The Business Of Our Periods: Why Are Feminine Products So Darn Expensive?

With more women leading physically active lifestyles and walking around with higher disposable incomes in their purse, this has meant new opportunities for the market to both maintain, if not grow their customer base in the future. Instead of focusing on the cost-focused hygiene products, something our generation was fond of, the market is transitioning towards convenient products, which can tack on higher prices for things like scents, extra absorbency and funky colors. Remember when Kotex dropped the U-brand? Those suckers on average cost more than the standard brand and all you really got was pads and tampons in hip colors. But of course, we were not buying them for the super absorbency or memory flex core, we were buying a lifestyle. And so goes capitalism.

One of the great things about the Affordable Healthcare Act, aka Obamacare, is that requires new insurance plans to fully cover women’s preventive care, which now will include free birth control, yearly wellness visits, breastfeeding counseling and equipment and sexually transmitted infections including HIV. What that means is that a woman’s reproductive health is almost on par with the menfolk, who’ve long benefited from not having their Viagra rejected by insurance companies.  However, the world still fails women. And if we are expected to go to school, to hold jobs or exist anywhere outside of a Dogon menstruation hut, than why should we be expected to pay for the necessities of feminine hygiene products?

If we were smart, we would do as my Facebook friend suggested, and take this on as the next wave of feminist agenda. Think about it; it would be just like the bra burning protest of the ’60’s but instead women would refuse to wear any type of feminine product including tampons and napkins. We can go around, bleeding through white pants and sitting on every seat we can find. Then as we unite as womankind, so will our cycles. And for one week out of every month, there will be literally be blood in the streets…

…Or perhaps we can always go the natural route. You know, using the cloth napkins, which are reusable, made with no harmful chemicals or dyes and lack the applicators, which are said to create their own havoc on the environment. There are a few sites, which offer an array of natural feminine products from the designer cloth pads to the menstruation cups to even crochet tampons. Of course, the upfront cost of those products range between $40 to an upwards of $120. And since I don’t have a washing machine or a dryer – or the extra time to spend hand-washing blood out of my reusable rags, I say we fight.  If not, then we will be forever beholden to a system, which likes to see our vaginas as mere vessels of profits.

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