My ovaries are my arch-nemesis. They rule when I can have sex or wear that cute, light colored dress. As a teenager, I dreaded it with every fiber of my being. I hated wearing maxi pads, I felt like I was wearing a diaper. And to add to the stress of having one’s period, schools don’t really allot for bathroom time between classes. Girls were always at the mercy of a teacher who may or may not write a pass for us to go use it. Not to mention, the girls’ bathroom at my high school only had two stalls with doors on them.
When I switched from pads to tampons I realized that I had entered a whole new era. They felt less dirty than pads, they’re more convenient, you can swim using them, yet still horribly over-priced and completely wasteful. Every month one is reminded how your killing the environment – one tampon at a time. Not to mention, that small piece of cotton that makes up a tampon somehow absorbs every ounce of moisture your vagina could possibly have. However, tampons are the better solution when faced with feeling like you have on a diaper or feeling slightly dried-up, but still grown up.
Which brings me to the diva cup. My girlfriend bought me one. You only have to buy one a year! Its reusable, you wash it out between uses, making it environmentally friendly. What a wonderful invention! A wonderful invention with a huge learning curve – its a pain in the vag to use. The “how-to” directions were clearly written by someone with far superior knowledge than me, or anyone who is probably using them. I’ve lost track of how many online forums full of befuddled diva cup users there are out there. I am not alone in this! The diagram, in the directions, doesn’t show how that goes up there, but does show how it looks properly inserted. Thank god I know how it looks because I don’t have a cross-section diagram of my own vagina! Look how nice that cartoon lady’s vagina looks with the diva cup properly inserted… how the hell did she make the damn thing work?! The directions may as well be written in another language, maybe I’d understand them better. At this point, I have to commend the people making tampons because at least they have better directions and diagrams. I guess with all that money women are pouring into their companies, they can afford to have illustrations and good directions. When looking at tampon directions/diagrams, I don’t feel like less of a woman who doesn’t understand her own body! But my diva cup did come with a nifty pin that says, “diva.” Maybe had they not spent time and money creating cutesy pins, they could’ve had time and money to write better directions.
I’m also insulted and annoyed by the diva cup ’sizes’ as if all vaginas are limited to pre-baby, under-30 model and post-baby over-30 model. The post-baby, over-30 model, that I have, makes one take one look at it and think: how is that fitting comfortably up there?! My vag can’t possibly be that big! True, the cup is made of squishy silicon. But squishing it up there feels akin to, well, squishing a plastic cup up your twat. Needless to say, its doesn’t feel all that great going in regardless of the way you fold it or squish it up there. The directions and website, suggests wetting it a bit. Wetting it makes it slippery which would be helpful if one’s hands had special grippers to stop that slippery sucker from slipping out of your hands. Because now your trying to squish a wet, silicon cup into your vagina, which also doesn’t stay wide open for you to insert things, and if your lucky, the cup won’t pop open while its half in and half out, and slap your lips. Want to know how that feels? Try taking a plastic cup and just smacking yourself with it.
Speaking of it popping open, or not. Here comes the part that really makes a gal feel completely inferior to the cutesy, happy ladies in the diva cup video proclaiming their undying love for it. First you need to fold/squish the sucker to get it inside, while holding the lips of your labia open, then you need to get it to pop open while inside you. Then, just for shits and giggles, you need to make sure that its actually open and… you need to create a seal so it doesn’t leak. There is a super fun ways to do this: you can grab the base of the cup, that is now inside you, and turn that little bastard in a complete circle. By doing this, it is supposed to create a seal, so that there won’t be any leaks. Of course the thing is supposed to also not squish back into itself when you do this, which it does. On those few occasions that it actually stayed open once I turned it, it moved around and did not stay in place like its supposed to, suggesting one of two things: one) I inserted it wrong, or two) my pelvic floor muscles are not ‘tight’ enough to hold this big silicon cup inside me. I can’t figure which it is! I keep up with my kegals and yoga, yet the damn thing won’t stay put when it opens or just won’t open at all!
Thank you diva cup, clearly I am not woman enough to use you. I may fight with the stupid thing for a few more months in some vain hope of getting the thing to stay open and to stay put. Maybe fifteen years of dancing and six years of yoga and pilates will pay off yet! I’m convinced that unlike what the folks at diva cup think, no two vaginas are alike meaning some girls can make it work, while others stand in the bathroom in various awkward positions, swearing under their breath.
Melanie Ducharme is a visual artist whose work has been described as 