Lunapads

Further to my “this is harder than it looks” entry a few weeks ago that covered some of the stresses and strains of floating the Lunapads boat, I’d like to fill in the rest of the story: why I love it. Where to start? I love our work here because it matters to us - this in & of itself feels like a kind of luxury. We get to be creative and political and close to some very intimate aspects of our customers’ lives. The freedom for me personally is incredible - I get up and have the choice of either going to the office or working from home, taking Genevieve with me if I like - how many people have this kind of flexibility? At work I find a group of amazing women who are completely committed to what we do, do fantastic work, and are more than happy to lend a hand with whatever small people happen to be around. It makes me wonder what work was like prior to the industrial revolution - women have always had kids and always worked after all, so I’m guessing that a lot of their enterprises were small, community-based, and involved having their kids running around - maybe kind of like this?

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I am currently living in the northeast of Brazil, in the third largest city of the country, which nevertheless ranks first in terms of poverty and unemployment. Women are frequently the sole earners in a lot of poor households, since it is easier for them to get a job, normally as domestic servants. Working conditions can vary, some women get a salary (minimum wage, which is still not enough to cover all their family’s expenses), free meals while at work and a decent treatment from their bosses. Others are not so fortunate. Stories about sexual harassment from male employers are common, and quite often the victims of this inappropriate behaviour are forced out of their job and accused of “trying to steal” a family man. Domestic and sexual violence is also very common, and only just recently the law was changed so that a man convicted of beating a woman now has to go to jail instead of having to pay a fine. But what does all this have to do with Lunapads?

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I am a Lunapads user for about 3 years now. I guess if you thought there was a certain look to a cloth pad user, I would break the mold. I am a stay-at-home mom to 2 kids, minivan driving, totally non-hippie looking woman who enjoys all kinds of active and fun sports and really enjoys shopping!! At the time I made the switch, I was a tampon only gal and the thought of pads invoked visions of high school nightmares of crinkling, leaking and wet, smelly diaper-feeling pads. But the tampons (organic cotton) were really causing a lot of problems for me——constant yeast infections, terrible cramps, awful dryness and ovulation pain so bad I could not get off the couch a full week after my period ended!! I first heard about cloth pads from a friend probably a year earlier and was horrified—-I thought it was such a ridiculous and gross idea! But with all my problems I was getting worried, and when I typed in a search about tampons being bad for your body on the internet, cloth pads came up. In fact, at the time, Lunapads was one of the first companies that came up. So I read the whole website and all the testimonials, but it was really the awesome colors and prints that sold me. I ordered a couple of sets of maxis and minis, and well, the rest is history.

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