How To Steal From Women
by Kerri Provost

Karen Houppert, in her book The Curse: Confronting the Last Unmentionable Taboo: Menstruation, writes that the average menstruating woman uses, "five tampons a day, five days a month, for 38 menstruating years. That's 11,400 tampons in a lifetime" (22). More accurately, the average woman is the victim of a legal scam. Tampons and sanitary napkins are not necessary to one's vitality as food and water are, yet sales figures indicate otherwise.

These manufactured disposable products have only been available during the past hundred years. Even so, women have been conditioned to depend on and trust these relatively new corporate menstrual products. Why is it that women would place an object in their vaginas that they would not stick in their mouths? According to Janet Lee and Jennifer Sasser-Coen, authors of Blood Stories: Menarche and the Politics of the Female Body in Contemporary U.S. Society, this mindless consumerism is made possible through corporate-funded education.

Of adolescent females, they write, "Many women received little books and pamphlets that were supposed to explain menstrual mysteries. Often this literature was made by menstrual product companies such as Kotex, Modess or Tampax, and these product names were used interchangeably with menstrual supplies generally" (66).

Such pamphlets lack objective information about menstrual product choices, as they fail to mention alternatives to tampons and pads: washable cloth pads, natural sea sponges, reusable menstrual cups, diaphragms, or using nothing at all. This omission is not because of health standards or availability as vulpine "feminine hygiene" companies claim.

Instead, it is due to their own interests. Promoting sustainable alternatives would cause tampon and pad manufacturers to lose money. These pamphlets continue to be distributed in public schools