One of the happiest days of my life was the day I realized I had gotten my period for the first time. To me, my menarche was like being initiated into a club that I had been admiring my entire life.
So, naturally, as any excited-beyond-belief 11-year old would do, I went to school the next day fully intending to tell all my friends. Much to my dismay, everyone met my excited whispers of “I got my period last night!” with various levels of disgust and reproach. For many years afterwards, I would conform to the “normal” way of dealing with my period: treating it as a secretive burden.
As a teenager, I found tactful ways of hiding tampons at all times, and began to refer to my cycle as “the curse.” It wasn’t until I turned 19 that the financial strain, social stigma, and inconvenience of tampons lead me to do some digging on how I could make my period a less miserable part of my life.
Why was I spending more than $15 per month on products that didn’t really work for me? Where does that money go? Is there anyone else out there who is struggling with this? What did women do before tampons? And why should I have to be secretive of something that happens to about 50 per cent of the population?
Herstory
I explored the history of the taboo behind the period — I found that in Judaism and Christianity, menstruation is described as being part of the punishment for the disobedience of Eve for eating the Forbidden Fruit. According to the Orthodox Christian Information Center, “These bodily functions are not sins, but they represent and emphasize the consequences of our fallen states.” Some Christian churches even refused communion to women on their periods.
In Nepal, women have traditionally been kept in in “menstrual huts,” or cow-sheds, for days while menstruating. Japanese Buddhism considered menstrual blood to be pollution — women were sentenced to Blood Pool Hell for their “sin.”
Why should I have to be secretive of something that happens to about 50 per cent of the population?
In Western Africa, the Asante considered menstrual blood to be powerful, and used it in harmful supernatural rituals. For them, menstruation was analogous to the inherent danger of the cycles in nature.
Much 19th century writing argues that women should not attend university because menstruation debilitates them and their capacity to learn. In 1883’s Sex in Mind and Education, Henry Maudsley argued that women are “of another body and mind which for one quarter of each month, during the best years of life, [are] more or less sick and unfit for hard work.”
Five years earlier, the British Medical Journal published a report about the chance of meat spoiling when touched by menstruating women, and argued that women may not be fit to practice medicine while menstruating.
While some progress has been made, menstruation remains a taboo for much of the world today, and that makes information on the history of menstrual products few and far between. Yet, there are rumours of tampon-like tools in ancient Egypt, Rome, and Japan made of materials such as papyrus, wool, and paper.
During the 19th century, European and American women may have simply bled onto their clothing or washable menstrual pads which fastened from the waist with a belt. At the turn of the century, though, new products appeared as a result of the industrial revolution.
Patents for products such as menstrual cups (which are reusable and hold the menses to later be poured out), and still-popular disposable tampons, were born during this era.
By the 1930s, the taboo of menstruation had been solidified in the US and Canada: “Advertising such a sensitive topic to a national audience would require just the right touch, a combination of aggressive selling and delicate good taste.” And it did. In 1936, led by Ellery Mann, Tampax boasted 11 million buyers of its new product.
Predictably, advertising has played a big role in popularizing the feminine hygiene industry throughout the 20th century. But many of these advertisements have both euphemized and vilified menstruation, to make it more easily marketable. A 1965 magazine ad from Tampax cites the “freedoms of Tampax [. . .] the swimming, the sunning, the poise, the comfort, the cool, clean, fresh feeling [. . .]” Later ads have involved women running through open fields in white dresses, usually with cheesy adult contemporary chiming away in the background.
All these ads have sent the same basic message: menstruation is unclean and undesirable, and buying menstrual products that can be easily disposed of is the only way to avoid social and cultural transgression.
Things aren’t much better in the Internet age. Tampax’ website includes a storied history of “The First Tampon” on the “About Us” page. It tells the tale of the modern tampon being invented by a man named Dr. Earle C. Haas in 1929, and how Tampax was co-founded by Thomas F. Casey in 1936.
The description reads, “Mann had the good sense to select men with the expertise and temperament to compliment his own special talents and personality.” The subtext here is clear: women are too hysterical to design and sell products they’ll be using. That, of course, is a job only a man can handle.
The feminine hygiene industry
Fast-forward to the present day, where Tampax’s parent company Procter & Gamble controls over 30 per cent of the global market share in the feminine care category. In 2013, P&G made $22 billion on its disposable products, including tampons, pads, toilet paper, and diapers.
Kimberly-Clark, another FemCare conglomerate, reported that its brand Kotex is an over $1 billion business. Energizer Holdings, owner of both Playtex and o.b., came in at over $2 billion in sales in 2013. The best part? The CEO of each and every company I listed is, as far as I can tell, a non-menstruating person.
So, with all this money being made, there must be a lot of products. Where do all those little cotton torpedos end up?
When I used disposable tampons, I generally went through about 25 each month. So that’s five tampons a day, for five days every month, for about 40 menstruating years. That would be 13,000 tampons and about 150 kg of waste in my lifetime. Factor in nearly all other menstruating people on the continent, and about 20 billion tampons, applicators, and pads are sent to North American landfills every year.
About 20 billion tampons, applicators, and pads are sent to North American landfills every year.
If you’re still asking yourself, “what’s the big deal,” consider this: What’s in that Tampax tampon you use every month? These things are going inside your vagina, an orifice like your mouth, ears, and nostrils — if it contained harmful chemicals, wouldn’t you want to know about it? Maybe not. Tampon companies are not required to display or reveal the ingredients of their products to the general public in the way that food products, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics are.
How are disposable pads and tampons made? Well, they start from wood pulp, which is treated with chemicals such as viscose to create the fiber rayon. The rayon and pulp are further processed with a variety of bleaching agents and other chemicals to render them white, absorbent, and fluffy.
All the major FemCare brands (Tampax, Kotex, Playtex, o.b., etc.) use this method, which combines rayon and bleach. This combination creates dioxins which are proven cancer-causing agents that can disrupt the hormone system and have been linked to endometriosis — a once-rare disease that can cause internal bleeding, permanent scar tissue, and infertility.
The pesticides used to treat cotton for menstrual products have been linked to infertility, neurological dysfunction, and developmental defects. To top it off, the “fragrance” found in some tampons and pads has been known to contain dozens of secret chemicals, which are linked to skin irritation and reproductive harm.
Alternatives to disposables
How can you avoid harming your bank account, the environment, and your body? Ditch the disposables! There are countless companies all over the world which provide eco-friendly options for menstrual health. For the inside scoop, I sat down with Madeleine Shaw, one of the founders of Lunapads: a natural FemCare company based right here in Vancouver.
“We specialize in natural feminine hygiene products, which is to say reusable alternatives to single-use, mainstream pads and tampons that are sort of ubiquitous in our culture and world,” said Madeleine, when I sat down with her at the East Van Lunapads HQ.
Lunapads makes reusable, washable cloth pads, pantiliners, and underwear, while also selling reusable menstrual cups. “We also have as part of our mission, an obligation to have a positive social and environmental impact,” Madeleine explained.
“It’s all part of a liberation and a truth-telling which leads to empowerment, which leads to healthier lives — because, really, this comes down to health. This comes down to our reproductive health and the health of our planet, which is also a reproductive organ that we need to take care of.”
Whether or not you get your period, menstruation affects everyone economically, environmentally, and socially.
In addition to their products, Lunapads runs a non-profit organization called One4Her, which supports “better access to education for girls in developing nations by providing sustainable, affordable menstrual care products for girls in need, as well as improving menstruation awareness.”
In case you don’t know, millions of girls in the developing world stay home from school during their periods due to lack of access to menstrual products. This can equate to missing up to 20 per cent of their education, making them more likely to drop out, which in turn can lead to early marriage and a greater risk of contracting HIV or dying in childbirth.
This is why we need to change the way we look at menstrual health and hygiene: by advocating a safer, destigmatized, and sustainable system, millions of people’s lives can be changed for the better.
Period power
Reusable products, such as menstrual cups, adhere to the greater societal trend of reusability and recyclability: cloth shopping bags, reusable coffee mugs and water bottles.
Companies like Lunapads also offer a product that recognizes that not all women menstruate, and not all who menstruate are women. “Lunapads users and community members are cisgender, transgender and genderqueer individuals who span the gender spectrum.”
There’s a growing cultural movement aimed towards promoting menstrual health and crushing the period taboo. Toronto-based artist Petra Collins has inspired praise and controversy for her American Apparel T-shirt entitled “Period Power,” which features a line drawing of a vulva, pubic hair, and a manicured hand with watercolour menstrual blood.
In an interview with Vice, she said, “[. . .] we’re so shocked and appalled at something that’s such a natural state — and it’s funny that out of all the images everywhere, all of the sexually violent images, or disgustingly derogatory images, this is something that’s so, so shocking apparently.”
Petra and other artists involved in the Period Power movement help break down the taboos that limit the way we talk about menstruation in our society. How people feel about their periods should be as unique as their bodies — whatever the case, these are conversations worth having, and they can’t happen until we eliminate the stigma that has haunted menstruation since day one.
The truth is that whether or not you get your period, menstruation affects everyone economically, environmentally, and socially. It’s a natural and healthy process, and one that should never be shamed or stigmatized.
So, if someone says to you, as I did to my classmates when I was 11, “I got my period today,” consider opening the discourse about a taboo topic of global health. You’ll be glad that you did.
