During the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, menstruation became more present in public discourse in Scotland. Despite this, little attention has been paid to the complex interplay of visibility and invisibility that characterises menstruation’s place in the nation’s wider cultural landscape. In this article, we explore the context of menstruation in the town of St Andrews specifically and Scotland more broadly, during the late 20th and early 21st century, and ask what this reveals about menstrual absence and presence in public debates. The University of St Andrews lies at the centre of this case study because it has been one of the Scottish institutions that has initiated a rollout of free menstrual products as a result of the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act of 2021. The University’s Centre for Contemporary Art also hosted Bee Hughes as artist-in-residence, whose practice focuses on the visible and invisible aspects of menstruation. Although impacted by a university strike and the Covid-19 pandemic, our collaboration has explored collections of menstrual culture in Scotland and broader questions of menstrual representation, reflecting on how established symbols with other connotations (notably the ceremonial red gown at the University of St Andrews) might provide a way of thinking about menstrual in/visibility. In this article, we discuss how these histories might be both present (institutionalised) and absent (when not on display). This paper presents our findings, in which the artist documents their first visit to St Andrews prior to the strike and pandemic, in relation to historical and contextual materials we located together.
In the late 2010s, menstruation became a topic of mainstream political and policy debate in Scotland.
In order to explore menstruation’s often contradictory and complex status in the 2010s and early 2020s, the authors of this paper collaborated to examine how the University of St Andrews responded to calls for free products before and after the Act, and how this response links to longer histories in menstruation’s in/visibility in both the town of St Andrews and Scotland as a country. Bee Hughes’s artist residency in St Andrews, which occurred before the 2020 strikes called by the University and College Union (UCU), and the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic in March of that year, relates to their longstanding practice of producing menstrual art.
To underline the ways in which menstruation interlinks with other issues, Hughes’s pre-pandemic visit to St Andrews included exploring parts of the town affected by menstrual stigma or policy both historically and recently. This included the University’s Estates team, (which is responsible for cleaning on campus, sanitary bins, and the practical roll-out of the Act), the University Feminist Society and LGBTQIA+ student groups who advocated for free products before the Act and stressed the importance of inclusivity, scholars who research menstruation, the local foodbank and the University’s museums. We observed what types of products were available in the local shops and in campus bathrooms, and Hughes documented their visit through photographs and notes.
Reflecting on these observations, the artist had hoped to make a work of menstrual art, while we collectively began investigating the longer histories, both traceable and occluded, of menstrual art and culture in St Andrews and Scotland. The project was initially conceived in a cyclical model, involving independent work punctuated with regular and collaborative interventions when the artist could be ‘in residence’. However, the UCU strikes and the Covid-19 pandemic put a stop to this plan, and our methodologies shifted in response.
Our collaborative project utilises artistic practice as a way of exploring the specificity of menstruation’s cultural in/visibility. Hughes considered St Andrews a central location for their developing research and practice, having presented and exhibited their work at the University before.
The fragmentary nature of the project, and our account of it, reflects a number of the challenges that come with researching menstruation, and with developing and enacting menstruation policy. We acknowledge the rough edges that accompany collaborative and interdisciplinary work, particularly when time and distance are taken into account. We also accept the slippages that can become magnified when working with topics that are at once deeply personal and societally important. The complexity of working with menstrual themes in this way is reflected not only in the broader considerations of menstrual literacy that are needed to enact menstruation policy successfully, but also in the tensions that surface in the production of artwork(s) by one artist, exploring a phenomenon (menstruation) that is experienced in so many varied ways, and impacted by different social and cultural conditions. We are informed by Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenology
Reflecting on the changed and disrupted circumstances of this project, in the first section of this article, we situate Hughes’s residency within the specific context of St Andrews as both the university and organisations in the town attempted to implement The Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021. In the second section, we link this to histories of feminist activism in St Andrews, and to the relationship between visual practice and menstruation in Scotland more widely, before we return in the conclusion to the symbolism of the St Andrews red gown, to period poverty, and to visual culture in the context of menstrual (in)visibility (Figure
Bee Hughes (2021)
Our article closes with a first-person perspective by the artist discussing their work in St Andrews and the symbol of the red gown in their initial stages of creative exploration. Given that Scotland is one of the first countries to have made access to free menstrual products legally binding through The Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021, we wanted to address whether there were specific visual cultures that had informed this. Working outward from the particular challenges presented by undertaking a residency when the artist cannot be present, we consider how this might parallel, and provide an important analytical perspective on, the wider issue of menstrual presence and absence in Scotland.
The implementation of the Act by the Scottish Government meant a sudden change for anyone tasked with stocking menstrual products in toilets and other facilities around the town. The Act meant that institutions had a duty of care towards any menstruator who might need a product, and therefore included local schools, colleges, the food bank, and the university. Some institutions had to quickly figure out how menstrual products would fit into their overall strategy for the provision of free items, while others expanded their already free menstrual product options.
At the University of St Andrews, as elsewhere, student groups had been increasingly active in the debate around menstruation and access to products. Significantly, university students had been petitioning for free products for years and started a petition for free products in 2018.
When the roll-out of the Act finally began, however, students like those involved in the Feminist Society also sometimes took on the role of educators. When a small number of other students made transphobic remarks about provision on the Society’s Facebook page, for instance, it was often up to the society members to provide support for trans students. Since limited guidance was available from the government (or from the University itself) regarding the role of gender and menstruation, student groups like these stepped in instead. For trans and non-binary students, and for non-students, this could be both frightening and exhausting. The lack of guidance from institutions around gender inclusivity demonstrates a knowledge gap between grassroots activism and the stakeholders of policy implementation. It also suggests an underlying unfamiliarity with the complex intersectional considerations inherent in advocacy, activism and academic research around menstrual health and experience.
While the students were part of activist work to raise awareness for period poverty, another group has had an even more intimate and long-standing relationship to menstruation and public buildings. At the University, the Estates team are in charge of cleaning and of supplying materials across the sprawling campus, which is spread throughout the town. For this group, the Act meant new practical challenges. While the Act offered some advice for such teams on how to acquire products, store them, and to promote the scheme, cleaners had to take a creative and space-specific approach to every single room, as each building and toilet on an old campus like St Andrews was necessarily slightly different.
Tracing notions of invisible and visible menstruation, we noted that the Estates team likely had the most knowledge about the everyday realities of menstruation in the workplace, and had expertise in discussing and managing menstrual practicalities. The Act made their existing work more visible to other colleagues and necessitated more discussion about menstruation throughout campus. These discussions, however, often centred on products, waste, disposal systems, and cleaning, which linked menstruation to long-standing historical tropes about menstrual blood being ‘unsanitary’ or a ‘hygiene’ issue.
It took some tweaking by the Estates team, but ultimately systems that took into account all the compromises (regarding, for example, access, finances, the environment, disposal, and gender) were established. For example, in the Student Union, students had to ask for products at the reception desk, where a box of disposable tampons and pads was provided. In staff-dominated buildings, products were not consistently available apart from some staff-organised and donated products. In the University Library and public areas, the vending machines filled with Tampax and Always tampons and pads (both brands produced by Procter & Gamble) simply became free overnight. However, conversations about how best to manage the presentation and dissemination of menstrual cups and reusable pads on campus are ongoing.
While students and the University as an institution were able to rely on the experienced Estates team to roll out the Act, infrastructure also existed at the St Andrews food bank. Organised by the neo-charismatic evangelical Christian Kingdom Vineyard group inside the Holy Trinity Church building in St Andrews, the service (called Storehouse) is open to anyone who needs it and is run through the Fair Share food distribution centre in Scotland. Structurally, menstrual products had been added to Fair Share’s existing regular delivery (nearby supermarkets supplemented this on an ad hoc basis, and community members sometimes dropped off donations). As we saw in other settings, the food bank had to rely on their own knowledge of consumers and of the architecture of the building (an old church) to process the change. When the Covid-19 pandemic began, the service continued for as long as it could. As shops and other options became impossible to reach due to a government-mandated stay-at-home order, the food bank’s inclusion of menstrual products was likely more important than ever imagined. Here, we note that the invisible labour of food banks became more public during the pandemic, and that because of the Act, menstrual products were already part of this labour.
Our observations of menstrual visibility and invisibility in St Andrews underline the ways in which some menstrual debates remain hidden. Most of the labour surrounding menstruation, including cleaning and providing products in bathrooms and foodbanks, continues to be discreetly done and is in many respects made invisible.
Having explored contemporary menstrual visibility in St Andrews, we turned to history to understand how the longer traditions of activism, feminism, and reproductive justice debates in St Andrews might have contributed to where we are today. Throughout the modern history of St Andrews (and in higher education more generally), menstruation tended to be present only as subtext, but it has still shaped the lives of people in the town. Second Wave feminists fought against essentialist views of the body and argued for more access to public space.
While St Andrews has a reputation as a conservative town, it also holds a long history of radical feminist activism. Historian Sarah Browne’s work on 1970s Second Wave feminism in Scotland uniquely positions St Andrews in this history as ‘a veritable hotbed of feminism’, fuelled in part by the international student body.
The Women’s Liberation group in St Andrews utilised many tactics to make space for itself, and to become visible in a larger battle for access to public, social and educational spaces for women. They vandalised the men-only golf course grass, harassed men on the street by staring at them and catcalling, and protested the mocking of female students that occurred during the annual Kate Kennedy parade in which a male student dresses as a woman.
Through their art, performances and stunts, the St Andrews Women’s Liberation group sought to bring attention to sexism, particularly sexism related to essentialist views of gender and women’s places in the physical and intellectual world. Their critique of Biology lectures demonstrates the group’s acute awareness of how discussions about women’s bodies could be weaponised against them. The group continued to question and fight against essentialist views of the body throughout the 1970s, before its members dispersed across the world.
The creativity of the St Andrews Women’s Liberation group, and of Raffles’s body of work in particular, intersects with the wider relationship between visual art and feminist activism in Scotland, including artistic and theatrical engagements with menstruation. Examples from the late 20th century show how artists working in Scotland linked menstruation to themes of growing up, girlhood, and sex, amongst other themes. These vary in medium, including a play, a performance art piece and zines, as well as in the reactions they incited, which ranged from outrage to critical acclaim to investigation and counter-cultural dissemination. On the opening night of Scottish playwright Sharman Macdonald’s first play about girlhood and sexuality,
LGBTQIA+ and feminist magazines circulating in Scotland also poked fun at menstrual tropes, exemplified by the humour and creativity in Megan Radclyffe’s collage
Megan Radclyffe, Napkin NEUROSIS.
The Glasgow Women’s Library’s Zine Library holds multiple menstruation-themed zines, including unique items made by comic book artist and musician Zaskia in the 1990s. She published a series of menstruation-themed zines named
These ebbing and flowing histories of art and menstruation in Scotland and in the UK more broadly demonstrate the wider context of our project, and our desire to look in particular at how art practice might provide a way of highlighting the little-known histories of menstrual activism and engagement in St Andrews specifically. These examples are reminders of a long-interlinked history of the arts, menstrual themes, and the public. Hughes’s work at St Andrews thus constitutes only one of the most recent contributions to this artist-activist discourse, which we hope illuminates how visual production and its reception can help us to understand changing attitudes to menstruation in Scotland today.
In this section, Hughes reflects on their experiences of working with the subject of menstruation, of St Andrews, of walking the line between being an academic and an artist, and of the role of (their) art in the conversations around The Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021. This section is written in the first person: a change from the previous sections, reflecting the tension that surfaces within this article (and in menstrual activism and advocacy more broadly) between the personal and the collective.
St Andrews is significant to my practice as a menstruation researcher and artist working with menstrual subject matter, as it is the first place where I presented this body of work to my peers. The town and university have been instrumental in shaping my understanding of the field, through various visits in support of Menstruation Research Network UK activities (a Wellcome Trust supported network of menstrual scholars active from 2019 onwards), the exhibition of my work in the Cloisters of the University’s St Salvator’s Chapel, and the collection of that work by the Museum of the University of St Andrews. Since visiting in 2018 I have felt an affinity to the town. It reminds me of home in elements of its geography, historic architecture, and the sense of division that bubbled underneath the surface. I grew up in rural North Wales, near the coast, the mountains of Snowdonia, and the university city of Bangor.
St Andrews is a small town on the east coast of the region Fife, with a population of about 17,000. It is home to one university, established in 1413 and considered a high-ranking academic institution. There is a palpable split between the university in St Andrews and the wider town, which also encompasses golf courses, a small fishing community, agriculture, a hospital, shops, a botanical garden and museums. Its reputation, alongside that of the university, is one of prosperity, privilege and conservativism, and it is steeped in long-standing traditions, student societies and systems.
During my first visit as artist in residence in 2020, we began considering what symbols of St Andrews might be available to act as an anchor for the creative work, a material grounding to situate a practice in and with the town and university. My curiosity was piqued by recalling glimpses of figures around the campus dressed in red gowns, the University of St Andrews’s ceremonial attire. Since 1800, students at the University have dressed in bright red gowns and walked back and forth over a harbour pier to commemorate the rescue of crew members of the ship
As an artist who explores the social and cultural aspects of menstruation in their art and academic works, I noted that the gown could be re-appropriated as part of this project as a symbol for menstrual invisibility and visibility. While the bright red gown is on public display every week as students walk the pier and circulate in the small town (as well as during graduation and formal events), menstrual signs remain taboo and occluded. The identification and re-appropriation of this symbol was important creatively and conceptually. As an artist, I do not see my role as (re)interpreting the findings of my collaborators (or even my own research data) into an artwork. My aim is not to represent the conversations Camilla, Catherine and myself had literally or figuratively in St Andrews, nor is it to quantify the impact of the Act. Rather, I see my role as an artist in residence (or elsewhere) as trying to navigate the various discourses of menstruation circulating in a particular cultural milieu, to form impressions, and to bring together fragments from these layered observations. My aim is not to hold up a mirror and produce a straightforward reflection, but to highlight contradictions, stitch together fragments, and produce objects or performances in dialogue with the space(s), experiences, and ideas encountered.
The hypervisibility of the red gown in St Andrews linked to our shared central concern with the ways in which menstrual visual cultural production, and specifically menstrual art that utilises real blood, have informed and shaped menstrual culture and discourse in Scotland and beyond.
Bee Hughes (2021)
Re-appropriation and fragmentation have been a central theme in my art practice in recent years, particularly using cut-up text and autobiographical elements to foreground the limited space for gender-diverse experience in medical and everyday framings of menstruation.
With only one official visit under my belt for this project, and the second in March 2020 cancelled due to a strike (which myself and my co-authors supported) and due to the worsening international news about Covid-19 (and the eventual ‘lockdown’), my preliminary notions about a co-produced, participatory, performance-led work were thrown into disarray. Instead, we turned to the historic documentation that we explored during my first visit, especially the photographic archive of Raffles held in the University’s Special Collections. This rooted me somewhat in the rhythms of the town, and the history of feminist health activism in Scotland documented by Raffles in the 1980s and early 1990s.
I was particularly struck by Raffles’ photographs documenting the everyday work and workers of hospitals in the Lothian region.
Franki Raffles,
Washing and keeping the body clean has so often been considered ‘women’s work’, and in Raffles’s documentation we see a respectful portrait of this hidden labour and gendered pressure.
The first visit offered unique insights into the contemporary and historic contexts of St Andrews, making me excited to unravel further the story of menstruation in the town. This enthusiasm was challenged during the strike and pandemic, which left the project uncertain, and the threads I had gathered in January slipping through my fingers. As I adjusted to thinking about the project and St Andrews from afar, the need for a physical connection to anchor my creative practice became evident: enter the red gown. I purchased a red gown of my own, had it shipped to my home, and started exploring its components (Figures
Bee Hughes (2021)
Bee Hughes (2021)
As I got to know the gown’s material and details, I began reflecting on the prevalence of the gown in the university’s marketing materials: for example, a photograph of the pier procession on campus maps, and splashed across the university’s website. The consistent presence of the gown in the University of St Andrews’ collective identity became solidified as a significant symbol, which could be re-formed around the role of Scottish universities in this historic moment for menstrual equity. At the same time, the ‘lockdown’ meant that no-one was walking the piers in St Andrews anymore, that the gown was back in the closet, and that the ambitious Scottish period poverty plan would be tested in ways unforeseen by policy makers.
The Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021 was necessitated by the need to grapple with economic inequalities in Scotland. The pandemic only underscored this. Likewise, our symbolic gown also documented a history of privilege and financial exclusion in St Andrews through its price and manufacturer. For months, we tried to find out where the gowns were made, by whom, and how. After numerous emails and phone calls, the makers of the gowns, leading UK academic gown providers Ede & Ravenscroft, replied after we were vetted through a University of St Andrews retail connection. They told us that the gowns were made in Littleport in England, and constructed of dyed wool and velveteen. The reason for the secrecy was financial and legal. A few years prior, a new academic dress company tried to make the red gowns cheaper and more accessible. This led to a lawsuit with Ede & Ravenscroft, who argued that no-one else had the right or ability to make the red gowns as well as they did.
These were the beginnings of my project to re-make the red gown, to un-pick and cut up its association with academic prestige, and to create a new link with menstrual work. The gown itself, a heavy wool garment covering the body from the shoulders to the calf, simultaneously marks the wearer as part of this academic community whilst shrouding the body beneath its voluminous folds (Figure
Bee Hughes (2021)
This dichotomy, hypervisible yet hidden, called to mind the strands of presence and absence inherent in menstruation research, experience, visual cultures, and policy-making. The gown itself became the site of my artistic exploration as I set about devising a process of making that mirrored the processes and themes uncovered by my first research visit.
I resolved to unpick and undo the gown, document its various threads, the panels of wool and velveteen, and the hidden supporting structures within the garment, in order to re-make them as symbols of menstruation (Figure
Bee Hughes (2021)
The gown was never intended to symbolise menstruation. Indeed, the very fabric of centuries of academic life has been built around the Cartesian notion of an immaterial intellectual self: the body is obscured, even denied, in favour of intellectual authority. Herein I find the humour
Bee Hughes
As Scotland combats period poverty, the gown is a reminder of underlying economic inequalities. While the lawsuit of the gown manufacturers continues in the courts, the episode clarifies how the gowns also tie St Andrews to an economic history of privileged access to the paraphernalia of studenthood. Not all students can afford the gown, and, as we know, some also utilise the foodbank. Some students thus welcomed the alternative, cheaper gown, excited finally to be able to access the proper academic ‘look’, wrapped in red and visible to the world. In what is often assumed to be a privileged space, like St Andrews, Scotland, or the Global North, it is easy to focus on status symbols such as the red gown or a generous menstrual product policy. The underlying issues, whether poverty or stigma, will likely not dissipate through a singular focus on pads, cups and tampons. Like menstrual products, the economic fight around the red gowns benefits companies first and foremost. Whether gowns are sold by Ede & Ravenscroft or Churchill Gowns, and menstrual products are supplied through the Scottish government or vending machines, a red-hot economic market serves no one better than the supplier.
Today’s students, cleaners, foodbanks, academics, and citizens are making the menstrual subtext into text in St Andrews. Menstruation is no longer so invisible in the town, nor is it in Scotland. The country has housed menstrual research and policy development, provided free products to all, and fronted a national campaign calling for an end to all menstrual euphemism: ‘Let’s call periods, periods!’
Fiona McKay, ‘Scotland and Period Poverty: A case study of media and political agenda setting’, in James Morrison, Jen Birks, Mike Berry (eds.),
For an initial reflection see Bee Hughes, Camilla Mørk Røstvik and Catherine Spencer, ‘Blood Lines: Researching Menstrual Histories During a Pandemic,’ 17 February 2021,
In February 2020, the University and College Union (UCU) announced 14 days of strike action as part of a long-running dispute over pensions and a platform known as the Four Fights (casualisation, equality, pay, and workload):
Bee Hughes,
Bee Hughes, ‘Challenging Menstrual Norms in Online Medical Advice: Deconstructing Stigma through Entangled Art Practice’,
Dallas J. Baker, ‘Queering Practice-Led Research: Subjectivity, Performative Research and the Creative Arts’,
See Sara Ahmed,
Sara Ahmed,
Ibid.
‘Free Sanitary Products at the University of St Andrews’, change.org (2018):
In the UK, this work was led by many individuals, groups and charities, including the Red Box Project, Bloody Good Period, Chella Quint and Period Positive, and the social enterprise Hey Girls. However, the schoolgirl Amika George led one of the larger campaigns and street protests to End Period Poverty during the 2010s in the UK, initiated by her change.org petition in 2017 and the associated social media campaign #FreePeriod.
Sarah E. Frank, ‘Queering Menstruation: Trans and Non-Binary Identity and Body Politics’,
On the history of the sanitary bin and the development of sanitary waste disposal systems in Britain, see Camilla Mørk Røstvik, ‘“Do Not Flush Feminine Products!” The Environmental History, Biohazards and Norms Contained in the UK Sanitary Bin Industry Since 1960’,
Our observations about where products were available on campus were based on pre-pandemic visits.
Scholars have explored the invisible nature of socially reproductive labour: see, for instance, Tithi Bhattacharya (ed.)
See Sarah Browne, ‘“A Veritable Hotbed of Feminism”: Women’s Liberation in St Andrews, Scotland,
Browne, ‘“A Veritable Hotbed of Feminism”, 100–123.
Browne, ‘“A Veritable Hotbed of Feminism”’, 107.
On feminism in Scotland see Esther Breitenbach and Fiona Mackay, eds.
The Kate Kennedy parade continues to be organised every year. It has been implicated in recent reporting on harassment at the University of St Andrews: Marc Horne, ‘St Andrews Sex Scandal Spreads to Elite Society’,
Browne, ‘“A Veritable Hotbed of Feminism”’, 119. Jackson’s website:
The University of St Andrews Photographic Special Collections now holds the Franki Raffles Photographic Archive, which contains over 40,000 negatives of photographs. These explore women’s health, among other topics, and constitute a significant resource for feminist research. For an overview of Raffles’s career drawing on research in this archive, which articulates how Raffles’s commitment to feminism throughout her practice grew from her experience of student activism at St Andrews, see Marine Benoit-Blain, ‘Franki Raffles, photographe engagée: la photographie féministe en Écosse dans les années 1980 et 1990’,
Alistair Scott, ‘Rediscovering Feminist Photographer Franki Raffles’
‘Bold Dundee screams and shouts for more money’,
Helena Neimann Erikstrup and Camilla Mørk Røstvik, ‘Menstruation in the 1990s: Feminist Resistance in Saskia’s Heavy Flow Zine’, Nursing Clio, 7 August 2018,
The intriguing question of whether there was a feminist art movement as such in Scotland during the 1970s cannot be addressed in this article. It is notable that examples of collective and concertedly feminist artistic activity seem to occur later, such as the founding of Women in Profile in 1990 (which ultimately led to the founding of the Glasgow Women’s Library), and which developed the Castlemilk Womanhouse project in 1991, which was based on the early-1970s Womanhouse in Los Angeles. Whereas the Los Angeles Womanhouse featured a ‘menstrual bathroom’, however, the Castlemilk Womanhouse did not. See Hannah Hamblin, ‘Los Angeles, 1972/Glasgow, 1990: A Report on Castlemilk Womanhouse’ in
See
‘Art at the Outer Limits; Karen Finley, Taking Performance to a New Level’,
‘Academic Dress’, University of St Andrews website (2021):
Art historical investigations of menstruation include Ruth Green-Cole, ‘Painting Blood: Visualizing Menstrual Blood in Art’ in Bobel et al. (eds.),
B. Hughes,
V. Newton,
Margaret Taylor, ‘Fight over St Andrews gowns Hots up as Replica Firm Makes New Legal Case’,
‘Let’s call periods, periods’, Scottish Government website (20 January 2020):
The authors would like to thank the University of St Andrews, the University Estates team, the University Feminist Society and LGBTQIA+ student group, Kingdom Vineyard church, University of St Andrews Special Collection, Proquest, the two anonymous peer reviewers, and the editors.
Camilla Mørk Røstvik’s involvement as an editor of this volume has not led to a conflict of interests as the author has been kept entirely separate from the peer review process for this article. The other authors have no competing interests to declare.