The thinking woman's tampon?

That bastion of good-taste, the late Bernard Manning, once complained that the only things female comedians ever talked about were “periods and f***ing tampax”. The irony here of course being the fact that the only thing most women won’t mention in earshot of men is menstruation. Female comedians seem to be the only ones with enough balls (ovaries?) to actually say the P-word in front of a bunch of Y-chromosomes. The fact remains that talking about the time-of-the-month in male company is still about as taboo as you can get. 

So tra-la-la, I am going to talk about periods and good causes and charity all in one go, and to hell with all of youse who feel uncomfortable. 

Recently I bought some of these in Tesco (don't judge me. It is the only supermarket within walking distance of work. Actually, there is a Costcutter, but it tends to be staffed with men whose eyes are permanently attracted to breast-shaped things). I normally can't be having with amazing pearlised scented handwoven sanitary pads, which tend to be jaw-droppingly expensive and just as good as own brand ones, but I will admit I got a bit excited when I saw these.

"Feminine Towels" (according to Tesco) - it will be interesting to see if we
can manage to euphemise things further in a few years time (lady sponges? No?)

15p from each Halo Initiative pack goes to three difference charities: the Eve Appeal (which researches gynaecological cancers), ageUK (which makes life better for older people), and Straight Talking (offers help, advice and support to pregnant teenagers). Sounds great: I buy something I would have to buy anyway, and help lots of other people without much thought or effort. 

However, I knew that some people object to this on the principle that charity should not be this easy because you get complacent about it, and because it removes the "guilt factor", so you end up thinking "Oooh, panty liners" (yeah, right, but work with me here) and forget about the thousands of women suffering with cervical cancer, for example. An interesting article on this can be found here (though I don't think I agree with everything in it, it is still pretty thought-provoking). 

So, I stood there with arguments raging round my head, among all these feminine hygiene doodahs for about 10 minutes, trying to do the maths.

1 x Halo pack at £1.20 (they were on offer, which made me wonder about that 15p to charity and what profit margin they were making)

1 x Tesco own brand at 80p

What it boiled down to was this: if I bought the own brand ones, I saved 40p per pack, three times the amount that would go to charity if I bought the Halo ones. I could then donate that 40p to charity and do more good for the charities in question than if I had bought the explicitly charitable ones.

In the end, I bought the Halo ones. Why? Because I liked the idea of them better. I didn't want to discourage them from making products with a charity focus, and also the pads themselves are less bulky than the own brand ones. In the future, though, when I next to stop by the euphemism aisle, I think I'll ask myself again how much I really care about charity, and I think I might just choose a different way to use my money.