When Arunachalam Muruganantham discovered that his wife was using old rags for menstrual pads to save their family the cost of pre-manufactured sanitary napkins (paying Indian prices for sanitary napkins “meant no milk for the family” that week), he decided to create a low-cost napkin. Read his amazing story of how he did it: It includes teaching himself English and pretending to be a millionaire to get U.S. manufacturers to send him samples of their raw material, and testing his pads by wearing them himself — while also wearing women’s underwear and his own homemade menstruating uterus, consisting of a bladder filled with goat’s blood.
It’s hard to imagine a high school dropout in the U.S. pushing this as far as Muruganantham did with the obstacles he faced — but only because we can take cheap pads and tampons for granted.
When I talk with young women who’ve never heard about alternative menstrual products, they often have a hard time imagining inserting something the size of a menstrual cup. For some reason, asking them to picture a silicone (or rubber) cone-shaped shot glass doesn’t ease their anxiety. Thanks to the Magical Menstruation Tumblr, I now have the perfect visual aids:
And there’s even a video to demonstrate how to do that tricky-looking fold!
Long before the current fad in Reality TV shows that trade in humiliation and embarrassment, the prevailing menstrual culture inculcated in women a feeling that exposure of the fact that a period was in progress was a social catastrophe. However, just as “The Biggest Loser” invites participants to parade their socially unacceptable bodies before the cameras for fame and fortune, there are times when women are invited to share their stories of menstrual humiliation in exchange for a moment of media recognition and even a cute photo spread.
Consider the October 1, 2007, issue of FIRST: for women on the go, a supermarket checkout publication. A regular column titled “First Blush” that specialized in sharing readers’ “mortifying moments” in this issue was titled “My most mortifying tampon moment!” It consists of four letters from women aged 35 to 50 relating stories of an exposed string, a blood stain on a car seat, dog mischief, and a child’s blurted remark about her mothers’ “bagina.”
The piece is illustrated by the smiling author of one of the letters, “Meg Fitzpatrick, 42, Yardly, PA” whose story about the adorable daughter’s outburst earns her a prized photo in the magazine.
Accompanying the article is some promotional copy for a product called “The Combpanion Tampon and Pantiliner Case” that is described as “a hair comb with a hidden compartment in its hollow handle” so that the reader can “carry a tampon . . . without fear of being spotted holding your feminine product.”
I’m prompted to wonder what an equivalent column in a men’s magazine would look like. Do men ever have “mortifying moments?”
Like Sheldon says, you could save a lot of money if you buy tampons in bulk. Lots of women are probably wishing they’d bought o.b. tampons in bulk, now that they’re going for $20 a box on ebay.
Women and girls in Korogocho slums have been identified who will use the cup for up to four months, after which they will be interviewed about their experiences,” explained Rhoune Ochako, a research officer at APHRC.
Celestine Awino [age 17] is among girls who agreed to participate in the project that started about a year and a half ago and has been using the cup since then. “At first I was afraid. I waited until a friend used it, then I tried. I have now been using it for over ten months,” she says.
Awino says she is able to engage in school activities during her periods while wearing the cup. “I take part in sports, cleaning and learning activities without any problem. It is better than missing school because one lacks sanitary pads,” she says.
Given the economic and environmental advantages of menstrual cups (not to mention their reliability), this experiment has great potential to make a big difference.
Vanessa Tolkin Meyer recently published her thesis film on Vimeo: it’s a short film about the menstrual cup. It’s also about attitudes toward menstruation and how we talk about it.
The Kasiisi Project Girls Program is now the first producer of locally manufactured sanitary pads in Uganda. Their M.A.K.A. pads (Menstruation Administration Knowledge Affordability) are made of papyrus. A package of ten sells for 650 shillings — one-third of the cost of imported pads. The availability of MakaPads helps women miss work and girls miss school less frequently.
If you’ve already made the switch, this is an easy way to persuade your friends. You can email it, Tweet, share it on Facebook, heck, cue it up on your smartphone and show it to ‘em!
Is it wrong that I like this ad because it makes men look foolish for fearing tampons? It’s not that I mean to endorse mocking men as a class, it’s just that unlike the Kotex “Ridiculous” ad, this new ad frames something other than menstruation as this lady’s biggest problem.
A small study published this month in the Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology tested effectiveness of the mooncup. The results won’t surprise anyone who has used one: “The Mooncup leaked 0.5 times less frequently and required to be changed 2.8 times less frequently, on average, during one menstrual period than regular sanitary protection.”
Readers should note that statements published in re: Cycling are those of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Society as a whole.
