Tampax- Use your period for good

[underpants]

http://www.protectingfutures.com/?tampax

HOW TO HELP CHANGE SOMEONE'S LIFE
For some girls in Southern Africa, getting their period means missing school for several days each month.

That's because they don't have access to something many of us take for granted: feminine protection.

Helping girls stay in school is critical. An education gives them a future. It helps build better lives - not just for them, but for their families and their communities.

This website will give you more information on what Tampax and Always are doing to help. More importantly, it will show you how you can get involved and truly help make a difference.

However, there are small steps each of us can take to help change things.

Your purchase of Tampax or Always helps us donate $1.4 million through 2008 to the United Nations Association's HERO campaign.

[yasmina27]

1. Wow, thanks! n/t

[DesertRat]

2. It sounds like a great program.

:kick:

[xmas74]

3. Pass this link on to any teenage girls

who would like to volunteer. They have info on the site for a youth ambassador program in conjunction with this program and it sounds like a great one.

[KittyWampus]

4. diva cups would be much more feasible economically.

[NashVegas]

5. Agreed

../

[spotbird]

8. I was unfamiliar with this method

but after I looked at it I wondered if it doesn't carry sanitary challenges in an area without methods for thorough cleaning methods.

[TahitiNut]

9. Ecologically and health-wise as well, imho.

But what do I know? I'm merely a male. :shrug:

[toadzilla]

17. yes, send them diva cups!

[spotbird]

6. Shouldn't sustainable solutions

be pursued first?

[tblue37]

18. Someone here on DU recently posted a method for making one's own reusable

sanitary pads.

I am glad that I am no longer in thrall to female sanitary products, though. I have seen many TV shows where a female character desperately laments menopause. The Michael Learned character (the mom) on Little House on the Prairie found out she was going through early menopause when she was at first thrilled because she thought her missed periods meant she was pregnant again. She mourned her lost fertility for the entire episode. Of course, that makes some sense because during that time period a woman's fertility was valuable, rather than something that had to be guarded against and circumvented with birth control methods.

When the Julia Sugarbaker character on Designing Women realized she was going through menopause, she mourned, too, saying, "I'm not ready yet to stop being a woman." That line has stuck with me all these years as one of the most offensive things I have ever heard on TV. In less enlightened times, of course, fertility was what defined a woman's value, but this program was popular in the 1980s or 1990s (I forget which), and it was supposed to represent, to some degree at least, feminist values. In fact, Julia Sugarbaker was the mouthpiece for feminist values on the show!

I suspect those episodes on those shows were written by men. I do know that some women have been upset about going through menopause, but most of the women I know have cheered their freedom from female hygiene products and from the risk of embarrassing accidents--not to mention the freedom to enjoy sex without worrying about getting pregnant.

[TahitiNut]

7. Toxic shock and non-recyclable waste is all Africa needs.

Send the Diva cups. :shrug:

[spotbird]

10. How are they cleaned well?

In an unfavorable environment?

It sounds like a good idea, but if they can't be sanitized letting nature take it's course seems preferable.

[toadzilla]

19. just a little soap and water is all they need.

its not difficult at all to keep them clean.

[Wiley50]

11. ? n/t

[Breeze54]

12. "Oh gheeze..here we go again!"

[rAVES]

13. Is this an ad or a charity?

[Celebration]

14. "underpants" is posting this?

:rofl:

[SoCalDem]

22. Indeed.. It's a bloody outrage,I tell ya

:)

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

15. That's a concerning situation for those girls. Yet, showering them in tampons or sanitary pads

doesn't seem like the most elegant solution.

This seems like a time our Western sensibilities and products would run counter to what some of the ingrained issues might be.

Is there some sort of cultural view that dictates the girls stay home during that time?

Education of the girls and, especially of the adults around them, seems like the first imperative.

There's got to be a more healthful and ecological way to help with this scenario.

MKJ

[Annces]

16. This seems like a joke

Women have been able to make their own "pads" out of natural materials, or cloth for forever. They don't need manufactured pieces.

[LisaL]

20. It also puzzles me as to why somebody would miss school

unless they have a manufactured product.

[lynnertic]

26. Think about it for a little while, it may become clear to you.

[GliderGuider]

21. Arrgh! This is an ad!

(FYI, I'm GG's partner, someone who, *sigh* still needs "feminine protection" even though my baby-making days are long gone)

I have a lovely stash of handmade, flannel pads. I use them for my period and for occasional urinary incontinence.
I only use manufactured pads and tampons when I'm travelling. Yes, I use my cloth pads even at work.

I've long felt that the way these things were normalized and then made into necessities was yet another corporate hook into our pocketbooks and our lives. I don't like being made dependent on a multinational corporation for decades for a simple requirement of womanhood.

Your money would amount to much more if you take the same amount you'd spend on pads and tampons every month and make regular donations to UNFEM or the Stephen Lewis Foundation.

[King Coal]

28. I used to use Depends, but I gave them up.

I just couldn't get used to crapping in my pants.

[LaurenG]

23. You are a brave man Underpants...

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[Breeze54]

24. Or a masochist.

:shrug:

[lynnertic]

25. do you know what's in a tampax?

I wouldn't send it to a girl with no health insurance

http://www.seventhgen.com/making_difference/newsletter_article.php?article=446&issue=68
A Periodic Problem: It’s Time to Talk About the Trouble With Tampons

In addition to dioxin-contaminated rayon and pesticide-soaked cotton, tampons contain any number of other ingredients with which healthy women shouldn’t get intimate. These include absorbency enhancers, unnecessary synthetic deodorants, and artificial fragrances. Clearly, calling conventional tampons a form of feminine protection is a bit of a misnomer.

Remember what we've got is a bunch of porous mucus membranes down there, and American women are suffering an epidemic of uterine cysts. Even if you don't want children now, remember that losing your natural fertility will cost you dearly if you want to procreate in the future.

:rant:

[countryjake]

27. Does Procter & Gamble think that women need plastic & paper polluting...

their country? Do they think that women of the world just sat around and bled all over everything before this wonderful corporation began making money off menstruation?

It's called "going on the rag" for a reason...good cotton rags is what we used to make our "protection" out of and to this day it is still probably the most hygienic and healthy way for a woman (or girl) to effectively handle her monthly period, especially if staying clean or water is in short supply. Sock tops, shirt sleeves, worn out dish towels can all be recycled very nicely into good supplies of pads, with a needle and thread and a little ingenuity.

Sorry, as a former resident of Cinti, I don't see Procter & Gamble ever doing anything helpful for anyone in any foreign nation and this sounds like unnecessary pollution, to me.

Let the UN send bolts of nice heavy cotton with directions, needles, and thread, if they really care about the girls of South Africa, and send the bill to P&G!