How tampons and pads became unsustainable and filled with plastic

“over the course of a lifetime, a single menstruator will use somewhere between 5 and 15 thousand pads and tampons, the vast majority of which will wind up in landfills as plastic waste.” ⤴️
“the reasons plastic has lodged itself so deep in the design in the first place are tangled in a web of culture, shame, science, and more.” ⤴️
“a symbol of female excess, a “humor” that needed to be expelled from the body in order to maintain balance and health. The blood itself was considered unhealthy—even poisonous.” ⤴️
“they had to be washed and dried—which meant they would be displayed publicly, a less-than-desirable situation in a culture that stigmatized menstruation.” ⤴️
“other menstruators choose to bleed freely throughout their periods, eschewing the traditional stigma that comes from visible evidence of this most basic of biological realities.” ⤴️
“(Disposables also meant that menstruators would have to stock up each month, locking them in to decades of purchases).” ⤴️
“Capitalizing on the Curse: The Business of Menstruation.” ⤴️
“An obsession with discretion was longstanding. In the 1920s, Johnson and Johnson printed slips in their magazine advertisements for their “Modess” brand sanitary napkins. Women would cut them out and hand them silently across the pharmacy counter, receiving a nearly unmarked box in return.” ⤴️
“Menstruators needed to be able to throw products in a bag and keep them clean, to carry them from desk to restroom, and then from restroom stall to waste container.” ⤴️
““I’m not denying that we need something to bleed on,” she says. “And at the same time, I want to acknowledge that we are fooling ourselves if we say promoting any product is going to fix the stigma. It’s not.”” ⤴️
“In Europe, most tampons are sold without applicators. In the U.S., there’s growing interest in alternatives: In a recent survey, almost 60 percent of the women questioned were considering a reusable product (about 20 percent were currently users).” ⤴️
“Women in the pre-20th century U.S. used a “bricolage” approach to managing it, repurposing all sorts of commonplace items into pad- or tampon-like objects, historian Susan Strasser explains. That meant leftover scraps of fabric, soft strips of bark, or whatever else was available and absorbent.” ⤴️
“Kotex were made with Cellucotton, a hyper-absorbent plant-based material that had been developed during World War I for use as medical bandaging. Nurses started to repurpose the material for menstrual pads, and the practice stuck.” ⤴️
“women and girls always have to bend to norms and standards of the workplace, to be hyperefficient at all times. You can’t let your body slow you down, is the message.”” ⤴️
“The appeal and ubiquity of disposables grew as more women entered the workforce. The products offered both convenience—they were readily available in many drugstores—and discretion—women wouldn’t have to worry about bringing used cloths from work to home. It also allowed menstruators to “pass,” hiding their bodily functions from those around them, letting work continue uninterrupted.” ⤴️
“By the late 1970s, designers realized they could make flexible plastic “wings” that would wrap around underwear and anchor a pad in place. And designers found ways to weave thin polyester fibers into the squishy part of the pad to wick fluid away into the absorbent cores, which were getting thinner as superabsorbent materials grew more sophisticated.” ⤴️
“The first recorded U.S. patent for tampons, from 1929, included a design for a telescoping cardboard applicator tube. Others suggested stainless steel or even glass. By the 1970s, plastics could be molded into smooth, thin, flexible rounded shapes—perfect, some designers thought, for tampon applicators.” ⤴️
“over the course of a lifetime, a single menstruator will use somewhere between 5 and 15 thousand pads and tampons, the vast majority of which will wind up in landfills as plastic waste.” ⤴️
“the reasons plastic has lodged itself so deep in the design in the first place are tangled in a web of culture, shame, science, and more.” ⤴️
“a symbol of female excess, a “humor” that needed to be expelled from the body in order to maintain balance and health. The blood itself was considered unhealthy—even poisonous.” ⤴️
“they had to be washed and dried—which meant they would be displayed publicly, a less-than-desirable situation in a culture that stigmatized menstruation.” ⤴️
“other menstruators choose to bleed freely throughout their periods, eschewing the traditional stigma that comes from visible evidence of this most basic of biological realities.” ⤴️
“(Disposables also meant that menstruators would have to stock up each month, locking them in to decades of purchases).” ⤴️
“Capitalizing on the Curse: The Business of Menstruation.” ⤴️
“An obsession with discretion was longstanding. In the 1920s, Johnson and Johnson printed slips in their magazine advertisements for their “Modess” brand sanitary napkins. Women would cut them out and hand them silently across the pharmacy counter, receiving a nearly unmarked box in return.” ⤴️
“Menstruators needed to be able to throw products in a bag and keep them clean, to carry them from desk to restroom, and then from restroom stall to waste container.” ⤴️
““I’m not denying that we need something to bleed on,” she says. “And at the same time, I want to acknowledge that we are fooling ourselves if we say promoting any product is going to fix the stigma. It’s not.”” ⤴️
“In Europe, most tampons are sold without applicators. In the U.S., there’s growing interest in alternatives: In a recent survey, almost 60 percent of the women questioned were considering a reusable product (about 20 percent were currently users).” ⤴️
“Women in the pre-20th century U.S. used a “bricolage” approach to managing it, repurposing all sorts of commonplace items into pad- or tampon-like objects, historian Susan Strasser explains. That meant leftover scraps of fabric, soft strips of bark, or whatever else was available and absorbent.” ⤴️
“Kotex were made with Cellucotton, a hyper-absorbent plant-based material that had been developed during World War I for use as medical bandaging. Nurses started to repurpose the material for menstrual pads, and the practice stuck.” ⤴️
“women and girls always have to bend to norms and standards of the workplace, to be hyperefficient at all times. You can’t let your body slow you down, is the message.”” ⤴️
“The appeal and ubiquity of disposables grew as more women entered the workforce. The products offered both convenience—they were readily available in many drugstores—and discretion—women wouldn’t have to worry about bringing used cloths from work to home. It also allowed menstruators to “pass,” hiding their bodily functions from those around them, letting work continue uninterrupted.” ⤴️
“By the late 1970s, designers realized they could make flexible plastic “wings” that would wrap around underwear and anchor a pad in place. And designers found ways to weave thin polyester fibers into the squishy part of the pad to wick fluid away into the absorbent cores, which were getting thinner as superabsorbent materials grew more sophisticated.” ⤴️
“The first recorded U.S. patent for tampons, from 1929, included a design for a telescoping cardboard applicator tube. Others suggested stainless steel or even glass. By the 1970s, plastics could be molded into smooth, thin, flexible rounded shapes—perfect, some designers thought, for tampon applicators.” ⤴️