To not accept that there is 'period poverty' in the UK.....?

[rosetree7]

Fully expecting to be told I am BU, but I genuinely do not get this 'period poverty' malarkey.

Some reports say periods cost £42-45 a month (£500 a year.) Never in my life have I - or anyone else I know - spent £42-45 a MONTH on their period. Not even a tenth of that actually.

Some of the things they (supposedly) spend money on are tampons and STs (obviously...) You can get a pack of sanitary towels for less than a pound. Less than 50p in some shops!

And also mooncups.

Although mooncups cost £16 to £22, most mooncups will last 10 years, so you'd only buy 3 or 4 in your lifetime!!! And they also spend on pain relief - but paracetamol and ibuprofen are 16 to 26p a packet from Wilkos. And plenty of other shops sell them for a similar price!

Oh and apparently, they have to keep spending money on new underwear every month. What a load of shit.. I have bought 18 pairs of underpants in 5 years, (at a cost of around £25 for the entire 5 years!) 5 pairs of them are dark coloured - and I wear them for my periods. Never in my life have I bought new underpants for every new period.

So what is this all about? And how on earth are they coming up with such a ludicrous figure as £42-45 a month?! I mean, some girls are apparently using toilet roll as they 'can't afford' sanitary towels? In most cases, toilet roll is more expensive than sanitary towels FGS!

I wouldn't wash a bloody mooncup out in a public toilet as an adult, let alone as a teen. I use reusable pads & rinse them when at home...when out & about there is no way i'd be using public sinks to do that.

Interesting that the OP has disappeared without trace, and the majority of her posts were deleted. She was just being goady and refused to listen to anyone else's experience.

It's pointless continuing to say how cheaply you can buy STs at the major supermarkets. The cheaper ones just didn't work for me or anyone else who has problems with flooding. Only the Always ultra night strength worked for me, and at my worst times I still had to change them every hour.

Always Ultra are not cheap! I could afford them, but I can well imagine them being too expensive for a lot of women.

The same way people change their tampons and pads - or is that too embarrassing/inconvient too?

Dont know about you but i change san pro in a toilet cubicle not in front of the sink!
I have never been in a toilet cubicle in general public toilets/school with a sink in them or do you suggest the girls wash out thier mooncups in the toilet?

But why can't they afford it?

Ffs do us all a favour and rtf?

TBH I bought some tampons, pant liners and towels in Tesco yesterday and I think it was about £2.30 for the lot

The point is some of us would need to pay a £5 bus fare to get to Tesco's

YADBVVVU

Yes the cost is exaggerated but it does not mean there is no period poverty. You have a nasty attitude, just because you haven't come across it so it mustn't be true.

My period normally lasts for 8 days, 5 are heavy flow requiring the super size and changing pad after 3 hours. However my last period was 11 days, 8 of which were heavier than normal and in that week I used 2 packs

I was using toilet paper rather than sanpro in the 90s when I was very poor. The point is you would already have toilet roll and/or you can get it from a public toilet. This is nothing new, just on a wider scale, plus at last it's being acknowledged.

I use Tena Lady which i have to wear all the time as i have an overactive bladder so they double for my periods as well I use the Extra ones mostly and the Extra Plus when im on.

Did no one use cotton wool? Or were we unusual of having a Constant supply of it?(not much in the way of san pro though)

I get periods every 2-3 weeks and use 1.5 packs.
Each pack is 55p super/long.
Roughly 82p monthly.
Packs of pants in primark approx 2.50
Cheap paracetamol approx 30p

I'm unsure where £500 a year is coming from.

But will happily donate a pack

Octopus & Kemer

Not everyone gets away with a pack pf pads and paracetamol!

Some of us needed pads and tampons changed hourly and heavy duty pain killers/anti spasmodics and anti emetics from Gp.
My nearest primark is 45 minutes away by car! Bloody expensive 'cheap pants' !!!

If you dont have money for food how do you buy san pro?
Still not one self righteous person on this thread has explained how you do this.

Willow the saying there's none so blind as those who will not see springs to mind, I don't think it's worth arguing with Neshoma and Boxset, they were on a few days ago arguing in support of 'unfair benefit sanctions' arguing against anyone with difficulties or that anyone has difficulties seems to be their raison d'etre.

For those lurkers who don't know what's going on I'm going to post some facts and figures:

People are referred to foodbanks by GPs, Citizens’ Advice Bureau, local councils:

The other main primary referral reasons in 2017-18 were benefit delays (24%) and benefit changes (18%). New data about the types of benefit change driving foodbank use is clear: whilst referrals due to ‘benefit sanction’ have declined over the last year, those due to ‘reduction in benefit value’ have the fastest growth rate of all referrals made due to a benefit change, and those due to ‘moving to a different benefit’ have also grown significantly.
Universal Credit is not the only benefit people at foodbanks are experiencing issues with, but it is a significant factor in many areas. New analysis of foodbanks that have been in full UC rollout areas for a year or more shows that these projects experienced an average increase of 52% in the twelve months after the full rollout date in their area. Analysis of foodbanks either not in full UC areas, or only in full rollout areas for up to three months, showed an average increase of 13%.*
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-40431701

Between 1st April 2017 and 31st March 2018, The Trussell Trust’s foodbank network distributed 1,332,952 three day emergency food supplies to people in crisis, a 13% increase on the previous year. 484,026 of these went to children.This is a higher increase than the previous financial year, where foodbank use was up by 6%.
For the first time, new national data highlights the growing proportion of foodbank referrals due to benefit levels not covering the costs of essentials, driving the increase in foodbank use overall. ‘Low income – benefits, not earning’ is the biggest single, and fastest growing, reason for referral to a foodbank, with ‘low income’ accounting for 28% of referrals UK-wide compared to 26% in the previous year. Analysis of trends over time demonstrates it has significantly increased since April 2016, suggesting an urgent need to look at the adequacy of current benefit levels.**
www.trusselltrust.org/news-and-blog/latest-stats/end-year-stats/

I used to use the cheap pads, probably like the 23p ones linked on here. By Christ were they awful.

They were as thick as nappies. You could literally see them through my school trousers. I had to wear skirts and cycling shorts instead of trousers. They glue sticking them down was dreadful. They constantly came loose or bunched up, hence the black cycling shorts, they stopped them slipping down my leg and hid the leaks.

They're filled with cotton wool stuff that balls up whenever you move and then you end up with a ball of cotton wool between your arsecheeks and no protection where it's needed.

A few months into my period my gran asked me why I wasn't using sanpro. They leaked through so much one night, soaking my pjs and her bedding, she assumed I had nothing on. I explained what I had and she had a word with my mum and started supplying me with Always and Kotex. The relief was immense. I had no idea sanpro could be so comfortable and discrete. My periods were still heavy and they still leaked a bit if I didn't change them every hour or two but nowhere near as much.

No matter how skint I was, I'd never make DD go through that. I'd rather shoplift some Always. Luckily, I've always managed to find a few quid to get her some but there's been times when I've gone without or had to ask my mum to buy her some, so I can understand how it's out of reach for some people.

I personally don't care why young women may not have money, some people on this thread seem to though. It seems if they judge you feckless it's fine for you to walk around with menstrual blood streaming out of you, but if they think you didn't deserve to be poor then they might help you out! Since the average age of starting a period is 12 and a half, but happens to 8,9,10,11 year olds. These are people who think that 8,9,10,11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 year olds don't deserve help with sanpro. Let's start interrogating children about sanitary protection!

Some people have resurfaced on this thread who think that people who can't afford things are all scroungers, omitting the fact that 'in-work poverty' in the UK is a growing problem.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has today [22/3/18] warned that working families are continuing to struggle on low incomes, with two thirds of children and working age adults in poverty belonging to working households.
www.jrf.org.uk/press/working-families-still-locked-poverty-time-right-wrong-work-poverty

A record 60% of British people in poverty live in a household where someone is in work, according to researchers, with the risk of falling into financial hardship especially high for families in private rented housing.
Although successive governments have maintained that work is the best route out of poverty, the study by Cardiff University academics says the risk of poverty for adults in working families grew by a quarter over the past decade
www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/22/record-britons-in-work-poverty-families-study-private-rented-housing

Around two thirds of children in poverty in the UK have at least one parent in paid work. This bold figure undermines the claim that work provides a straightforward route out of poverty. Instead, it tells us a great deal about the type of work that low income parents currently undertake.

www.cpag.org.uk/content/stop-work-poverty

Workers dragged beneath poverty line by low wages

Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) found that 57 per cent of Britons in poverty live in a household where someone is in work, up from 35 per cent in 1995.
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/workers-dragged-beneath-poverty-line-by-low-wages-xss9k5xj9
Article dated 7/3/18

paracetamol doesn't work for period pain, no idea why anyone thinks that it does.
You can take ibuprofen but they give you stomach ulcers.
So you have to take co codamol and ignore the paracetamol in it. More expensive.

I don't know about some people on this thread but I'm not personally going to interrogate an 11 year old and decide whether she deserves a sanitary towel using a check list of how she became poor enough not to have one. I'm going to do the decent thing and donate them to foodbanks and redboxs so no child has to live with that kind of basic need unfulfilled. BUT I guess the Neshoma's and Boxset's of this world can do the same but put a note on the packet that their donation is only going to go to those they consider deserving!

Cheap towels might 'only be 50p a pack, but if you have 2-3 menstruating women needing 2-3 packs per month it soon adds up.

And RebelRogue cotton wool! FFS either you're a man or you're very uninformed. Any woman knows that cotton wool disintegrates and sticks to the vagina, vulva, labia (since you're not very on the ball that's what you might call 'down there) causing problems for removal, hygiene issues and possible vaginal infections, as do using rags. BUT hey better judge the poor and pay out for unnecessary medical treatment than help them out.