There I said it. Why is it so taboo? I have never really treated it like a big deal personally. There are much grosser things a body can do. So why does it make people feel so uncomfortable. Remember how women’s bodies create life? Well as much as we want to be ethereal there are side effects to that particular miracle. We bleed every month that we are not pregnant. Just like you do when you get a scratch and you put a band aid on it. Just like in She Is The Man when Amanda Bynes sticks a tampon up her nose when it is bleeding.
via GIPHY
It’s not a big deal ya’ll. Humans bleed. A tampon is basically a wad of toilet paper with a string in it. Ok. Super essential to common civilized hygiene.
But you know what, this is a problem in the world. SO BIG. There are girls around the world who stop getting education because they BLEED! WHAT??? Yeah, they have no tampons or pads so they have to stay home for the week. Not even acknowledging the pain associated. They can not go to school because they are ashamed that they can not keep track of their own hygiene, so they miss a week of school and then they get behind… and then eventually they drop out of school.
I will admit that I am a spoiled American who did not even ever once consider this until I saw this video. Go ahead and watch all 13 min of it. PAY ATTENTION if you don’t already know this MEN because you should be able to answer these questions.
WATCH THIS VIDEO THOUGH
Just watch what women in Africa use as products! Leaves, bits of old mattresses, old rags. Still. in 2016. That alone is a good enough reason to try a pair of Thinx underwear. Just to fund a pack of Afripads. I feel like we are used to saying, "in Africa there are..." but what about the poor in EVERY country???
Like: ALSO IN AMERICA; READ THIS!!!!
( but no thanks on that “free bleed” run)
Yes I get that they are in prison, but made to walk around covered in blood? This stuff should be just as common as toilet paper should it not? I mean I remember the first time I saw free tampons in an LDS temple bathroom and I though it was MAGICAL! How sad that that I was so excited about it because it is so uncommon. And tax on tampons? It's really just about how compared to all the other things that are tax exempt. It really is just ridiculous that these personal hygiene products are not. Also on top of the wage gap that already exists???Just add the $10 a month, $120 a year on top of that.
Sign the petition you guys. Let's just take care of this human rights issue? Yeah? I know you all want to, it takes like 20 seconds.
As far as the fact of the innovation for feminine hygiene being so not a concern for so long. We can almost blame that on the ones who use the products, but are we not the loves of your lives? The mothers of your children that we grow for you? You should care about this.
But WAIT, do you know what Toxic Shock Syndrome is??? It is something we were taught once in the Maturation Program in Elementary school. It is something we may read about if we take a minute to read a box of tampax. "It is what happens when a bacterial infection goes very wrong. It is usually involving a type of staff bacteria and that bacteria starts producing a toxin and it will send the body into shock. It is a life threatening illness." - Tori Telfer Writer, Vice.
You can get TSS from leaving a tampon in too long. Which is what the box warns. But ALSO from using a tampons that is too absorbent for what you need. So too large of a size ladies.
So you may have heard this story last year about this model that had to get her right leg and her left toes amputated to save her life after she got TSS from kotex tampons. No? Read it here, all of it. Because when I have talked about this story with people they have said, "Oh well yeah that happens if you leave it in too long..." and really they are talking about things they think they know what it means but they don't REALLY KNOW. Here is what Happened to Lauren:
"It started on October 3, 2012, when Lauren says she felt a little off—almost like she was coming down with the flu. She was also on her period, and ran down to a nearby Ralph's to stock up on her go-to brand of tampons, Kotex Natural Balance. The errand felt completely unrelated to the vague malady permeating her body. After all, Lauren had been dealing with the logistics of her period for 11 years at that point, and Kotex was just part of the ritual. Like most girls, her mom had walked her through the ins and outs of tampon usage when she was 13, showing her how to use the applicator, warning her to change the tampon every three to four hours. The rule was a no-brainer; on that day, Lauren says she replaced her tampon in the morning, afternoon, and again in the evening.
Later that night, she decided to stop by her friend's birthday party at the Darkroom on Melrose Avenue. "I tried to act normal," she says, though by that point she was struggling to stay upright. "Everyone was like, 'Dude, you look horrible.'" She drove herself back to Santa Monica, took off all her clothes, and fell into bed. All she wanted to do was sleep.
The next thing she remembers is waking up to her blind cocker spaniel perched on her chest and barking aggressively. Someone was pounding on the door yelling, "Police, police!" Lauren dragged herself to the door, and a cop came in to inspect the apartment. Lauren's mother, fresh out of surgery, had been worried at Lauren's lack of communication and called in a welfare check.
"I hadn't been able to take my dog out, so there was piss and shit everywhere," she says. She has no idea how long she was in bed, and can't remember if it was day or night. The cop eyed the situation, told her to call her mom, and left.
Lauren managed to feed her dog a few carrots from her empty refrigerator and then contacted her mom, who asked if she needed an ambulance. "But I was so sick that I couldn't make that decision for myself," Lauren says. "I told her that I wanted to go to bed, and that I'd call her in the morning. And that was the last thing I remember happening." The next day, her mother sent a friend over along with the police. They found Lauren facedown on her bedroom floor.
She was rushed to St. John's with a fever of 107 degrees—ten minutes from death, they said. Her internal organs were shutting down and she'd suffered a massive heart attack. The doctors couldn't stabilize her, and nobody had any idea what was going on until they called an infectious disease specialist, who immediately asked, "Does she have a tampon in?" She did, and they sent it to the lab. It came back positive for toxic shock syndrome.
That is so understandable. She thought she had the flu. We always self diagnose ourselves. We always minimize our sickness. She wasn't trying anything new, was not doing anything different. This was not her fault.
The Artical further States:
"Over the past 50 or so years, the tampon composition has changed from natural ingredients like cotton to synthetic ingredients like rayon and plastic, especially among the big tampon manufacturers—Playtex, Tampax, Kotex. These synthetic fibers, along with a tampon's absorbency, can form an ideal environment for staph bacteria to flourish. When Proctor & Gamble debuted an extra-absorbent tampon called Rely in the 80s, it created the perfect storm for TSS, resulting in a number of deaths. According a study conducted by the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, "the gelled carboxymethylcellulose" in Rely tampons "acted like agar in a petri dish, providing a viscous medium on which the bacteria could grow.
"The tampon has not been changed since the day of the original TSS epidemic. All they did was put on the label, 'Oh, you can get toxic shock.' The material has gone unchanged for decades." To avoid the wrath of the FDA, he says, companies simply put a warning on the outside of their tampon boxes. He calls this a "get-out-of-jail-free card.
...—it's about the fact that they've had materials available for 20 years that could make [tampons] safer, and they've chosen not to use them. They call these tampons 'natural,' when in fact it's the man-made materials that make them dangerous. Their marketing makes young women think, 'Oh, these are the natural cotton ones,' but they're not natural, they're not cotton, and if they were, the chance of toxic shock would be down to almost nothing."
Dr. Philip M. Tierno, a professor of microbiology and pathology at the NYU School of Medicine who has done serious independent research into the link between tampons and toxic shock syndrome, agrees that cotton would be safer. "Most major tampon manufacturers make tampons with either mixes of viscose rayon and cotton, or pure viscose rayon, and in either case those tampons provide optimal physical-chemical conditions necessary to cause the production of the TSST-1 toxin if a toxigenic strain of Staphylococcus aureus is part of the normal vaginal flora in a woman," he says. "Toxic shock syndrome may result if a woman has no antibody to the toxin or low antibody. Therefore the synthetic ingredients of a tampon are a problem, whereas 100 percent cotton tampons provide the lowest risk, if any risk at all."
After I read this story last year I did the research and found that you can buy organic cotton tampons on Amazon for about $8. They were ok; they have a cardboard applicator and that is not my favorite so I have switched to Lola, which I would SO recommend because:
- I can customize an entire box of the sizes that I need
- They have a smooth applicator
- The are priced well, $9-$10
- You get a free box with your first purchase
- You can have them set up to charge and ship every month, skip whenever
- You can get $5 off by using the promo code EWEST1
I really feel like this should not be a Taboo. We need to make this part of our world better for the people with periods. It is an area of inequality. We women really need to step up. We need to learn to take better care of ourselves. By research, by creating new products and by fighting for the inequality issues surrounding our menstruation.
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