This one is goin' out to all you ladies out there. . .

Males Beware: This is a very girly post/rant. And I don't mean "girly" in that way where you're like, "oooh, the girls are gonna talk about us now!" kinda way, like when you secretly read the Glamour or Cosmo, looking for tips. I mean the kinda shit that freaks you guys out. Yeah, it's what we talk about when we get together, but it's not the variety of girltalk that's scantily-clad sorority girls tussling with each other, pillow fights, "let's talk about all the things a man should do in bed and how size doesn't matter at all! In between our practicing how to French kiss on each other, that is!" Okay? That is just this world that, like, exists like only in your heads. This is the Real Stuff, and it's not for you. So just stop reading now.

So, now that it's just us girls, here is my girl-rant. Except now I'm sorta off on another rant because of the warning above, where I just wanna be like, Men! They want Barbie dolls instead of us? Fine! Barbie fits nicely RIGHT UP YOUR ASS, BUDDY!

But that's a rant for another day. (Side-note: Can we all tell Beth had a bad day at work today? Yeah. Okay.) Today I am like soooo freaking annoyed at tampons. Well, not annoyed at them in the general sense because they certainly are useful and I hate to imagine what life would've been like a hundred years ago. Back when "on the rag" was literal. (shudder) It's the marketing and the packaging and the whole thing that has me going, I mean puh-leez. Like to prove it works, you must have a no-make-up (means she's All Natural And Perfectly Healthy!) girl/woman, smiling, preferably wearing cropped pants and sandals and either sitting on a beach or jauntily skipping down a busy street (meadows and country lanes are generally reserved for douche commercials - and Metamucil), and wearing white. Of course. Because she's so confident in her tampon that she wears white.

Um yeah, hi? She's so dressed in white that she looks like a tampon.

So today in the mail I got this thing from the Jewel-Osco. Little box about the size of a video tape that says "Go beyond the ordinary..." And it's this pink and seafoam-ish green box and the script is all cuurrrvy and there's a couple of cuuurrrvy lines on it and the flap where you open it is one long cuuurrrve, and I mean please. All that soft pastels fading into eachother and all those sinuous lines just screams TAMPONS WITHIN.

As if we don't get the point, the slogan for this product - oh, the product is Playtex Beyond™ - is "The Natural Shape of Comfort". Uh-huh. Some marketing genius got like millions to come up with another slightly different arrangement of the words "natural", "shape" and "comfort".

Whatever. So I open it up and the box inside is (not kidding) about 1/5th the size of the outer box. There's no reason for the outer box to be so large, of course, except for the general principle of Unnecessary Packaging. I was getting ready to say how much I hate excess packaging, but I am SUCH a girl sometimes and when the packaging is really cool, I love it. A constant battle between the Minimalist within and the OMG So Cuuuute within. (I know I'm not alone. I know you're out there, and we can't be ashamed of how we're genetically geared to like stuff like that. We can just keep on fighting the good fight, sisterhood.)

And the inside flap of the soft-pastels, cuuuurvy, unnecessary box? It says:
Introducing. . .
The First With NATURAL TAPER™ Tampon and Applicator Duo.
Beyond Plastic. . . Flushable.
Beyond Cardboard. . .Comfortable.
It's the best of both. . . And More!

(and this is the best part)

Comfortable, Colorful, Flushable, Fabulous!

Okay, Playtex, are you fucking KIDDING me? Aside from the obvious question of is that an ellipsis in your pocket or. . .?, and the jokes to be had from the comic-book-waiting-to-happen "Applicator Duo" , there's this one that begs to be answered, you excessive-ellipses wankers: That's the best you could do?

Fabulous? Gay men run your marketing department? If so, who put the diva next to the practical-but-clunky Lil Ms. Flushable? And the fact that the word "colorful" is supposed to make me want them is just sick. Like I care about how visually appealing it is? I'm sorry, but have you ever LOOKED at a tampon applicator after it's been used? It's like a red-streaked severed digit, a kind of blood-covered worm-skin, if worms had exoskeletons which they don't. Okay, maybe not THAT bad, but it's about as aesthetically pleasing as a used condom found on the side of the road. (Or wherever you throw your used condoms, you know what I mean.) Why would color be a selling point? At least to anyone over the age of 15?

Even the ditziest airheads I've ever known don't give a damn about color-coordinating their feminine hygiene products. From the age of [supply your own date of womanhood here], we learn pretty quick that it's not about the looks, not on this one. Wanna sell me? Make your slogan And Nary A Drop Shall Spill, then tell me it also somehow soaks up all my retained water, relieves cramping, soothes headaches and backaches, and also alerts me to the precise moment it needs to be replaced. Hm, how would they do that? Maybe a pop-up thing like on a turkey, bing! It's ready! Or it transmits a signal to your watch and you can monitor the whole flow-to-tampon-capacity ratio, little light goes off when you reach like defcon 4 - that'd be excellent.

(Okay, the guys MIGHT be interested in this discussion if it involved gadgets like that. Perhap we can entice them to help us come up with a Tampon of the Future. Boys are, in general, much better at science than me. Like even 4 year old boys. Sigh.)

Back to the product in question. Now I'm looking around for exactly what this NATURAL TAPER™ is supposed to be exactly and there's a pic on the littler box. Basically, the tip is shaped like a bullet. A little more tapered than an o.b. tampon (personal faves, never touch this other crap, I mean o.b. actually had the balls to come up with a jingle, and one that goes "it's the way you should be" - which is a true statement, a challenge to the weak, and a damn catchy little ditty - but I digress). What, this is new - a tapered tip? Not to me.

Under the pic of the tampon tip, it says "Natural Taper™ tampon and applicator help ensure Precise Placement for Unbeatable Protection." I won't even go into it on that "unbeatable protection" hubris. We've all heard it before. [Insert cliché about bridges in Brooklyn and swampland for sale, etc.] The whole "precise placement" thing kinda throws me, though. I mean - is that really a problem? I was never formally trained on the use of a tampon, it's true. But I swear on the sacred feminine, the labia majora and the mons of venus and all those other places that we generally just refer to as down there, the core of her womanhood and coochie, I swear by them all that I have never imprecisely placed a tampon.

Internally, I mean. Once, I was putting one in my pocket and missed and dropped it on the floor and it was in a crowded elevator and I was SO embarrassed, but that's beside the point.

Other thing on the box that just annoys me? Color-coded absorbency. YES, it's a wonderful thing to color code it - as we all know, I am a bit fanatical about color-coding things. There are (typically) 3 categories here: Regular = lavender, Super = pastel pink, Super Plus = light blue. Here's my glitch: Can all the tampon people PLEASE get together and standardize this shit? I'll even arrange it. The First Annual Tampon Summit. We'll have it in Malta and take sepia-toned pictures, all the companies will have delegates sitting at long tables, each with a little flag (no names, just the stylized picture of their respective products, naked in their not-so-glory, against a field of ANY NON-PASTEL COLOR) in front of him - no, wait, in front of HER, godammit. They'll debate flow and absorbency and translators will whisper in their earpieces and I imagine there'll be a scuffle over metrics because this is an international conference, see.

(Yes, I have the whole summit playing out in my head already. I get to wield a gavel at some point, and all the food will be pizza and chocolate and pasta and all other comfort foods associated with the curse. That includes whiskey. Judy Blume is making a special appearance, too - she'll read from Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, that part about men-stroo-AYYYY-shun, and be available for booksignings in the lobby from 4-8pm. You don't have to wear your nametags at all times, though, not if I can help it.)

Okay and what? WHAT? This says in the corner - "unscented tampons". They make them scented? SCENTED?! Are you serious? See, it's a good thing that I don't pay attention in that aisle, I just grab my trusted (and thoroughly SANE) o.b.'s and go on my merry way, so I don't notice that there is such a thing in this world as SCENTED TAMPONS? Scented. I mean scented.

(4 minutes of speechless blinking)

Scented is for candles. I can say no more than that. I think it says it all, as far as my personal tampon philosophy goes. And who knew I had a tampon philosophy? Learn something new every day.

Anyway, there's my rant. The whole point is this: it's all so stupid. It's the most practical product in the world and they have to make it all complicated and frou-frou and just outright dumb. We're girls. We bleed. Every month. That's it. Not a lot of glamour, nor any need for it. Save the pastel and cuuurrrvy packaging for something a little more dreeeeamy than coagulated blood clots, 'kay?

But we all know that I'm grateful for the 4 free tampons, and that I'll use them even if I almost definitely won't like them and MOST definitely will not switch brands. I mean, they're free. And that's another rant for another day - why tampons and pads aren't covered as a health expense, and why the hell is it taxed? Answer - men running the country, that's why. Dumbasses. Run away at the mere mention of girlblood. Pshaw. They're too busy picking the Barbie-dolls outta their butts, anyway.