Sanitary Towels and Tampons

I am sitting here, at my desk, fighting my own compulsion to ‘do the right thing’ and try to find some work to do, but it’s impossible. The aftermath of Christmas is always a very quiet time at work, and today the boss is away and hence there is unlikely to be any work forthcoming until later when he has returned.

I have spent the last hour adjusting some of my macro photographs that I have taken for my college project, but my eye-sight has been strained this last week, a sign of getting old I guess, and I cannot scrutinize any more bloody pixels!

For anyone who has never taken really close-up macro photographs, the depth of field, ie the amount of the image in crisp, sharp focus is minute, often only a couple of millimetres deep, and so the rest of the image is unfocussed and plays havoc with your eyes.

Here is one of my favourite shots of the stamens of a beautiful Lily.




Wondering what to do instead, a visit to the office by the woman in the factory who sees to it that the toiletries in the ladies are always kept topped up provided some light relief.

This woman brought the change from the dispenser in ladies toilets into the office, and when we enquired with her whether these items had been delivered she replied,

“Yes, Geoff came to find me to tell me ‘the ladies things’ were in”!!

I said to her that she should have replied, LOUDLY,

“Do you mean the sanitary towels and tampons Geoff”? to which she laughed, and commented,

“Out there they are referred to as Bullets and Hammocks”

How many times during conversations, other than those with our girly friends, do people who are talking about these items actually use the correct terms? How many euphemisms for these products are there, and why?

This got me thinking to when I was younger. I have one sister who is 3 years older than me and one who is 4 years younger. I guess that maybe the first girl in a family has it the toughest, and maybe this is where girls learn to first use euphemisms for sanitary products. At the time when my sister started her periods I was sharing a bedroom with her, and so I knew fairly soon after. Being only 3 years younger than her, and with her starting her periods a little later than average, I was aware of them already, although still young enough to want mine oh so badly because that meant I would be all grown up, and at the same time feeling quite disgusted at the thought of it all.

I remember an occasion that first year, where my eldest sister had been caught out with her timings and was stranded on the toilet, no sanitary towel to hand and not knowing what to do when my younger sister happened by on the landing outside. Perched on toilet, helpless to move, she called out to her;

“Can you go and ask Mum for a Woolworths bag” she said to her youngest sister.

Well. With 7 years juniority (I just made that up, but it must be the opposite of seniority, right?), and a constant readiness at her tender age to help and please people of she ran to find Mum.

“D said can she have a Woolworths bag please” she conveyed, just as she had been requested.

This was a pre-conceived code between the two of them for a sanitary towel, saving my sisters embarrassment at having to discuss such things infront of her sisters, brother and father. Quite clever I suppose, but the beginning of the slippery slope of euphemisms.

My Mum duly gave T a paper bag in which she had placed a sanitary towel for D. The bag had ‘Boots’ written on it!

“No, she said she wanted a Woolworths bag” my innocent young sister protested.

“That one will do just fine” she was told.

The ever thoughtful T didn’t want to take the Boots bag to D as she had specifically asked for one from Woolworths. For several minutes, she disputed the fact with Mum that D had definitely asked for a Woolworths bag, but eventually Mum convinced her that what she had in her hand was OK;

“and if she complains when you give it to her, bring it back” she told T, knowing of course that she wouldn’t.

With so much discussion, and with the toilet seat creating ever deeper indentations on her backside, D had waited quite some time. My youngest sister, God bless her, ever aware of the time she had taken, rushed back, apologetically handed over the Boots bag and never once questioned or thought to look in the bag to actually see what she was carrying.

She learned of this story only about 5 years ago, but she still remembered the time she had been duped into fetching the sanitary towel, revealing how she had felt quite bad that she couldn't get the bag that D had asked for.