Lunapads

We invite you to enter the latest contest at Pajama Mommy to win a Lunapads Intro Kit. What originally started as a blog, Pajama Mommy is an online community that is “a nice cozy spot on the web for mothers”. Pajama Mommy does book reviews, interviews, tips on blogging, and of course product reviews. When Pajama Mommy featured Lunapads as a product in the Going Green section on their site last month, we were thrilled and rewarded them with an Intro Kit to give away. To see the contest details and enter, visit their site. Good luck!

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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The New Yorker has a piece on their site right now called “Greener Postures: Hacking through the biodegradable, zero-carbon, ecochic overhype” which has my panties in a bit of a twist. I respect what they’re trying to do with the piece, namely: to analyze whether or not many “green” items on the current consumer market are actually helping the larger environmental cause. Take for example something like the Body Squeege (details here), which is a product intended to be used to remove water from your body after your bath/shower so that you use less of your towel, thereby reducing the amount of laundry you need to do. I tend to agree with the authors of the piece whose verdict on the product is: “The proliferation of absurdly specialized and redundant tools is not our idea of green.” Fair enough.

In their review of 12 products they also included washable menstrual pads (review here). They start by claiming that the garbage and waste impact of disposables isn’t that bad in the greater scheme of garbage. Fair enough perhaps, but if we though that way about everything then how do we hope to ever make an impact. Really, it was their final verdict that got me “A personal matter. But the cup thing kind of makes sense if you can get over the gross-out factor.” Yes, your menstrual products are a matter of personal taste, so too I would argue is a body squegee or choosing to buy soy fabrics (another product reviewed), but those items don’t get the “personal matter” treatment. Then comes the mention of the “gross-out factor” which is in my opinion just plain stupid and a perilously individualistic approach to the matter. The message really is: it’s ok to get away with not examining your use of disposable products in this case because, well “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” we all know this one is kind of gross. And I think it’s time we put those ideas to rest. I don’t expect everyone to become comfortable with using alternative menstrual products by any means, but I do expect those who care about the environment or their bodies to spend a bit of time actually looking at the issue and deciding how they feel about it before just writing it off as “too gross.” I know the piece is meant to be funny, but I guess after many years of working in this field I’m so used to seeing this kind of “humour” about women’s cycles and our bodies accepted as the norm.

Check out the latest review of Lunapads in “The Opinionated Parent”. Contributing writer Reesh talks about how she seamlessly incorporated Lunapads into her monthly routine while on the road travelling for theatre. Her story also goes to show the power of word of mouth and the impact of leading by example. Thanks Reesh, and all the best with your pregnancy!

The Opinionated Parent is also having a contest for a Lunapads Intro Kit. I’m sure all you gals reading this will have no trouble answering the question below. If you win, and already own a stash of Lunapads, pass your winnings on to a friend, and keep spreading the good word!

Want to win a Lunapads intro kit to try them yourself? Email theopinionatedparent@gmail.com with LUNAPADS in the subject line and the correct answer to the question “What are the names of the Lunapads’ owners’ 3 children?” Contest closes Friday 6/8/07 at midnight MST.

Feminine hygiene product commercials have really pissed me off as of late. I’m pretty sure I know why. It all started in my Women’s Studies discussion section when my students were comparing feminine hygiene ads with masculine hygiene ads. One pad magazine ad was talking about how the consumer would be ‘fresher’ because the pad came with a scented (re: bleached) strip and a freshening wipe (which is what I can only assume is exactly like a baby wipe). All of the feminine ads were essentially telling their female consumers to CLEAN IT UP. That their bodies were ‘unnatural’ in smell, hygiene, and appearance. Our bodies are not OK by themselves and these products are NECESSARY to improve this ‘unnatural’ state. On the other hand, the male hygiene advertisements all stressed that the man’s body was perfect and ‘naturally’ great smelling. The hygiene product was there only to ENHANCE the natural attributes that the man possesses. TAG body spray is the overdone version of this typical kind of men’s hygiene product advertising. I guess bottom line, it’s f*’d up that the message to women about our bodies is that we’re not acceptable or natural as we are. These hygiene products are deemed necessary for women, but NOT for men according to the media. Men’s bodies can only be ENHANCED with hygiene products. What does this tell us from a young age: Women = unnatural, smelly, dirty bodies; Men = natural, healthy normal bodies.

In The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler talks about the fact that women are taught from an early age to NEVER talk about our vaginas. Consequently, this implies that our vaginas’ activities like menstruation should similarly never be spoken about. Why is it that we can’t TALK about our periods (other than in hushed conversation with a girlfriend)? My first memory of menstruation was at age fourteen waiting in my parents car while my stepmom went inside the store to get me some pads. She returns to the car and hands me her purchase. With a hushed voice she instructs me to be discrete about my period so no one ever KNOWS when I’m having it. She instructed me to wrap my pads in kleenex and hide them in the trash as if they never existed.

It was as if I was hiding a shameful terrible secret no one was ever to find out about, unless they followed my trail of unbiodegradable ‘discretely’ wrapped pads. The underlying message is that women are supposed to pretend that we don’t go through a natural process because it’s thought to be deemed ‘unnatural’ by various corporations and their media ads suggesting that we ought to ‘CLEAN IT UP’ with their various line of douches, sanitary wipes, pads with bleach and other harsh chemicals. Did the pioneer women have pads that came with freshening wipes? WTF?

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In the past week I’ve had two different emails come across my inbox with info about fabulous looking movies on the topic of menstruation. One, Period the Movie, happens to be playing in my town this Wednesday night (that’s Vancouver BC if you’re so inclined, screening info here).

Period the Movie is a documentary focusing on the recent rise in menstrual suppression pills and the discourse that has arisen around that. The film takes a look at both the medical implications of hormonally suppressing women’s periods and the cultural impact of “freeing” women from their periods. There aren’t a tonne of screening dates listed, but you can buy the DVD for about $30 if you’re interested. Info in on their website.

The other film, Moon Inside You, documents the personal journey of the filmmaker Diana, as she searches for some answers to her own question around painful periods: “why does it hurt, if I’m healthy?” The resulting journey that the film documents looks really amazing frankly. She travels the world (Syria, Papua-New Guinea, Africa, Europe, etc) and speaks to experts and regular women sharing stories and knowledge along the way. There is a trailer on the website, but currently no screening info.

- Emira (aka Lunapads Webmistress)

Anyone out there using mainly tampons (but open to trying the DivaCup) in Vancouver, Victoria or Prince George BC? Family Practice resident doctors from UBC will be conducting the Finding Lasting Options for Women (FLOW) study, a randomized trial comparing tampons to menstrual cups. If you’re between the ages of 19-40 and are willing to help out, email flowbyflow@gmail.com with your phone number and city.

Being an avid camper and a die-hard natural menstrual products user for years, one would think the two had collided by now. But oddly enough I had always been ‘fortunate’ enough to often not have my period while out in the woods, or I was near some more modern services that made using cloth pads and the DivaCup much easier.

This Thanksgiving weekend I was set to head out camping for three days with only pit toilets and my period started the morning we were leaving…

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I’ve named this post after the work pictured above, “The Birth of Consciousness” by John Outram

There is something special about every birth, and something that stays with us about every birth story that we hear. I’ve been thinking about birth lately for a bunch of reasons - friends trying to conceive or about to have babies, the “birth” of various creative projects (more on these soon!), and my upcoming attendance of a wonderful benefit for a new birthing center in New York City.

What’s coming up for me is an observation that, in mainstream culture at least, menstruation and birth are held in a similar regard in at least one respect that I call “bounce back and get on with it”. A birth story that I heard a few years ago epitomizes this concept. The woman had a fast, intervention-free labour and birth that took place on a Saturday morning. To top it off, she informed us proudly, she was back in the office, baby in tow, first thing Monday morning. I was speechless - 48 hours into your first child’s life and you’re where? And yet she was beaming and happy - clearly it was the right choice for her, but it has kind of haunted me ever since.

While I’m thrilled that the birth was so easy for her, I’m still perplexed that she felt that she had to go to work (in her case, this would not have been a choice driven by financial necessity) so soon, even though it clearly felt empowering to her. In conversations about birth and new mothers I have heard numerous admiration-filled versions of “she just bounced right back!” (this is a particularly popular observation among my Mother’s friends when comparing their daughters’ experiences), and I’m left wondering what’s being left out of the picture.

For me, giving birth was a crazy, warrior-worthy marathon, a physically and emotionally shattering experience from which I most certainly did not “bounce right back”. So maybe a “woo hoo!” birth triggers me, but what I think I’m picking up on on a larger level is a culture that celebrates moving as quickly as possible through the sacred events of our lives.

It’s actually very similar to how menstruation is treated, at least in this culture - little or no celebration of menarche, no encouragement to really understand our cycles, and very little support around taking time to deeply connect with ourselves, or even discuss it.  The spate in recent years of hormonal birth control methods used for menstrual suppression is right on trend here, and it leads me to wonder what else is being suppressed along with our cycles, cramps, bleeding and all the rest.  For all that our cycles (not to mention giving birth!) can be a chore, I encourage all women to look deeper and see what gifts are there for us as well.

Now that I’ve rejoined the menstruation club (see “Starting over at 38”), I’ve also been reconnecting with its related emotional and energetic cycles. Not that I didn’t have my share of inspirations, feelings and meltdowns when I was pregnant and nursing, but not with this intensity, and not on a predictable schedule. PMS for me can look like everything from manic creative energy to over-the-top emotionality to barely suppressed rage.

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