Ra ra skirt

[slemslempike]

Previously on slemslempike, I made a post about tampons with skirts.

I initially locked it because of paranoia about Tampax hunting me down for breaking the rather loose security thing I ticked and leaving me in a pool of (blue) blood). Now they are advertising it, according to notmarcie, so I needn't have, but since there are comments I will leave it locked, in case people didn't want to share.

Anyway, further to that post, in which I signed up for a trial, I have received my box of clothed tampons. I am to use them as I normally would, not allow my friends and family to use them, and send back any unused ones. They came with a sheaf of informative leaflets, the first of which told me brightly that these tampons were definitely not harmful! At all! The rest of the leaflets were mostly warning me about the dangers of Toxic Shock Syndrome.

Anyway, my lady time is not yet upon me, and so until I can report properly on the actual experience of using a tampon with a skirt, I bring you the experiments of slemslempike and the frilly tampon.




So here we have a filly tampon. It's less of a skirt, if you ask me, and more of a kind of useless bunch of material at the base. So there's the main bulk of cotton (or whatever it is) that is the tampon, and then over that there's another covering, which goes right over it and then has excess material at the string. It's sort of on one side of the string, if you can see that.

For my first experiment I got a glass of water, coloured it with red food colouring for verisimilitude, and dipped the tampon into it until the top half was quite heavily saturated, and then turned it upside down.



This wasn't a very good way of doing it, it turns out. The skirt thing held off bravely for a while, but then was entirely red. So I tried a different thing. I got a small toiletries bottle, filled that with blood-substitute, wedged the tampon in the mouth, and turned it upside down.



This worked better! Although I got a bit bored of holding it upside down, and wished I were a proper scientist with clamps and things. This time, the skirt thing did hold off for a bit longer, though I'm not sure how much time that would buy you, but then succumbed gradually.



So. Not that much of an advance, you might think. But I beg you to note that in both experiments the string remained spotless. At last an end to tampon-string-staining misery!

Now, bring on the bleeding, and I can try it out for realz.

Comments

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

What actual difference is some flimsy porous stuff supposed to make, frilly or not? I am confused.

Maybe it is there to make the process of removing the thing nastier.

I am just grateful that scented tampons are not the norm in the UK. I lurk in that bit of Boots sometimes to see if the Mooncup section is still nicely at visible height (yes, very sad and a bit creepy, I know) and I have yet to see anything that sinister. I live in fear, though.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

It is for EXTRA PROTECTION. And based on the survey I filled in, keeping the string clean.

That's not sad or creepy! I think highly of you for it. Our local organic co-op stocks the mooncup, but I haven't checked to see if Boots do. My mum once tried to tell me what a funny conversation she'd been having with a friend that ended abruptly when she said "have you heard of a mooncup</i" and I sad "yes, I have one", and she stopped talking.

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

I got mine in Boots in Newcastle, because I concluded that it was worth demonstrating to them that there was Demand. They don't even keep them on a bottom shelf or anything. I am a bit impressed, although obviously not enough to forgive them for testing on animals and bombarding me with ways of becoming a PROPER LADY every time I go in there which is lots more often than it should be.

*small pause to miss the Body Shop and be grateful their stuff always made my skin flake so I only needed them for cotton wool and such*

My mum went Urgh at first re: Mooncup, then Well I can see the point, then Really? when I mentioned the Lots Less Cramping, but says she is too near not needing one any more to go through the learning curve. So, um, almost success there I feel. And I owe her many thanks for never really doing makeup so that I grew up fully aware that it was not some sort of obligation and did not have to learn that myself after horrible teenage experiments.

I think the skirt seems less gleefully insane than those Lil-Lets that come covered in gel. Come on, P&G, you can be weirder than that!

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

LIL-LETS COVERED IN GEL????

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

I saw them in Tesco once and read the box. As one does. It seems they are to enable one to insert a tampon more easily on those later hardly-bleeding days when wearing a tampon is at its least easy and most inadvisable. I think they were in a sort of sealed pouch. They would, um, at least stop that horrible dragging feeling of removing a not-that-damp tampon one probably shouldn't have worn in the first place?

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

The dragging feeling is horrible, but GEL? Wouldn't that stop the tampon absorbing anything?

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

I did wonder that. Maybe it's water-based? And, um, magic?

I may apply for membership of a species that sensibly re-absorbs its womb lining. It is the only solution I see to the MADNESS.

[pisica.livejournal.com]

Oh dear heavens, and also huh?

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

http://www.lil-lets.com/products/extra-comfort/

I didn't imagine them! I feel less insane now.

I stand by the being-anything-but-a-primate, though. I used to faint regularly out of blood loss as a teenager and it was not a clever way to run a menstrual cycle.

[pisica.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry, the 'huh?' wasn't directed at your not-a-primate theory (which, frankly, would be a useful skill) - I'd meant to quote the water-based/magic line.

I don't wear tampons at all, ever - suspect it's partly due to having been a very impressionable age during the whole Toxic Shock Syndrome/Rely events - but even if I did...urgh, if there isn't enough blood then you shouldn't be wearing a tampon!

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

Oh, right-ho. That line was meant to be gibberish and to indicate my complete baffledness re: gel tampons. Oops.

I wore tampons for years because I got the Horror of Pads before I got the fear of tampons, and mere horrendous health risks could not compete with the reality of horrible squelchiness and (TMI approaching) the horrible pain of menstrual dreadlocks. Sort of like smoking even though you know it is utterly utterly dreadful for you, only with more womb lining involved. My Mooncup has made everything lovely, though, and the thought of tampons seems pretty horrid in retrospect.

[cosmolinguist]

"have you heard of a mooncup"

That reminds me; a friend was telling me that she got a coil fitted this week and asked at the doctors if it was okay to use a mooncup with it. Nobody there had heard of it, so they asked her to bring hers in when she came back to the fitting appointment. She did and said they held it like it was an unexploded nuclear bomb.

[notmarcie.livejournal.com]

According to TamBrands, it helps draw "fluid" into the bottom of the tampon to protect against leakage. In my experiment I will be seeing how much extra time it buys you compared to a normal tampon. I might even take bets. I think 2 minutes.

I really want to know what article is about, but I'm not paying eight quid . It seems that the it may not just be a skirt but a fluid wicking over-wrap skirt.

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

I have visions of it splashing when removed. Lovely.

That article is one or more people pretending very hard that their life's work is not an embarrassment.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I used my academic log-in, and it seems that it's a patent listing. My search also brought up items for "highly deformable tampon" http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20060025741.html

But wait! I have found something better. It is an auxiliary product, that functions as FINGER PROTECTION during tampon use.

[aldenmacrae.livejournal.com]

Maybe it is there to make the process of removing the thing nastier.

Ooh, I hope its whole purpose is to fling blood everywhere during the removal process! That would be heaps of fun.

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

It would fully recapture that "oops, I broke the seal a bit wrong" moment from the Mooncup Learning Curve. Good times.