IM HERE TO KEEP IT ONE HUNNIT.
Alternatives to pads and tampons have been gaining popularity recently for many great reasons. Personally, the amount of toxins found in feminine hygiene products terrifies me. The rates at which women and gender non-conforming period-having folks are exposed to harmful products is alarming, and I’ll jump at any opportunity to eliminate toxicity from my lifestyle.
So after doing some research, I became super intrigued with THINX for many reasons. As a company, THINX is doing some awesome stuff. They have fire newsletters that hit my inbox weekly, their entire product is shifting the stigma women carry around about their periods, and the underwear was founded and designed by a woman of color. Also, the idea of free bleeding blew my mind, and I imagined the experience to be so liberating. So I thought, why the hell not, what do I have to lose?
I’ve been using THINX for about a few months now and I’m still sorting through how I feel about it. Here’s the thing, free bleeding is amazing but also takes hella time to get used to.
My basic thoughts on the product:
Order a size up
These tend to run small, so the more comfortable fit, the better the experience. The material is great, soft, and feels like a normal pair of panties.
Be mindful of the days you’re wearing them.
I personally wouldn’t wear THINX on day 1 or day 2, (or any day/cycle that’s heavier than normal). The underwear does not localize where the blood is stored, meaning your blood will be carried throughout the underwear. So if you wear these on a heavy day, you’ll literally feel the weight of your blood as you pull the panties on and off.
Don’t panic.
The first day I wore them I was terrified something would go wrong (I even brought back up underwear and everything). Trust me, its not like you’ll walk around with blood bursting from the seams. If you over think, you’ll ruin the point. These panties are supposed to let you bleed freely, so let them!
Now here’s where it gets deep — I’ve realized that there’s something really satisfactory about using disposable products. Being able to toss out my pads or tampons throughout the day was…strangely cathartic.
This led me to realize that I felt some type of way about carrying my period blood around with me. All. Day. Long. It was beginning to feel like some sort of emotional baggage that just followed me around. This feeling would definitely be heightened at the end of the day, when I needed to hand wash the THINX underwear and wring out the blood from the fabric.
I grew up in an African household, so hand washing my clothes is nothing new, and I never saw myself as someone who was grossed out or afraid of my own period blood. So why did my period blood feel like baggage? Why did I get so much satisfaction from being able to dispose of it when I was using pads/tampons?
Was there some part of me that stigmatized my own period?
At any rate, I did what any good blackademic would do and did some research.
Luckily, a friend of mine from college, Rakiah Anderson, did her thesis on this. She’s dope, and her work really contextualized a lot of emotions for me. Essentially, her research is about “the the ways in which African American female novelists have used fiction literature to critique, resist, or preserve cultural taboos of menstruation as a form of feminism and cultural response” (Anderson).
Throughout reading her work I realized that menstruation had largely been left out of the conversation during the years I developed my consciousness. As she points out, this is largely due to women of color being left out of radical menstruation movements.
“The absence of women of color in the radical menstruation and feminist spiritualist movements is important because it suggest that women of color, and particularly African American women, may not be attuned to the ways in which menstruation is used as a tool of oppression” (Anderson).
Furthermore, “despite the urgency of black feminists to dismantle and critique white feminism and the dynamic form of oppression experienced by black women, little attention was given to the specificity of menstruation as oppression for black women” (Anderson).
As I unpacked her thesis, I began to connect the dots and understand where the discomfort with free bleeding was coming from. Understanding this discomfort is a work in progress for me, and although exploring these new discoveries about myself via THINX has been an introspective challenge, I urge everyone to step out of the comfort zone with this and give it a try.
Unfortunately, periods are still taboo. They’re associated with numerous amounts of cultural stigma, thereby forcing us period having people to avoid and ignore the ways in which shame about menstruation can become an insidious form of internalized misogyny.
Take a step toward liberation, and bleed freely.
Will you try THINX? Let us know in the comments below.
