[I wrote this article in 1994. It’s hard to say what exactly prompted me to write it and run the little experiment. The years in high school hearing guys make jokes about friends ‘being on the rag’ when they got mad, and my lame attempts to say ‘maybe you’re just being a dick’ must have had something to do with it. But it also had something to do with seeing women I knew feel like they had to discreetly head off to the bathroom with pads or tampons was a factor as I got a bit older.
It was a mystery with contradictions. I always wondered why some women I knew in college left pads and tampons out in plain sight while others must have been hiding them. I mean, they all had them somewhere as there were no menopausal women in my circle of friends at the time.
I decided to revisit this piece now because of the inspiring and successful #notaxontampons/I’m Essential campaign launched by @CDNMenstruators. Their incredible grass-roots campaign worked to remove the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on pads and tampons, pointing out that essential goods are exempt from GST. The absurdity of the tax code came to light through their pointed, hilarious, and intelligent work. I wanted to update this and send it out into the universe at the height of their campaign but did not have time until now.
The writing is old, and I hope I am a better writer now, but the sentiment was there. My updated comments appear in brackets and bold.]
Most men have witnessed the discomfort and pain women experience during
their periods. Whether it was their mother, sister, friend or lover maybe
some of them have tried to show sympathy as well. But no matter how many
cups of tea we brew, no matter how many heating pads we apply, and no
matter how many massages we give, we, as men, never really know what it's
all about.
From what I had seen and heard of menstruation I was pretty sure that I
didn't want to find out too much either. It somehow has always seemed a
lot easier to be sympathetic than to deal with the bloating, cramping and
bleeding. For some women periods can be nightmares; for others they can be
a monthly cleansing. For most it's probably something in between.
Regardless, no man I know has ever envied a woman her period. What most
men forget when, if ever, they think about periods is that there is a
strong social stigma attached to menstruation. So, though all women
menstruate at some time during their lives, somehow it's still considered
dirty.
------------------------------------------------------------------
When I was a kid of five or six, I remember my mother wearing these huge
belted pads. She used to curse them and I was always mystified by this big
white diaper thing that came with an elastic belt. Today's pad technology
is somewhat improved and women in 1995 don't have to wear a harness every
time they have their period. Now we have Dry-Weave, Wings and Sure Fit.
But it's not just the comfort and design of pads that has changed. Today,
in a somewhat roundabout way, feminine hygiene has come out in the open.
[As a teacher, I have seen some really interesting developments in this ‘openness’. In a recent ‘personal narrative’ unit with middle school students, a student wrote an amazing piece on the first time she got her period. When I praised her for taking such a risk, she didn’t see it as a big deal. I have had current and former students speak openly in front of me (a male teacher and occasionally in front of male students about having their period. This seems to vary tremendously based in local and school culture. A former student who came to visit mentioned that she was shocked at the stony silence of students in her new high school when she mentioned having her period. It was clearly NOT a subject raised publicly.
At the same time that my current school is fairly open, it’s not all good. The week before our yearly 3 day field trip, I always talk to all the girls about the fact that there is a good chance that one of them will get her period on the trip, perhaps for the first time. Remember, this is middle school. I reassure them, however, that each teacher will have a supply of pads just in case. Their reaction, though hilarious to watch, make me feel sad, too. Some of them can’t handle the mention of ‘periods’ or pads. This year, the night before the trip, I went to buy said supply of pads at the local grocery store. A bunch of students buying snacks for the trip saw me and came up to say hello. When they saw what was in my cart, about 10 packs of pads, several of them blanched and were speechless. Again, funny but sad.
Similarly, the other teachers I work with are often VERY uncomfortable having the same talk with their students. Some have said they don’t want to raise the issue with their students. I know from my students that quite a few girls on the trip only know about the availability of pads because they told them about it after hearing it from me.]
Advertising has probably been one of the major factors in this development
as manufacturers compete in every media for women's hard earned tampon and
pad budget. Even the environmental impact of menstruation is debated these
days. Recently while listening to one such discussion regarding the
advantages and disadvantages of reusable versus disposable pads a friend
casually remarked that I "should try wearing one of these things." Thus an
experiment was born.
For the next three days, I tried different brands of feminine hygiene
products, or sanitary napkins. Now I know that the average period is longer
than three days and that I could never really know what it felt like to
have a period, but I could find out what it was like to wear pads for a
while, just to experience one aspect of what women so rightfully complain
about when it's their time of the month. For reasons of anatomy tampons
were out, but with the help of my friend I chose Always Long for moderate
to heavy flow, Always Regular Maxi and Lightdays Contour panty liners.
From the very first moment this was to be an experience full of surprises.
You see these commercials all your life showing these great Wings that lock
your pad in place. It seems easy, but just what place? Especially when
you have a penis, how do you know where to put the thing? And Wings and
boxers just simply don't mix. For these things to be at all effective
you've got to wear tight underwear, and loose pants or shorts. At least
for me white was still all right because, as you know, it wasn't really my
time. No chance of those embarrassing blue leaks.
Now the people who invented Always Long knew what they were doing when they chose the name. When I unwrapped it I was quite literally overwhelmed. It
was like that joke about men with big penises where they say "he's seven
inches" and they measure off from their hand to their elbow. Talk about a gift for
understatement.
These things are more like diapers than pads. You get the eerie feeling
that you're riding some sort of super absorbent flying carpet when you wear
one. When I finally got mine on it stretched all the way from my scrotum
and half way up my bum.
Now I didn't fly but I did ride my bike around town. The monster between
my legs (and I sure don't mean my penis) seemed to be growing, and it felt
like I was sitting on a booster chair. Unfortunately, my pad experiment
coincided with a late Toronto Hydro utility bill which had to be paid in
person. I locked up my bike and went straight to the office without
stopping to adjust my pad in the bathroom. Big mistake.
Walking through the lobby I seriously could not shake the feeling that
everyone was staring at me. I felt like I had a load of poop in my pants
and I was sure that the crinkly sound of the pad was echoing to the
farthest reaches of the office. When my friend suggested wearing pads I
thought about how it could be embarrassing, but it was nothing like this.
This is probably how they wanted Hester Prynne to feel with that scarlet
letter A. I just imagined the whispers after I paid at the counter: "Did
that man shit himself or is he wearing a pad?" As I walked away from the
counter I had to fight the urge to bolt out the door.
At work I found myself sitting down a lot to avoid the possibility of
people looking at me and, while seated, I almost forgot about the thing
strapped to my underwear. But as soon as I stood up that crinkly sound
would bring me back to reality. The children I work with could be
extremely observant and tended to zero in on anything out of the ordinary.
A zit could be a topic of conversation for a whole afternoon so I was
dreading the mere idea of them realizing I was wearing a pad. What would
happen if they went home to mom and said, "James was wearing a pad today."
I envisioned being branded a social deviant by some overreacting parents
and banned from ever working with children again.
[For our end of the year trip, we went to a water park for a few hours. When discussing it with students, a girl asked, “What if we can’t swim because we have our periods?”
Another girls immediately responded, “Just wear a tampon.”
So I was incredibly proud in that moment. I was proud of the girls who discussed it openly in a room with boys. I was proud of the boys for having grown up enough this year that they did not groan, moan, roll their eyes. I was proud of them all for seeing it as normal part of life. When I mentioned it to a colleague, however, s/he was surprised that I would have the discussion in class and not ask the student who asked to talk to me privately. Sigh.
Oh, by the way, my response to the original question was, “No one is going to make you swim, but yes M______ is right, you can always wear a tampon if you want to.”]
For women there is a very real possibility of leakage (and not that blue
stuff). For me there was just a silly fear that someone would think my ass
looked puffy. Leaking can be embarrassing but what comes after can be
worse. I remember in Grade 7 this girl named Melissa got her period and
some blood leaked on her skirt. She was utterly humiliated and from then
on people would remember her as "the girl who leaked." I can just imagine
how she dreaded it ever happening again. I think all the other girls
shared her fear, though they still enjoyed talking about Melissa, "the girl
who leaked.”
[This still happens. I haven’t had it happen in my classroom, but I have had students tell me that there were ‘early adopters’ who got their periods in Grade 5 and were unprepared. Their peers remember.]
Sleeping was uncomfortable but uneventful. When I woke up the next day I
made the big switch to Always Regular Maxi which were a much more
manageable size. I had already gotten better at putting them in and the
little pink envelopes made disposal very discreet. It really wasn't fair
to wear a dry pad for 72 hours when that rarely happens with women, so to
simulate the feeling of walking around with a damp pad all day long I
decided to wet my Maxi every hour. That blue liquid that women menstruate
in all the T.V. commercials was hard to find so I had to use water. It
generally absorbed quickly and evenly but occasionally ran down my leg.
Unlike blood, it wasn't sticky.
Being damp quickly got on my nerves though. Like putting on a wet bathing
suit or wearing really nice clothes on a humid day, I just felt constantly
uncomfortable. My crotch never seemed to be completely dry. At times I
needed to reach down my pants and adjust things or scratch but you can't do
that. A woman (and least of all me) cannot get fed up and say, "This pad
is driving me nuts, I've got to move it." People definitely do not want to
hear this sort of thing. And you have to ask yourself why.
Every media carries ads for pads and tampons so the concept of menstruation
is out there for everyone to see. But if we take a look, what do we see?
Instead of blood we see this innocuous blue stuff that looks like the water
in the toilet bowls of people who are really uptight about potentially offensive odours. In the ads half the time there's a woman in white paranoid about leaking in public. Whatever the brand, the message is: "Choose us and no one will have to know that you menstruate.”
[This seems to have changed somewhat. Advertisements for menstrual products seem to be a bit more upfront than before, but I have to say that living overseas, I don’t get full exposure to advertising.]
For Day 3 of my experiment, I made the leap to Lightdays. Now this was
comfort! It really is the closest thing to wearing nothing at all.
Unfortunately, they aren't very absorbent and when you're dealing with
blood and not the occasional dose of water I'm sure this is a big drawback.
But as far as the comfort of having something between ones legs, Lightdays
are about as unobtrusive as you can get. They stick to your underwear,
hopefully do what they are supposed to and you don't even really notice
them.
And so it went. Wearing pads was in some ways far worse than I expected
and in some ways easier. In terms of the actual sensation of wearing a
pad, at times I almost forgot that I even had one on (except for those huge
long ones). What never ever went away was the idea that someone might
notice either the lumpiness in my underwear, hear the crinkly noise, or,
worst possible outcome, the water I was dosing my pad with would leak and
someone would see a huge wet spot in my pants. And this paranoia was a
constant sensation.
This must be one of the worst parts of menstruation. It's not enough to
have to try and deal with cramping and bloating; advertisers seem to want
to make women afraid to stand up. Our society tries to make women paranoid
about their periods. Witness all the commercials about leaking in a white
skirt. Menstruation is so bad they have to use some mysterious blue liquid
that looks like a melted popsicle to simulate blood.
And this is where the true power of the taboo over menstruation comes into
play. Not only are women supposed to worry about leakage twenty four hours
a day, somehow they must prevent it while keeping it hidden because supposedly no one should know about this awful secret. If you're a woman you're not supposed to whip out a tampon in the middle of the office. It's somehow better to hide them. They've even invented those neat little envelopes so no one has to look at a pad with blood on it in the garbage.
What men should also remember, besides the fact that pads are
uncomfortable, is that feminine hygiene products are expensive. My supply
of pads, for example, broke down as follows: $2.99 for 24 Lightdays; $3.99
for 16 of the Always Regular; and $4.59 for 20 Always Long. According to
my sources, you use up about a box of tampons and a box of pads each
period. The Longs and the Maxis would last for one average period and the
Lightdays would last for up to three periods. That comes out to about
$10.00 minimum per month, plus pain killers and anything else that women
need during menstruation.
[These are 1994 prices. I don’t know what they would be in North America now. With the ubiquity of places like Costco, though, you can buy family sized packages that might last until menopause.
Most importantly on the issue of price, @CDNMenstruators has successfully campaigned to remove the tax on these essential products.]
One fine day, women will hopefully win the right to free or subsidized
tampons and pads. A lot of people may balk at such a proposal but before
you do, remember that there is no single product that men have to buy
(besides toilet paper). Women need tampons and/or pads and this requires
that they spend a significant amount of money, especially if you add it up
over the course of a lifetime.
Until then, I'll settle for the day when all women can pull out their pad
or tampon in the middle of a crowded room and stride nonchalantly to the
washroom to change it. That day will indeed be a time for rejoicing.
No comments:
Post a Comment