Only Women Bleed

Of a quiet evening, I like nothing better than leafing through a study of menstruation. The Wise Wound to be exact. Apparently it’s one of Linder’s favourite reads and it’s very interesting, although I would have titled it The Blob.

Which is why I’ll never be asked to write a book about menstruation.

One of the chapters is dedicated to an interpretation of The Exorcist as a allegory for menstruation and adolescence. I’ve actually heard this metaphor before and in fact a lot of horror films can be seen in terms of sexuality and the like. About two days after someone said this to me I watched the Evil Dead which I saw in a whole new light!

With this interpretation the author state the following:

A friend of ours, who is a Greek Cypriot, took his mother on her first visit to Britain to see The Exorcist. He hoped to shock her, but she was completely unmoved. She said she couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about, since little girls growing up in Cyprus were always like that!

Brilliant.

Anyway, that’s by the by as the other day I was on the tube and a gaggle of teenage girls got on at Oxford Circus. But even though I was reading a book and had earphones on I could tell a gaggle of teenage girls had got on. Because they have a distinctive smell.

I don’t know what this smell is. The teenage boy equivalent I know well, it’s Reebok and Lynx and damp towels and asthma inhalers. But what do teenage girls smell of?

And I don’t mean it in a pervy way, so there.