was something that us girls were to talk about the boys shouldn’t hear and vice versa. For the record, I still am not positive what the boys talked about.

But us girls learned all about our periods. We learned that once a month one of our ovaries would release an egg and if it wasn’t fertilized (by some act that we won’t actually talk about), then the lining of our uterus will shed, causing us to bleed. Sitting there all, embarrassed and sheepish, we were taught that - no really, our bodies weren’t broken if they bled. However, it was this somewhat clinical, rather gender separate experience that I believe causes young women to be embarrassed about the changes in their bodies. Girls will stealthily put a tampon (hopefully organic) in their pocket without anyone seeing. Boys pretty much pretend that the whole thing isn’t happening. And why should they acknowledge it, they weren’t made to watch with period video with all the girls, so they can claim ignorance. If we remove this taboo about menstruation at a young age, maybe our children won’t be so freaked out by it when they are adults?

Anyway, I digress. Recently, this video clip was brought to my attention by former GladRagger, Sara (Green Light Design). The video is a 1940’s Disney/Kotex production called The Story of Menstruation. It is a delightful look at how our bodies change with the onset of puberty and things to remember when attempting to avoid cramps and stay healthy and happy. This is just the sort of video that I watched sitting with all my female classmates, most definitely embarrassed of my body. Alright folks, grab some popcorn and Dots candy and enjoy The Story of Menstruation (see below)!

 -Jodi