as a natural part of the narrative. He was observing himself observing Johnson -- just the sort of thing Norman Mailer would do 150 years later, though Mailer wouldn't bother trying to pair up with another literary light (Mailer and his fists! That's the buddy team, pal!). This made people think that although Boswell's books were excellent, the author himself was something of an ass. It's not entirely incorrect (Boswell was a loud, messy drunk, among other things), but it's still mean.
Johnson and Boswell had their own separate lives independent of each other of course -- Johnson in particular, as he went some 54 years before even meeting Boswell. But the two are now indisputably tied together. It's Boswell's doing, of course (and good for him, as otherwise he'd be only a minor literary figure instead of the pre-eminent diarist of the 18th Century), but Johnson's reputation certainly didn't suffer out of it. Their relationship ended up making the both of them look good. And ultimately, that's what being a buddy team is all about.
Best Personal Hygiene Products of the Millennium.
Feminine hygiene products. Toothpaste and underarm deodorants are very well and good. But we don't bleed from the teeth and armpits five days every month.
This is a difficult topic for me to write about. There are several reasons for this, but primary among them is simply that I'm a man. Men are not mentally equipped to handle menstruation. I don't mean this in the sense that we all rush for the remote when the tampon ads are on television. Avoiding those ads is just common sense. No one should be expected to believe that any woman is that cheerful about tampons. It'd be like a man, wide-eyed and smiling, extolling the virtues of medicated, cottony swabs for testicular herniations.
No, when I say men are not mentally equipped to handle menstruation, I mean that there is no parallel in the male experience. Men simply do not bleed from their genitals on a regular basis. We can't even imagine it. Suggest to a man that his equipment should hemorrhage for five out of every 28 days, and he will instantly drop to a fetal position, clutch his tum-tum and scream for mommy (who, of course, would have no sympathy whatsoever). This is not to say that men can't grasp the concept of menstruation. We're aware it happens. It just fills us with a confused and holy terror, like Australopithecenes confronting the Monolith.
Be that as it may, it's just a physical process, and a messy one at that. Something had to be done. Or did it? The most amazing thing about feminine hygiene products is not what they do, but the fact that they we re n't commercially available at all until well into the 20th Century. This is astounding to me; after all, the onset of human menstruation didn't suddenly occur in tandem with the rise of the radio. What were women doing before then?
Various things. As early as the second millennium BC, Egyptian women were fashioning crude tampons out of available materials. Polynesian cultures created "menstrual huts," in which women would retire for their interim. The "hut" concept is not exclusive to island paradises; similar huts pop up everywhere from the Caucus Steppes to New Guinea (New Guineans, incidentally , having a very complex and disturbing relationship with menstruation; among other things, the men in certain New Guinean tribes would practice genital mutilation, the aim being to imitate the menstrual flow. Women, that sound you hear is the soft thump of every man reading this falling to the floor and clutching his groin in sympathetic pain). Mostly, however, women made do, using natural sponges, rags or other absorbent materials. In the 19th century, reusable cotton pads came into existence, but, you know, ick .
Then World War I, and the discovery by nurses that a super-absorbent type of cellulose fiber designed to bandage soldiers also made an excellent menstrual pad (blood is blood). Kimberly-Clark, the makers of the cellulose
Johnson and Boswell had their own separate lives independent of each other of course -- Johnson in particular, as he went some 54 years before even meeting Boswell. But the two are now indisputably tied together. It's Boswell's doing, of course (and good for him, as otherwise he'd be only a minor literary figure instead of the pre-eminent diarist of the 18th Century), but Johnson's reputation certainly didn't suffer out of it. Their relationship ended up making the both of them look good. And ultimately, that's what being a buddy team is all about.
Best Personal Hygiene Products of the Millennium.
Feminine hygiene products. Toothpaste and underarm deodorants are very well and good. But we don't bleed from the teeth and armpits five days every month.
This is a difficult topic for me to write about. There are several reasons for this, but primary among them is simply that I'm a man. Men are not mentally equipped to handle menstruation. I don't mean this in the sense that we all rush for the remote when the tampon ads are on television. Avoiding those ads is just common sense. No one should be expected to believe that any woman is that cheerful about tampons. It'd be like a man, wide-eyed and smiling, extolling the virtues of medicated, cottony swabs for testicular herniations.
No, when I say men are not mentally equipped to handle menstruation, I mean that there is no parallel in the male experience. Men simply do not bleed from their genitals on a regular basis. We can't even imagine it. Suggest to a man that his equipment should hemorrhage for five out of every 28 days, and he will instantly drop to a fetal position, clutch his tum-tum and scream for mommy (who, of course, would have no sympathy whatsoever). This is not to say that men can't grasp the concept of menstruation. We're aware it happens. It just fills us with a confused and holy terror, like Australopithecenes confronting the Monolith.
Be that as it may, it's just a physical process, and a messy one at that. Something had to be done. Or did it? The most amazing thing about feminine hygiene products is not what they do, but the fact that they we re n't commercially available at all until well into the 20th Century. This is astounding to me; after all, the onset of human menstruation didn't suddenly occur in tandem with the rise of the radio. What were women doing before then?
Various things. As early as the second millennium BC, Egyptian women were fashioning crude tampons out of available materials. Polynesian cultures created "menstrual huts," in which women would retire for their interim. The "hut" concept is not exclusive to island paradises; similar huts pop up everywhere from the Caucus Steppes to New Guinea (New Guineans, incidentally , having a very complex and disturbing relationship with menstruation; among other things, the men in certain New Guinean tribes would practice genital mutilation, the aim being to imitate the menstrual flow. Women, that sound you hear is the soft thump of every man reading this falling to the floor and clutching his groin in sympathetic pain). Mostly, however, women made do, using natural sponges, rags or other absorbent materials. In the 19th century, reusable cotton pads came into existence, but, you know, ick .
Then World War I, and the discovery by nurses that a super-absorbent type of cellulose fiber designed to bandage soldiers also made an excellent menstrual pad (blood is blood). Kimberly-Clark, the makers of the cellulose
Similar Books
