Lunapads

How does one make sure girls are getting involded in the action sports that have typically been left to the ‘boyz’? You start your own community to get women involved! Enter Bettygohard, the action sports company focused on inspiring women. Created by Natasha Lockey aka Betty, a lover of action sports who was frustrated at never seeing Girls in Action and wanted to see more girls out there pushing their limits and inspiring others to do the same! She wanted to create a safe space where women could play hard and get the suport they needed to get involved.

She started out with a series of women’s weekly shuttle-assisted rides followed with appetizers (wine, cheese & chocolate…the way to a girls heart.) This mountain biking series was created after speaking with a number of women who wanted to get out on their bikes but lacked confidence and riding partners of a similar level. She has been overwhelmed with the positive response for the six week riding series, and is developing other programs to accommodate the demand.

While inspiring women to get outdoors, she also decided to make a point of educating women on how to respect their bodies. She contacted us here at Lunapads to make a donation so we sent along a Mini Pantyliner for each rider in the summer series - they were a hit! Wearing cloth pads while riding a bike is far more comfortable and healthier for you.

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We are often asked to contribute samples and information to various women’s and environmental groups. The Younger Women’s Task Force is a great example. Pictured here are participants in the YWTF’s recent national leadership conference in Washington DC, holding the Lunapads gift packs we donated.

The YWTF is a project of the National Council of Women’s Organizations in the USA. It is a nationwide, diverse and inclusive grassroots movement dedicated to organizing younger women and their allies to take action on issues that matter most to them. By and for younger women, YWTF works both within and beyond the women’s movement, engaging all who are invested in advancing the rights of younger women. Through its twelve chapters across the USA, YWTF members are working to:
- Provide a stronger voice in the policy making process for women in their 20’s and 30’s
- Increase the impact of younger women activists through the articulation of, and collaboration on, a common agenda
- Create a culture of inclusion where decision-making and power are practiced collectively, and members from diverse backgrounds participate in all levels of YWTF
- Define and develop the next generation of women leaders
- Create a local and national network for peer mentoring, networking and sharing resources
Sounds like our kind of thing!

As if I’m not busy enough working full-time, trying to maintain a social life, and balancing other weekly commitments, I’ve recently started volunteering every Sunday afternoon. I’m working for Battered Women’s Support Services, this amazing feminist organization which “provides counselling and advocacy for women survivors of violence in relationships, childhood sexual abuse and adult sexual assault” as well as for survivors of foster care and the residential school system. They also provide education and training on violence against women to high school students and other groups, and offer various services for women survivors of violence including legal advocacy, support groups, a crisis line, referrals, as well as support and outreach specific to First Nations women.

And it doesn`t stop there. They also have a really fabulous thrift store called My Sister’s Closet – where I volunteer – that provides redeemable store vouchers and hampers of household goods to women who are leaving violent situations. The store gives all its revenue to BWSS, providing some much-needed funding for the organization (especially since the BC Liberal government recently cut all funding from women’s organizations…). What is especially amazing though, I think, is that My Sister`s Closet makes a point of only selling high quality, stylish, and seriously hip clothes at affordable prices. The women who run the organization believe that women who are in dire financial situations or those who face economic barriers (as a result of a various factors such as chronic poverty, abuse, violence, ethnicity, etc.) should still have the option of buying stylish and high quality clothes. I couldn`t agree more!

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I have many reasons for praising and choosing to switch from disposable pads to Lunapads! First and foremost is my health. I was HORRIFIED when I learned about the nasty chemicals inside of disposable pads - and the fact that my poor vagina was the most absorbant part of my body. YIKES!!!

My other reason was activity and comfort. I live on a farm in Scotland where I spend a good amount of time wrestling sheep and herding cattle and all manner of physical work. Having my period has always been a problem because the disposable maxi pads are so useless! They roll up and become narrow so everything leaks. They tear apart. And they chafe in places that shouldn’t be chafed! This is not very helpful when you have several miles to walk behind a herd of cattle! Then, trying to sleep at night with a hard plastic-y sticky pad poking me here and there made my period misery from sun up to sun down!

This may sound like a strange reason but I also changed over to Lunapads because of sanitation reasons. I’ll get to that…

My last, but definately not least, reason for choosing Lunapads is the Earth. Disposable maxi pads may be small but a lot of small things add up and become very big! As a farmer I am very aware of the importance of responsible stewardship of the Earth!

I discovered Lunapads on the internet, but at first the price put me off. Then I did a bit of calculating and realized that Lunapads would pay for themselves in several ways! So I bought one pad and liner for a trial run.

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Well I just finished a full period using only cloth. Here’s some things I found out.

1. Cloth is way more absorbent than the synthetic stuff. Period. I always would leak to the sides of the disposables, even the maxi ones or superabsorbent ones. They’d be full and sort of “wet” all over, even with a dry layer. The cloth feels much drier, and even if I bleed a lot, it stays in one spot, and doesn’t start leaking off to the sides. I may sometimes have to check my layering and change a pad because without a waterproof plastic layer it is more possible to bleed through (though the wings on the underside are another extra safety layer), but I didn’t run the risk of bleeding off the sides. Cloth is just far superior to whatever the disposables are made out of as far as that goes.

2. Cloth doesn’t move around. Unlike my constantly bunched up disposables. It’s right where I left it, and when I sit down I don’t need to worry like I used to that I might not be sitting “on the pad.” Same goes for sleeping. The blood won’t slip off the back of the pad or anything. It will go into the cloth first.

3. The sweaty smell is from the plastic, not from me. I smell kind of nice actually. I guess if I put a piece of plastic tape around my armpit and walked around all day, it would probably stink too. Duh.

4. Don’t buy a whole ton at once, because it’s really fun to shop for new prints. It’s almost certain that once you buy a lot from one place, Lunapads will post a new print that you love. Once you get a whole set, you feel guilty for buying beyond what you need. It’s like getting yourself a pretty pair of panties. You want to have the excuse.

5. It’s funny how a little thing like changing your pad can change your whole attitude toward your period. I never really thought of it as a “special time” or anything. Mostly just an annoyance. But suddenly, not being in the yucky disposables (but I didn’t realize how yucky they were before) and being in touch with your body makes you feel a lot different about the whole thing.

6. I realized how much the ads for the main companies annoy me. They manipulate women, femininity, and feminism to sell stuff. It’s either, “You have to hide everything,” “It’s delicate like a pretty flower on the box…(so here, put on a diaper),” or “You’re a woman on the go, and we’ve got you covered;” they all irritate me. Yes, I am a hard working woman on the go. And I do like pretty things. But you really haven’t done anything for me except sell me stuff while patronizing things that I care about, like feminism, in order to do so!

Peace out, Sara C.
Jerusalem, Israel

The style of this piece was inspired by an amazing female friend of mine, she sometimes writes in third person to tell a story of something that happened to her. It is a different style, and one that she (and now I) feel to be therapeutic. The context was inspired by my period, so I guess you could call it period prose.

My periods have decided to go a bit wacky on me since I ditched hormonal birth control a year and a half ago. My cycles have been haywire with as little as 26 days long, to more recently, 80 days long. It is that cycle that inspired this post. After starting my period in April after not having one since January, I was ecstatic and thrilled. I suppose that this story, being told as it is, is to not just come out and say, “Hey everyone, I am bleeding, isn’t that wonderful?” because I respect that not everyone cares, frankly. But I was happy enough to want to share my feelings in an allegory, I suppose, even if it was partly fictional…to get my meaning across to those it was intended to get across to, and to fly over the heads of others that it was unimportant to. The story has sensual references, but it is not intended to be erotic in any fashion, but more to emphasize the body, and femininity, and the natural process. And everything we are.

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I’ve always had a bit of a problem understanding the meaning of “feminism.” I spent the majority of my childhood coercing my male cousins into playing Barbies with me, having the Ken doll staying at home with the kids while the Mom, always a dark-haired barbie, went to work. I suppose that in some ways, this was a direct result of the fact that my father worked freelance, and so he always stayed home with me and was there to pick me up from school while my mother went to work. This instilled the fact that men and women are nearly equal from an early age, and I was surprised that most of my classmates were picked up by their mothers. While my father would carry me out to the classroom on rainy days, I’d see only mothers dropping their kids off at the curb, and I would wonder why their daddies didn’t carry them out as well. As I got older, I wondered why my father and uncle always did the cleaning and my mom and aunt cooked, and in other families, the mom did everything.

As I got into high school, I tended to shy away from the self-labeled feminists: they tended to open their own doors, but would not hold them open for the men, and felt insulted when a man tried to help them with their chair or coat, snapping at them that she could do it herself, whereas I felt appreciative of the help that I recieved from my male friends. Similarly, I never refused them a favor, and more often than not these favors came in the form of sewing a rip in a pair of jeans. I was perfectly capable of performing heavy manual labor (most times, in a skirt and barefoot), but I would not refuse if a guy offered to help me, or to simply take over.

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Feminism, to be honest, is a loaded word. It has so many connotations – and not all of them positive. Some would say that feminists are angry militant women who want to be treated, act, and even look like men; with the same one set of values. That is a stereotype, and nothing could be farther from the truth.

My style of feminism is very different from the stereotype. I celebrate being a woman and being feminine. I firmly believe myself to be worthy of just as much respect and value as any other human being.

As a woman, I respect my body, its processes, its unique abilities, and its limitations. I would not allow anyone – including myself to use my body for selfish pleasure. I respect my body’s natural rhythms and choose to better understand them and celebrate them rather than suppress them as if a disease. My monthly period is a sign that my ovaries are active. Other signs that we (my husband and I) chart on my cyclical Sympto-Thermal chart indicate that I ovulate, and have periods of fertility and infertility in my cycle. I have the awesome privilege as a fertile woman to be able to carry new life within me, and then nourish that child with milk uniquely tailored to his or her needs. I believe that my role as mother is one to be respected by our society – whether I choose to stay at home and raise and maybe even educate our children myself, or if I choose to leave our children in the care of someone we trust while I go to work.

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To really answer that question, I need to share with you some of my personal history.

When I was in high school, I was an athlete on the fencing team. Now, if you are new to the sport, allow me to tell you a bit about it so you can understand the impact of what happened to me. There are three different styles of fencing associated with the weapon: sabre, foil and epee. Sabre is fought by hitting the opponent with either the side or the point of the blade anywhere above the waist, including the head. Foil fencers use only the tip of their weapon to score points in a region covered by a stupid vest. And, epee is a bit of a free-for-all, hitting anywhere on the body, using just the tip of the weapon.

Traditionally (and at that time—the 1980s), women were primarily fencing foil, with the handful or two fencing epee. But it was the rare girl/woman who took on the sabre because it meant that she would be competing against men.

I enjoyed everything about the sport, even if it meant coming home with red, throbbing welts on my legs because some boys decided to hit me “off target” to teach me a lesson. But, my male teammates and the coach were supportive and kept at it with me because they believed that I could do it. I also spent weekends hauling my 20 lbs of equipment on the bus into New York City to learn from and compete with athletes from the New York Fencers Club (home of some Olympic fencers including medalist Peter Westbrook). However, I did know that I was an oddity because there weren’t many opportunities to compete against other women.

In my junior year, right after the fencing season started, one of our competing teams discovered that there was a girl on the sabre team. We were already one match into the season, and I had just earned my position on the varsity sabre squad. This team refused to let me fence their boys, except in a humiliating “exhibition” bout. I won that bout, and word spread that I could fence, but wasn’t going to be allowed to compete.

The state of New Jersey argued that since there was an “equivalent” girls’ team (they meant the girls’ foil team), that I should not be competing on the sabre team. I tried to educate the state officials on the differences between sabre and foil, but they turned a deaf ear to my pleas.

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I grew up surrounded by strong, intelligent women. And by men who loved and respected them. It’s hard to come out of that kind of upbringing without a profound sense that women are capable, worthy, autonomous human beings.

I remember a very telling exchange I had with my mother many years ago. I was quite young, probably in elementary school. I don’t remember much of the conversation, or how we got on the topic, but I do remember saying that I wouldn’t really have to worry about finding a good job when I grew up because I could rely on a man to find one, and to presumably support me and our family.

At which point my mother gently said something to the effect of, “Why couldn’t you have your own job and support yourself?”

I obviously don’t remember her exact words, but I never lost the lesson: I am smart. I am capable. I can support myself just as well as any man could support me. And I think it’s a testament to how well I learned that lesson that I absolutely balk at the thing I said all those years ago.

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