What If Menstrual Products Were Free Everywhere? - video Dailymotion

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1/29/2024

Did you know that you ladies spend about 2,300 days of your life menstruating?

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00:00 Did you know that you ladies spend about 2,300 days of your life menstruating?

00:15 That amounts to about 10,400 tampons or pads,

00:20 over 5,000 pills for your cramps,

00:23 and about 500 chocolate bars to make you feel a little less miserable.

00:28 What if you didn't have to pay for at least some of these period expenses?

00:33 This is WHAT IF, and here's what would happen if menstrual products were free.

00:39 Let's do some math.

00:40 An average woman uses about 20 tampons or pads during her period.

00:45 That's 260 disposable menstrual products that she throws away every year.

00:50 That costs her about $50.

00:53 Now $50 may seem like a lot to some people,

00:57 nothing at all for others.

00:58 But think about this.

01:00 The last time you used a public washroom,

01:02 did you have to pay for the toilet paper?

01:04 Then why don't we make tampons and pads available for free,

01:08 at least in public washrooms?

01:11 Every month, women have to put their income towards something that men don't have to worry about.

01:16 Some argue that if men were the ones who menstruated,

01:19 tampons would've already become free of charge.

01:22 We'll never know for sure.

01:24 But imagine you were an 11-year-old girl getting her first period in the middle of the school day.

01:29 How would you feel?

01:30 I'll tell you.

01:31 Embarrassed and confused.

01:34 You sure wouldn't want anyone to know your dirty little secret.

01:37 Not that I know from experience, a friend told me.

01:41 Of course, periods are nothing to be ashamed of,

01:43 and free tampons in school bathrooms would help the situation.

01:48 10% of girls in Africa wouldn't skip school while on their period,

01:52 and female workers wouldn't miss an average of six days of work monthly.

01:56 Plus, being exposed to free menstrual products would likely make everyone a little bit more open about it.

02:03 Nobody signed up for having periods, but half the population experiences them.

02:07 So why do you feel uncomfortable talking about this?

02:12 Half of all women say at least once in their lives,

02:15 they've found themselves without pads or tampons at the moment they needed them.

02:19 If menstrual products were available free,

02:22 those women would simply run to the nearest washroom,

02:24 and could avoid practicing the back-to-the-wall shuffle.

02:28 Here's another stat for you.

02:29 50,000 women in the U.S. alone are living on the street.

02:33 Every month, they have to decide between buying a pad or buying lunch.

02:38 With free tampons, they wouldn't have to get by using toilet paper, towels, even socks.

02:45 None of that is sanitary.

02:47 But if women didn't pay for their pads, who would?

02:50 It's true, you didn't choose to have a period.

02:53 But companies producing pads and tampons wouldn't be able to give away millions of dollars of product for free.

02:59 It would be up to the government to pay for the menstrual products with tax money.

03:03 But the government doesn't cover the costs of those kinds of necessities.

03:07 Your food isn't free.

03:08 Your clothes aren't free.

03:10 Why should your pads be?

03:12 You might argue that men can get free condoms, but let's be honest, condoms aren't just for men.

03:18 Women should carry them around as well, to protect against sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies.

03:25 The least the government could do, though, is to not charge sales tax for women's pads and tampons.

03:30 What do you think?

03:32 Maybe a world with no money at all would be a better one.

03:35 But that's a story for another WHAT IF.

03:39 [MUSIC]

03:45 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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