VINNIE'S FRIGGIN' MAGNET
Around the same time, Vinnie was talking with some women friends who had been raped. They told him about the negative ways their families had reacted to the incidents -- blaming or doubting them, and making them feel ashamed.

"I was with a good friend of mine who had been raped, and we watched Thelma & Louise together," Vinnie recalls. "When we watched the part where Susan Sarandon's character shoots the guy who tries to rape Geena Davis, I noticed how much that moment in the movie meant to my friend."

He continues: "This was her one way of reliving her experience, and coming out on top. It caused me to rethink how women perceive our world, especially women who are victims of violent crime. I started making images in my paintings of women basically living that moment in Thelma & Louise."

This led to the creation of Vinnie's Friggin' Magnet, which reads, "Women, tired of taking men's shit." It shows a cartoon image of a woman with a gun, smiling and saying, "Pinch this."

Eventually, though, Vinnie decided that the magnets were not fully formed as an idea. The word "shit" is in the title and the gun made the magnet inaccessible to young girls, whom he was interested in reaching.

THE TAMPON CASE IS BORN

"When the idea of a tampon case came up, I was thinking very hard about the roles men play in suppressing women," says Vinnie. "Just the whistling that my female roommates experienced on the street—some would say it's a small thing, but it did make them feel uncomfortable. So I thought, What could I affect? Where could I start?"

Vinnie was already making tampon cases as gifts for his female roommates, who complained that they always found broken tampons at the bottom of their handbags. Something clicked. Here was something that women were hiding, and Vinnie decided to help his girls break the stigma of embarrassment associated with their periods.

Now, Vinnie's Tampon Cases are carried in over 200 stores around the country, ranging from kitschy gift shops, to offbeat women's clothing stores, to bigger outlets like Urban Outfitters and Nordstrom. "It's great," Vinnie says. "The best part of that is that I actively got maybe 20 of those stores, and the rest was word of mouth."

Fan mail also pours in. Young girls write to him on Hello Kitty stationary, and older women send letters on flowery notepaper, talking about how they are about to go into menopause.

> Next: He's on the Case