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WHAT IF
  • 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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