AIBU to not wear panty liners every day?

[Sammysees]

Tbh this is a complete new one for me. Was having a conversation with a friend yesterday who wears panty liners every day and has done since she was 15. I’d never heard of this before and told her so. She told me I was a manky minge and that everybody wore them. Is this true? Thoughts please ....

@bertiebotts
I am a little confused as we regularly have to go to Ann summers to pick up slide and ride which would suggest the opposite problem? Menopause is done and dusted.

Oh @Lweji get a grip. Well done for being so pedantic and such a smartarse.

I think that's unlikely. Most vags dry out with menopause.

To those who ask, yes I do use reusable nappies, reusable sanpro, reusable makeup wipes my clothes are generally second hand, my childrens clothes are part of a rotation with friends and have been passed on several times with occasional new items, I update my home with stuff from fb marketplace, the children's plastic toys are second hand.

Even if I didn't do the above, I'm still allowed to be concerned with the amount of stuff being sent to landfill. Being concerned for the environment is not shaming other women.

I don't wear panty liners every day, no way. Changing knickers daily is fine.

Nope. Not good for the environment, hardly helping your finances and less than ideal for your nether region. Surely wearing sanitary products every day increases the chances of thrush down there!

I don’t either. Think it’s her that has the manky minge!

Thank you those who have doubted my nursing qualifications. I'm a qualified nurse and specialist community practitioner in general practice and my role is largely sexual health, contraception and cervical screening (along with chronic disease management, childhood immunisations, travel health, general health screening etc). If a woman attended for a smear that was suffering from excessive vaginal discharge then I would take swabs to check for infection. If all came back clear then she would be advised that it is likely to be normal physiological discharge and nothing to worry about. She'd be advised re hygiene, no scented products, cotton knickers, avoiding tights and tight clothing. If if continued to be a problem then she'd be referred to gynae for further investigation. I have swabbed and screened hundreds of women and never seen any excessive discharge like described here. I'm not saying it doesn't happen but in my experience it's not usual and would be investigated. So many women don't understand their genitals and have anxiety about how normal they are so it's no surprise discharge is seen as dirty.

That sounds about right to me perverse. I'm not a nurse but am medical.

I imagine it’s a vicious cycle.
Your bits probably issue more discharge in protest at having been smothered by a liner.
Hoorah for the cotton gusset.

It's not like it's pouring out all the time, it comes in globs, it might be present or not at a gynelogical examination.

OP it's different from the fluid which is produced during sexual arousal. Indeed non-fertile mucous is more like hand lotion and doesn't really provide any sexual lubrication at all, it's more sticky. So it's possible that somebody could produce more discharge than usual yet still require lube.

I don't think my discharge is dirty, it's perfectly healthy and shows my cervix is functioning normally, but I don't want to sit in it all day either.

• imagine it’s a vicious cycle. Your bits probably issue more discharge in protest at having been smothered by a liner. Hoorah for the cotton gusset.*

Nah, my bits are normal to be ‘issuing’ discharge at certain times of the month, for ovulation it’s been helpful to me to get pregnant, I’d rather just avoid it on my trousers. I think dryness is a worse issue, but in the meantime, I’ll avoid the wet clothes with a pad.

I'm aware other things I do impact the environment, but landfill is one of the things I really worry about.

I am not sure that 21st century clothing is very vagina-friendly. I think cotton knickers used to be more substantial and always have a proper gusset. Now there's a trend for very insubstantial pants - more thong-linke often with added lycra. Nylon tights will be worn by a great many women. Fashionable trousers will usually contain synthetic fabrics and may be closely fitted around the crotch. So combined with industry that promotes the idea that the vagina is a zone that needs 'freshening' to be hygienic, the whole thing becomes problematic.

In early centuries women would have worn loose or open knickers or long underwear that wasn't closely fitted.. Stockings might have been worn but not tights. Skirts and dresses would be loose - as would trousers if worn. Inexpensive synthetic fabrics again, are a relatively recent development.

It seems like people are confusing a few things.

Incontinence - if you leak pee then you probably want a pad or liner of some sort. But that's not discharge, and a pantyliner isn't really made to hold any significant amount of urine.

Period - makes sense as that's liquid that can stain and get your clothes wet. On a light flow day totally normal to use a liner

Discharge - If you're wearing a pantyliner daily because A) you have excessive discharge or B) your discharge has a strong smell, you might need a medical check up

There are lined panties like Thinx that would be a more sustainable option and probably healthier than plastic liners.

@visitorthedog that's where I am right now - very clear pattern of fluid so not a medical
Issue.

Meanwhile does anyone use washable liners? Any links? Any good?

I'm moving to liners I've had enough of worrying about stains. The disposal liners bit plastic and sweaty for my liking

Cotton is not sustainable, and few women can afford to buy enough Thinx type pants to have enough clean, dry ones handy. We'd also have to carry them around in our bag along with the used ones.

I don’t think shaming people that have more discharge by asserting it’s a medical issue (when it’s not for many) or that they’re a landfill disaster (some of us use cloth ones or thinkx style pants) is helpful. Especially when you have no knowledge of it!

Also - cloth is likely out of reach financially for quite a few women too, the initial outlay can be a lot.

@visitorthedog - easy and cheap to make them yourself from material you already have in old clothes.

So many women don't understand their genitals and have anxiety about how normal they are so it's no surprise discharge is seen as dirty.

@PerverseConverse … I largely agree with this, and further agree that there will undeniably be women who've fallen for marketing and/or are unnecessarily fretting about needing to use a liner when their discharge is minimal. However, I am confused why you think it's necessary to offer 'hygiene' advice to women presenting with excessive discharge ? (assuming there's no obvious evidence of poor hygiene like grubby clothing, stale sweat smell and so on) As a grown adult I would feel insulted and patronised at the implication this complaint was of my own making … offering hygiene advice when a woman has already been negatively screened for infection, other underlying causes etc. suggests that copious vaginal secretions might therefore be caused by poor hygiene …. i.e. that the woman concerned is, indeed, 'dirty', despite your efforts to reduce women's anxiety about their genitals and how they work.

I don't doubt your medical credentials by the way but it's not all that surprising that you, or your colleagues, haven't 'seen' the volume of discharge many of us have described here because it's a cumulative thing across the day, and it's not as if we can collect 24 hours worth of the stuff to show you. If I'm having a smear for example, I would always shower immediately beforehand and if that weren't possible, freshen up with wet wipes in the surgery loo. I can, however, certainly describe my experience, how it soaks through my knickers and onto outer clothing, how uncomfortable it is some days when it's particularly heavy, necessitating a change of liner, how anxious it can be worrying about leaving a noticeable wet patch when you get up from a seat (which would also be on the back of your skirt) etc etc …

… unfortunately however, it would appear - like a lot of 'women's issues' - that unless you have first hand experience of it yourself, a significant number of other people, including other women and HCPs more the shame, simply don't believe it can be 'that bad' and to add insult to injury then denigrate us for being 'gross', 'dirty', 'paranoid', 'exaggerating' and so on, even before you get on to the guilt tripping in relation to landfill. Don't get me wrong, I'm not 'woe is me', I'm not looking for sympathy or even a solution, having had medical nasties ruled out. It's much more of an annoyance you learn to deal with rather than something which has a severe impact on your life. What I am really fuming about though is effectively being told that I can't possibly be experiencing what I know to be very real on the basis that others don't have and/or have never seen this issue.

This whole thread has made me want to bang my head repeatedly on a wall

I think it is just very difficult to know how to read the posters on Mumsnet - for many of us it isn't about trying to shame people necessarily.

But I know that many Mumsnetters feel that their vulva is 'cleaner' if they remove their pubic hair. There also many people on MN who change towels each day - after a single use even - who spray disinfectant over kitchen surfaces, wash chicken, would never sit on a public toilet, who put down more towels if they have sex and wash immediately afterwards. There is a lot of discomfort about the body.

So it seems quite possible that if I'm ovulating and have a bit more vaginal mucus than normal, I vaguely register a slight dampness. But I'm wearing cotton pants and strong denim jeans, and I just go on my way.

Whereas other women - ones who have very strong views on what constitutes bodily hygiene and who opt for less substnatial, tighter synthetic clothing - might produce exactly the same amount of mucus but experience this as being 'soaking wet' - and need to take immediate action. Or they'll want to do stuff in advance that will prevent this 'soaking' sensation.

@catsmother by Hygiene I mean washing the vulva without perfumed products, not douching the vagina, advising the vagina itself is self-cleaning. Nothing to do with suggesting that they don't wash or are unclean in any way.

Oh bollocks is anyone being shamed.
For some women and for all women at some times in their lives, they are a godsend.
The suggestion that all women need them all the time is a triumph of the marketing people who are always looking for new ways to make women feel unhappy and insecure about their bodies and sell them a solution to an imaginary problem. And anyone who says they are not vulnerable to advertising is either lying or in denial. We all are!! And we act on their bullshit even if we know it is bullshit. So we are made anxious and spend money we don't need to spend and damage the environment in ways we don't have to. Because some corporate arsehole had a clever idea one Monday morning about something he could sell us.

I don’t think shaming people that have more discharge by asserting it’s a medical issue (when it’s not for many) or that they’re a landfill disaster (some of us use cloth ones or thinkx style pants) is helpful.

Yes, this. There's a worrying tendency on MN (and lots of other websites to be fair!) to default to 'anything that is not normal for me must be a problem that needs fixing'. It's like the body hair discussions- the number of adult women who find the idea that some women are naturally hirsute and that it isn't a medical condition needing treatment impossible to get their head round is always an eye opener. For many women, heavy discharge is normal, natural and healthy, and it's very annoying when others attempt to say that it is not!

@pandorasbag - I think quite a few of us on this thread have made it more than clear that at certain times of the month it could leave a noticeable wet and uncomfortable patch through even jeans. It’s nkt a perception, it’s a regular described experience of a normally functioning women’s body (of which clearly there is a large spectrum).

This lack of awareness and belief in other people’s anatomy and experience is what does make girls and women ashamed of their bodies, thinking they are ‘wrong’, ‘different’ or ‘dirty’. The porn culture is bad enough without women adding to the problem themselves.

@catmother - I absolutely agree with everything you’ve said!