We had a sale on Celestial Seasonings tea at my place of work that resulted in several of us buying several boxes of tea each. I got one called "Tension Tamer" and I was showing one of my co-workers/friends the box, which features a saucy woman in red sitting atop a beautiful dragon, their castle in the background. He immediately said, "Tension Tamer? Like for menstruation problems?" I hadn't thought about that, but suddenly the hot lady's deep red dress and her place perched on top of the dragon all seemed to scream "MENSTRUATION SYMBOLISM!" Disgusted, I said, "eww, I got the period tea!" We then proceeded to have a discussion about whether or not I should keep the "period tea." My co-worker Alex said, "yeah but it's not like it TASTES like period..." That clenched my decision and when my shift was over, I switched out the Tension Tamer/period tea for a nice box of Madagascar Vanilla, featuring a jovial looking lion drinking tea while his jungle minions graze in the jungle scene behind him.
Funny story from a friend of mine. I'm kind of disappointed that she switched out the "period tea." Especially since the tea she replaced it with had male symbolism of the lion and his minions (the dominant male and his underlings). Still, a story of the way we blindly accept the genderization of commodities, and the commodification of gender.
This is a very interesting post. I'm interested to hear more about your response to your friend's actions. Why do you think she should have kept the "period tea"?
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