....With the onset of menstruation, young women often experience a spiraling down to a state of being out of control AGAIN with their body fluids. As children, most of us were degraded for our inability to control our elimination. In response to such unconscious shame, young women are challenged to hide and to control their flow; that creative force, that cycle of rich endometrial shedding, rebuilding, shedding, rebuilding and shedding. The same humiliation of infantile incontinence has the potential of defiling our self-esteem. The shame can also stunt the developmental tasks required for successful entry into adulthood: moving from doubt to initiative, stagnation to industry, dependence to autonomy. It is of no surprise that with the onset of menses, females also start to score lower in scholastics and experience an increase in depression.

....Since societies were predominantly controlled by men, men defined what events are to be celebrated and what events were to be condemned. Therefore, menstruation has been projected culturally as something to hide away, something that is disgusting and most of all, something that is frightening. Death is a taboo subject and anything that confronts man with death should be removed. Women have been forced into isolation, judged unclean and reviled. There was a time, when I lived in the city, that I would place an unopened tampon conspicuously on the dash of my car to keep would-be thieves away. I have never had my car stolen and I attribute my good fortune to the Power of the Tampon.

It is easy to forget that only since the beginning part of the last century have women been allowed to vote and own property. Having custody of the children if a marriage failed was not a mother's right. Keeping women as breeding chattel with little or no rights has been the status quo through millenniums. Women, except for the rare instances of societal matriarchies, have been perceived as inferior in intelligence, inadequate in controlling their body fluids, and predominantly sexually moronic.

....Tampon Art is a transformation. Our history has been women bleeding, being isolated, being shamed, and being diapered in rags. But now, we have the opportunity of utilizing an internal absorbent, not just for convenience during menstruation, but for having fun and making art. Out from the mud comes the lotus flower. From the blood and pain comes Tampon Art, an alchemy of the human spirit. It is rare for a process that has such a profound negative, even taboo status, to transform its control mechanism into art. Who would have guessed that such amazing creations would be possible from a tampon?

We hope that you will enjoy this new and fun art form, taking the tampon from ordinariness to spectacular creativity! So there you have it - check out the gallery and be amazed and/or disturbed.