I’ve noticed an alarming trend sweeping the nation: women are using so-called “period panties” during their time of the month as a replacement for tampons. The most popular brand of these menstruation cloths are THINX. I like the name “THINX” because they remind men that we still THINK when we’re on our periods, but also that we don’t know how to spell.
In my opinion, though, these panties are a huge waste of money. I see no reason why women should go out and buy menstruation underwear when we can just do what I’ve always done: wait for our underwear to become menstruation underwear. Furthermore, when I actually purchased a pair of THINX, I was unimpressed. They’re hard to wash, and they don’t stop nosebleeds.
At this point you might be wondering: “But Ginny, if we don’t use period panties, do we have to keep losing cardboard cylinders up our vaginas every month?”
I wanted an answer for you, so I started learning about biblical menstrual history, and it soon became clear that we were ignoring a solution that’s right in front of us: women used to spend their menstrual cycle in a tent, free from all men and sanitation.
This sounds pretty awesome, like a really fun sleepover. In fact, depending on how hard you PMS'd, you could get sent to the tent up to three days early.
I was thinking menstruation tents were definitely the way to go, but I had a bunch of unanswered questions about these women in tents.
- Did they have to set up the tents themselves, or could they find a man to do it?
- Was there wifi in the tents?
- Did they all use the same Netflix login?
- Were there bears?
- Did they have Hulu, because it actually has a better selection than Netflix at this point IMO?
- What did they do for food?
- Was there access to HBO NOW?
To find the answers to these questions and more, I decided I’d spend one menstrual cycle in a tent. I should caveat that I have an IUD and only ever get my period for one day at a time, so when I say one cycle, I mean one night. This advice is not useful for anyone who menstruates for a normal amount of time because like, ew, who would want to sleep outside for more than one night.
My time in a menstrual tent was awesome. I didn’t have to go to work, I didn’t get harassed on Tinder, and I didn’t have to go to work. I also got to spend a lot of time in nature.
I would warn against going anywhere with bears–they love the smell of blood. However, I had become so accustomed to men running in disgust at the sight of my menstrual blood that it was a warm change to have a bear come eagerly. In fact, the boost in self-esteem was probably worse than the loss in arm functionality. The doctors say I could get back to 60% and honestly who needs more than that anyway.
Overall, I highly recommend the tent-based system. I mean, as I always say, menstruation is a choice. So if you choose to menstruate, you need to choose the best solution. With tents, you save money on tampons and period panties, you get to explore nature, and you finally get an answer to the age-old question of exactly how much blood comes out. The answer: enough for your dad to tell you, “Nevermind, you can keep the tent.”