Come Be We And We Be Free

i found this inappropriately hilarious and i want one.

LOL OH MY FUCKING GOD

The way most tampon/pad ads are written makes it seem like our periods are the dirtiest, smelliest, nastiest shit on earth. We need to keep it hidden, mask the smell with lilac-scented-zen-infused tampons, and most of all, keep it CLEAN because  periods are so dirty.

This kind of discourse make us self conscious about our periods, which leads us to buy these “special” products designed to clean up our nasty, dirty periods. Don’t buy into this crap they’re trying to sell - scented tampons or pads with individually wrapped wipes. But most importantly, never buy into the idea that your period is dirty, smelly or unnatural, because it’s not.

I agree in principle. And it’s certainly not unnatural. If it was we would have to band together as a sex and beat the crap out of the person responsible.

BUT

Periods are smelly. They are dirty. I’m not ashamed to have one, but I’m not going to frolic in fields going “Hooray, huzzah, I’m bleeding out of my cunt like a dead thing!” either. And incidentally, if - like me - your periods are super messed-up, that’s what it smells like. A dead thing. I get solid periods. I came off the Pill because it made me bleed until I was anaemic and huge chunks of that stank to high heaven because they were rotting blood clots.

I refuse to buy into “be ashamed of your period”, yeah, and I get that this is the message peddled by advertising. But I feel equally patronized and pissed-off by the apparent alternative of “Your period is wonderful and life-affirming and totally not smelly or dirty at all!”

IT IS DIRTY. Okay? Bloodstains in my knickers and all over my clean trousers and occasionally on my chair if I don’t catch it in time - that’s dirty. It’s dirty if it’s coming out of my cunt, it’s dirty if it’s coming out of my knee, it’s dirty if it’s coming out of a split fucking lip. Blood is not a neat clean tidy thing. It’s dirty.

IT IS SMELLY. I can attest to this because my fingers continue to smell until I scrub all the period blood off them. Blood smells. It’s kind of one of the things about blood.

Periods are dirty, they are smelly, they are goddamn fucking unpleasant, and I’m just as tired of being told to embrace them as I am of being told to be ashamed of them. I don’t have to think they’re more gross than any other blood/blood clot/occasional chunk of semi-rotten flesh (I told you my periods were messed-up) coming out of my body to find them gross. My period isn’t unnatural, but it is gross. It isn’t shameful, but it isn’t wonderful either. It’s a crap-out of human evolution that we’ve somehow got stuck with when most other species don’t have it, and there’s no sense in it being taboo, but I am not down with treating it as a fucking marvel, either.

Blood is blood. If I needed a tampon to stop up a cut that bled as much as my vagina does every few weeks, then I would use one. If they offered one which also covered up the smell of that much blood, then I might well use that.

I have no idea where this rant came from. I apologise.

I prefer the word ‘Messy’ to dirty, but 100% this^ comment.

[snipping because this got very long; click on their username to read the whole thing]

[tw for slightly graphic talk about abnormal periods]

THANK YOU 1,000x

periods are messy as hell. Pads that come with wipes are actually a really awesome idea; do you know how many times I’ve gotten a rash because of dried blood all over my thighs? It’s a pain in the ass.

Periods are natural and perfectly normal and not “gross” in the sense that other people should be disgusted in them, but they are pretty nasty in the sense that you have blood and dead tissue pouring out of you for like five days out of the month.

I can embrace my period as “natural” and acknowledge that it’s not dirty (as in germy) and still want to keep it from being smeared all over my thighs, thanks.

Reblogging to add that the scented products CAUSE YEAST INFECTIONS. Yes let’s put fragrance compounds on our mucus membranes that sounds like a great idea.

Period Panties by Harebrained.