In bygone days, when my mother was young
there was only one kind of female pad… The Sanitary Napkin.
It was big. It was thick. It was bulky.
You clipped the sanitary napkin to a sanitary belt
which you wore around your waist.
It was like slinging a fat hammock
It was not comfortable. It did not feel particularly sanitary either.
Because it did not absorb well.
Things just floated around on the top... Like jam.
Bleeding from female parts was frowned upon.
Too messy, too gross, too red, too disgusting.
Nobody wanted to even think about it.
Pads were sold in the stores in plain brown paper bags with no labels.
You just had to know what was in them.
Nobody would tell you, except your mother and maybe your best friend.
And even she felt like she had to whisper.
“ PSSSST! There are sanitary napkins in there... pass it on”
The napkins were kept at the very back of the store almost out of sight.
It was all very hush hush.
No advertising. No special packaging. Nothing to draw attention to them.
Picking up one of those brown paper bags was like admitting
you had a case of leprosy. You’d buy six or seven other things you didn’t want in order to disguise what you were really buying.
“I’ll take a pack of gum, the shoelaces, the camera film,
The sanitary napkins, the hair brush, two combs, the bar of soap
And these Life Savors please.”
There you’d be all red in the face, putting your money down,
Just wanting it to be over.
Fast forward to today.
Oh, how far we’ve come baby!
Today, menstruation is big business.
It’s big bucks for the mega corporations.
A monthly cash cow!
Today there is a myriad of pad choices.
There are whole walls full of them in the drugstore.
There are ads on TV.
Menstruation has come out of the closet.
Now, they even have names,
Incognito...
For when you're on a spy mission....
and Carefree…
Doesn’t that sound fun?
You’re out having a blast and nobody even knows you’ve got your period.
Alldays:
Which makes them sound like you never will have to change them.
Or Always
Which could mean you can wear them in different places if you want…
Like behind your left ear.
Some even have wings.
Imagine that.
Wearing a pad with wings is a spiritual experience.
Like turning into an angel.
I think they should invent boxes that play "The Hallelujah Chorus"
when you open them.
That would be angel- like.
You could hum along while you attach the wings to your panties.
Or maybe it could play "Like a Virgin"
That would also be very interesting and quite uplifting when you’re forty.
Now there are so many choices it’s completely dazzling!
You can choose a pad for moderate flow
or heavy flow or light flow.
It’s all so complicated that the boxes have pictures
to help you to know what you’re buying.
‘We have a whole family of products’ boasts one company….
Isn’t that nice…. Just like a lesbian Three Bears
Heavy Mama Bear, Medium Mama Bear and Little Tiny Feminine Baby Bear
You can buy cottony dry pads and dry weave ones.
And ones with adjustable tabs… just like the ones on baby diapers.
You can buy scented pads so you can smell artificial
while you have your period, or unscented ones if you don’t.
You can buy pads specifically for overnight or ones for during the day.
I guess the night ones are more pillow like so your parts sleep better.
You can buy contoured body fit and ones that are breathable.
Now that’s very important! You definitely want to be able to breathe down there.
Especially in such close quarters.
There are Thins and if that’s not thin enough for you there’s Ultra Thins
Even thinner is Paper Thin. You’re barely wearing anything at this point…
Then there are The Mini- Invisibles.
“Am I wearing a pad? I can’t tell…
I’d better wear three or four of these just in case.”
You can even buy the new Carefree Thong. How about that?
And it comes in black. A black sanitary napkin.
This is some male advertiser’s idea of making menstruation, sexy.
This is so women can say,
“Look everyone! I’m not on the rag any more, I’m on the thong!”
“Does that turn you on?”
I have to change it every three minutes because it’s so small…
but you can watch if you want!”
Who are these for? Exotic dancers?
And why black? You can’t even tell if you’re bleeding or not.
It’s like a napkin for vampires. Who the hell thought that one up?
They’ve also invented pads for when you don’t even have your period.
These are called Panty Liners.
Like the Titanic.
These are to protect your panties from ever having to touch your parts at all.
They can also be called Panty Shields.
These are to attract the more Amazonian type of women.
Both are so you never have to change your underwear.
It’s like putting a paper plate over your real plate when you eat.
You can just throw it out when it gets messed up.
One pair of underwear can last all week.
You can wear the same pair of underwear until the elastic gives out in the legs.
How great is that?
One box said it offered 'four wall protection'. 

Did you know you had four walls?
Where the hell did they get four walls from?
That's news to me.
Have you ever counted down there?
I challenge you to find more than two and a half,
Mine’s more like a drainage ditch.
Of course that's not much of a selling point .... "drainage ditch protection"
Sounds like too much manual labour involved there.
Some promise they have new technology.
What the hell does that mean?
Does wearing one whisk you away to another dimension
until your period is over?
Does the pad clean up after itself?
Does it flush the toilet for you?
They can call me when I don’t need to change the pad at all.
But then, of course..... that's called menopause.