Women all have their stories of when we first used your product. Mine began later in life when, at 25, I ventured to use my first tampon. Up until that point, I used only pads -- saddles in my underwear. My housemate, at the time, helped me insert my first tampon and then later that day, my other 3 housemates came into the bathroom to share their techniques. My first tampon was uncomfortable, but not unbearable. It was, as you advertised then, freeing not to be restricted to the side of the pool during those "times of the month" but now, almost 25 years later and thousands upon thousands of tampons disposed of, I have a complaint.
What the hell were you thinking changing the shape, length, AND WIDTH of the "new" tampon? They hurt, they leak, and when pulling them out, it's much the same feeling as I experience during my yearly pelvic exams. OUCH! I wish I'd known you were changing your design for I would have hoarded as many of the old style tampons as I could have possibly fit into my storage cabinets. I would have hauled away one of those slatted wooden pallets straped high with boxes upon boxes of tampons from Costco. As a pre-menopausal woman, my time left in the purgatory of your recent invention should be relatively short, but still I cringe at the thought of another year or even another month dreading both the insertion and extraction of this medieval device you dare to call "feminine" let alone hygenic!
Alas, I am left with only one option: I am sending out an ad on Craig's List calling all post-menopausal women to scour their cupboards for half-full or perhaps fully stocked boxes of the old-style tampons that have gone unused since the blood stopped. I will pay any price though currently the outrageous cost of any tampon cries out for revolutionary action. Who invents these things? Certainly it is not women. Certainly it is not middle-aged women who've been using your product for 25 years and have grown accustomed to the absorbent structure and the cardboard applicator. Certainly it is not women who, during that 25 years, have literally carved out a "niche" for one particular type of tampon.
For if women of my generation, my size and shape had been part of your research and development team, we would have cried FOUL. We would have stormed the board rooms swinging tampons by their strings over our heads like Xena the Warrior Princess weilding her spiked mace at drooling enemies. We would have bled on your fine boardroom chairs, soiling your white carpets as we raced around your typing pools.
So much for "freeing" me...I now feel enslaved by one little white plug slowly slipping out even as I write.
I no longer want to be a part of this story. Change it back!!
Signed,
Tampooned
1 comment:
Dear Tampooned,
The first time I ever attempted the placement of a tampon was when I was sixteen years old. I was at the Hot Springs with two very nice families. Each family had a room, separated by a bathroom in the middle. I was in the bathroom, which had a locked door. Sweating and huffing, I tried to follow the diagram provided inside the tampon box. I had never even considered that I might look anything like that diagram - I had always thought a vagina simply went "straight up". So I kept pushing and pushing this white cotton sword (for that is what it felt like to me) up, up and up. Finally, I fainted. Which caused considerable agitation amongst the families, who were, as I have said, very nice - but let's face it - when a sixteen year old girl makes a big thump inside a locked bathroom - - well, you've just got to wonder - - and maybe even figure out - - what the hell happened. Mr. Clee stormed the bathroom door just at the moment when I was bringing myself to my feet. I pulled out the "plug", which was halfway in and halfway out, and threw it into a drawer. I grabbed a towel and loooked forlornly at Mr. Clee. He noticed the tampon box on the bathroom sink, politely excused himself,turned and left the bathroom. I did not attempt another tampon usage for several years. Either their illustration was right and I was built wrong - or I was built correctly and their illustration was wrong. It was the American tampon that kept me a virgin until I married my first husband. I felt that there was serious national confusion as to the anatomy of females and I was not going to punch a hole in my Self just to stay current in the arena of feminine hygiene. Wearing the "saddle" was bad, but not THAT bad.
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