Previously on Fanny Cool

As long as Fanny can remember her periods have always been pretty shitty.  Like an insanely heavy tidal wave of ick, pain like a mad bastard, and several days wandering around like a sick cat dragging it’s sorry arse along the ground.  The monthly mayhem would commence with 7 days of chocolate-inhaling, weeping, sleep deprived PMS and end with a monster migraine.

Imagine then Fanny's irritation when, a couple of years ago, she read an incredibly smug article instructing women to ‘embrace their cycles’ and ‘learn to love their periods’. It encouraged with cheerfully motivational thoughts about 'going with the flow', and cherishing our natural rhythm. Pfft, Fanny thought. Written by someone with teeny tiny bleeds and zero pain. One of those mythical creatures who wears tight white trousers and skips across a field of daisies, grinning in delight at the joy of womanhood with total confidence in her lack of leakage. One of those women for whom a little exercise for light cramp is just the ticket. Not one of us women who really suffer.

 Around the same time though Fanny was also going through a poor patch. She was working in the arts living off tips as a waitress, and was scratching around for ways to save money.  Fanny had read about the Mooncup and decided to give it a whirl to save on tampons and to appease her nagging conscience on the subject of landfill. To cut a long story short, whilst Fanny still believes that they're a brilliant solution for so many vagina-owners, it didn't suit her personally and she spent too much time with her hands up her vag trying to make it work. But even so, Fanny still felt as though she'd had a bit of a ‘ding!’ moment.  The idea of saving money and being a bit less wasteful just seemed really sensible. Fanny started to wonder - what if there was a way of achieving those goals but also being rather more comfortable?  And behold! Google had the answer all along.  Fanny ordered the softest looking reusable pads she could find (suitably thick and long to cope with her monstrous bleeds) and road tested them as soon as her grumpy, shedding womb would allow.  And that was the glorious moment her affair with reusable sanitary pads began.

Fanny will chat A LOT about the benefits of the pads in other posts.  But, to give you a flavour, the hugest, most enormous and bestest benefit was the incredible level of comparative comfort. With disposables Fanny would waddle about like John Wayne with a massive nappy stuck up his front bum, simultaneously being chafed and prickled by the scratchy fabric in her down below region. But with her lovely new pads, she felt cosy, comfortable, and totally, blissfully normal.

To top it all off, the pads seemed so much more absorbent and she didn’t leak. Not even a little bit. And while her body was comfy, Fanny felt a strange but pleasant shift in her mindset about her periods. For starters she felt she was giving her ragey body a little extra love.  The experience of selecting the pads, choosing the softest looking materials and prettiest patterns gave her an wholly unexpected feeling of a treat (retail therapy really is Fanny's crack). The 'ick-factor' in cleaning them was non-existent - they went into the washing machine with her pants and socks and then got tucked away in her chest of drawers with her undies.  Disposables suddenly seemed like the most outrageous and ridiculous con -  and Fanny had seen the fluffy, reusable light.

Fanny still has a feeling that the lady espousing cheery bollocks about ‘embracing our womb cycles’ is a bit of tit.  Fanny will never be all like ‘yay, bleeding from my vagina!’  But she's not sure she hates her period quite so much now… she even feels pretty damn cheery when perusing her finest and most nicely patterned pads, complete with glittery unicorns.

Given that they feel so much comfier, can make you feel a bit less shitey about your periods, can save a vast amount of money and significantly cut down on landfill, Fanny feels compelled to make the case for them.  If she can persuade even one person to try reusables with this blog, she’ll feel as though she's done her bit for womankind…

 More on lots of the topics covered in this post soon…

Fanny, over and out.