We're not sure we want to try this with our BFF...
2015 seems to be the year of the ‘period revolution’; women globally are reclaiming their menstrual cycles, and we are on board!
After all, how can you not support calls to end the ‘tampon tax’? Or commend the woman who ran the London Marathon whilst she was on? Who doesn’t find it hard to be angered at Donald Trump’s comments poking fun at FOX host Megyn Kelly supposedly being on her period, or when Instagram deleted artist Rupi Kaur's photograph of her bleeding?
In recent months unique and inspiring campaigns and products have been launched to remove the social taboo imposed on periods, and allow those who get them, to live comfortably.
Soofiya Andry has been crowd funding her own intersectional feminist zine, all about menstruation, which includes artwork submissions, written pieces and drawings, all from people that menstruate. Whilst at the start of the year a group of advertising interns started a campaign to lobby the government to provide funding to homeless shelters to buy female sanitary products for homeless women.
More recently, a team of art students designed the contraption ‘Flo’, that allows women in parts of the world who have limited access to female sanitation products to clean their reusable rags in a hygienic, and private, way.
However, we’re not sure if we can get on board with this latest invention… the ‘Friends Forever' tampon. In short, the whole concept is two tampons connected by one string, with the end goal being that you and your best friend can take your friendship to the next level by not just sharing secrets and a bottle of wine... but your female sanitary products.
Are you as confused as we are? All we keep thinking, is that this device poses a number of limitations. For a start, you and your friend would need to be in sync with one another, and that’s before you even consider the manoeuvrability whilst wearing this. How can you possibly do anything, other than lie there binge-watching Netflix, whilst connected via tampon to another person? Plus, what would happen if the string got caught and all hell broke loose?
Upon further research, the elusive sharing tampon does seem to have remained merely a myth, and although multiple news outlets have claimed they will be stocked in pop-up boutiques around the UK and USA this summer, we’ve yet to see any coverage of the bizarre product hitting shelves.
Perhaps it could work as a novelty gift for your BFF… but we’re not sure this concept is heading in the same direction as the aforementioned campaigns to end the societal taboo surrounding periods.