How everyone can shift this culture.
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For many people, their first official step into maturity came the day they started bleeding, which most often meant, the day they started using tampons. Menstrual cups were yet to become accessible and pads felt like a wet, bulky nappy had been wedged between your legs.
Shame was (and still is) a given when this day arrived. Menstruation is treated like a problem to be band-aided instead of a cyclical process to be understood and celebrated. And it is as if we still don’t understand that bleeding from the vagina every 28 days is a normal part of existence. It’s certainly not something to ‘plug-up’ and hide – and there are major financial, physical and environmental benefits when we stop doing so.
“The average Australian woman uses approximately 10,000 single-use menstrual hygiene products in her lifetime,” Lottie Dalziel, health journalist and founder of Banish tells Channel Void. “On a global scale this equates to around 200,000 tonnes of landfill annually, but we aren’t exactly sure of the true cost of this, as scientists estimate that it takes between 300-400 years for one product to break down.”
Most tampon users have never been educated on environmentally-conscious ways to dispose of their products (cheers, school sex-ed class). And given our shame-laden hide-the-evidence culture, and that many bathrooms in private dwellings and public spaces don’t offer sanitary bins, much of this waste ends up flushed down the toilet. Little wonder that microplastics from tampons, tampon strings, applicators and packaging make up a disproportionately high amount of ocean pollution. In fact, on average, litter pickers record six pieces of period waste for every 100m stretch of beach.
This lack of education and pride in bodily function has devastating effects on our collective conscience and the environment. The very least everyone can do to begin addressing this situation is talk more about reusable alternatives like period discs and underwear, such as ModiBodi, and start suggesting it as an option to anyone who you know who gets their period, even if you don’t.
“By switching to a more reusable option like period underwear that’s specifically made to support women throughout their menstrual cycle, menstruating people are not only helping the planet by cutting down on single-use plastic, they’re helping their bodies too,” Lottie explains.
RELATED: Is it time to start celebrating menstruation?
Out of all the menstrual products on the market, tampons are a particularly contentious issue when it comes to feminine health. The vaginal canal is one of the most permeable parts of the body, and although the TGA states tampons are perfectly safe, they can contain harmful chemicals (like bleach and chlorine) that can be absorbed into the bloodstream of the wearer.
In addition, the majority of overseas cotton crops are sprayed with glyphosate, one of the primary ingredients in Round-up; a powerful herbicide used to kill weeds. According to the World Health Organisation, chronic exposure to glyphosate (say, using multiple tampons per day for a week of every month of a woman’s reproductive lifetime), may increase the risk of cancer. It can also cause oxidative stress, metabolic changes, and disrupt the endocrine system. But the worst part? It’s long-term effects in humans aren’t actually known.
Emerging studies on this topic (thank you Zach Bush, our king) have only heralded the push to use alternative period products. Which, along with being significantly better for your health and the planet, also benefit your bank account.
Research has found that menstruating people spend on average $19.54 each month on sanitary items, not including birth control or hygiene costs. This totals $9379.73 over the course of 40 years. This is moderately concerning, considering 60 percent of us admit to having to budget in order to afford these items, while 79 percent have made sacrifices or gone without in the past. Yes free-bleeding = hot Earth goddess vibe, but not so much when it’s involuntary.
As a no-brainer alternative to disposables all together, period underwear directly challenges the culture of discarding our periods from thought. One pair of period underwear replaces all of your daily tampon and pad usage and waste, with little to no change required from your daily routine other than putting a different pair of underwear on. The outright cost of buying enough period underwear to replace your weekly disposable usage is around $100 (3-5 pairs will have you covered), but after six months, this spend proves itself to be a great investment. These products are built to last with moisture wicking, odour protection and absorbent layers for even the heaviest of flows. They are also safe to be thrown in with your normal washing.
Anecdotally, many people who transition to period underwear report less period pain or cramping from the lack of a foreign object inside their body, alongside less irritation, pH imbalance and pain caused by repeated friction. What’s more, integrating period underwear into one’s cycle means zero risk of breaking sleep in the middle of the night due to thy personal bloodbath (and the mattress cleaning this entails.) More rest, less intervention time and physical pain resulting in reduced stress levels and more energy to do the things that actually bring joy and expansion.
For some, trying period underwear or mindfully free-bleeding (bleeding without a period product) can be very confronting at first. As women, being able to feel when we are bleeding, how much we are bleeding, and being fully present with the consistency and colour of what is coming out of us is exactly the kind of contact with our bodily functions that we have been conditioned to avoid. Yet, the menstrual cycle is a crystalline and invaluable window into one’s present state of wellbeing. Re-educating bleeding and non-bleeding people to honour and understand the menstrual cycle might just have the power to shift our whole experience of being alive, gender void.
RELATED: Getting to know the vulva
