I have to say, I really have some very keen friends within my Facebook network. For instance, Modupe Liston, a Milwaukee activist, posted a very poignant thought on her wall, “How come there is not an organized women’s movement against the absurdity of high prices for feminine hygiene products such as tampons and pads?”

Excellent observation.

Always Ultra Thin Overnights with Flexi-wings has been my staple product since they were invented. I’ve never been a tampon girl as I have developed an abnormal fear of Toxic Shock Syndrome, thanks in part to my reading of the insert from a pack of tampons as a child (long story). Yet over the last couple of years, I too have noticed that my beloved sanitary napkins has begun to slowly creep up in price.  It’s not like an item that I can go without – unless I plan on taking up residency inside a menstruating hut, like the Dogon women of West Mali, for one week out of a month. Actually, that wouldn’t be a bad idea if the hut came with cable television and dark chocolate chip cookies. But alas, I don’t own a hut but I do have bills, which means that my hemorrhaging A$$ has to get up and go to work.

Anyway, the average cost for my necessity ranges between $7 to $9, depending upon the size of the package I get. Since I tend to flow on the heavy side, I go through about four to five of those suckers a day, which means that I use about a pack of around 36 in a month’s span.  Based upon my rough estimations, my Aunt Flow costs me about $84 dollars a year, which means that I have paid thus far around $1260 since I was 15. And by the time I’m relieved of my womanly duty (i.e. menopause), I will have spent over $3000, just on sanitary napkins. Of course, this cost does not include inflation. Nor does it include the cost of party-liners, PMS relief, chocolate chip cookies and Victoria’s Secret panties that my aunt ruined.  If we factor in these additional expenditures, we are probably looking at an additional $5000 over a lifetime. That is almost $10,000 of my hard earned money, which I have no say-son in.

The fact is that owning a vagina is pretty costly; from the pap smears, to infections, to the birth control, to actually giving birth, to menopause, woman must absorb certain costs that are exclusively spent on maintaining our natural, biological function. And who get’s rich off of this? Well since it is the elite that runs things and majority of the 1 percent are not women, let’s just say it’s men.  And in a lot of ways, they have us by the…ahem…lady parts.

Source: DIYtrade.com

First it was mold inside of a tampon, now it’s cocaine?

A Salt Lake City woman found an interesting surprise after she purchased a sealed box of sanitary supplies from a local store over the weekend. After opening the box, Cindy Davidson immediately suspected some of the applicators had been tampered with, and after noticing a powdery substance inside she called the police. HazMat investigators came out to determine just what the powder was—like if it was anthrax— but in the end it was (just?) cocaine.

“It appears to be a highly sophisticated way of attempting to smuggle or get drugs though to some place or another,” a police detective told KSL.

The store has since stopped selling the particular brand of contaminated tampons, although they haven’t released that information to the public. Investigators are also trying to figure out exactly where the drugs came from and just how elaborate of a drug scheme this singular box could be apart of. Meanwhile Cindy is still a little shocked at the situation but thankful the substance was just drugs and not a terrorist attack.

“I really couldn’t wrap my head around it,” she said. “I was just thinking it was crazy. I couldn’t believe it had happened. It was just crazy to me.”

Thank God she noticed the tampered applicators before putting them to use.

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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Source: The Frisky

When I was a little girl, and really still to this day, I had an irrational fear about small foreign objects getting stuck in my vadge. (Remember, we can’t say use the technical word on this site…) If I was sitting in the grass, I couldn’t be there for too long because I’d ultimately start worrying that an ant would some how find it’s way through my clothes, and into my love below, never to be retrieved again.

Now, with recent news of mold found on Kotex tampons, I’m starting to believe that that fear wasn’t so irrational after all. The image above is what Danielle Parr discovered when she went to insert a Kotex tampon. Can you imagine mold in your sweet spot, eventually traveling into your blood stream?!? It’s nothing short of terrifying. But you know what’s more terrifying than mold in your va-jay-jay? Kotex pretending like mold in your va-jay-jay is no big deal.

When Parr contacted Kotex to complain about the mold on a tampon this is what they had to say.

We understand how distressing it can be to find mold on a product that is used for personal hygiene and apologize for your concern. In instances where it has been found, we conducted tests on the product involved and have found the mold to be a common environmental species that carries no health risk. The vegetative mold is similar in nature to mold on vegetables or in baked goods.

Umm… wtf?!? That’s just not good enough. Really, who would knowingly eat a moldy vegetable or piece of bread more less insert said mold into your vadge? People must not understand the nature of mold. It thrives in dark, moist, warm environments. Sound familiar? I’m not telling you what to do with your body; but I can’t rock with Kotex. They were never my brand of choice anyway. But in all seriousness, if they’re having problems like this, they might not be the only ones. Be sure to thoroughly check out all of your feminine hygiene products before you end up hurting yourself.

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