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Jeanne Guien, a doctoral researcher, appears to be like at three emblems of our “menstrual tradition”: disposable pads, tampons, and period-monitoring purposes. Three merchandise that, the creator writes, “imply residing in a consumerist society: a world the place to have, to make use of, to share one thing, is initially to purchase one thing.”
To grasp how Procter & Gamble, Tampax and co. got here to impose their disposable empire – which has a worldwide turnover of a number of tens of billions of {dollars} every year – required some digging within the archives. By analysing the communication strategies utilized by these corporations since their inception within the late nineteenth century, the researcher reveals some causes for his or her success. Among the many predominant elements was their cultivation, via advertisements and TV commercials, of a tenacious hatred of the human physique and of the “home made” units that had lengthy been used to soak up menstruation.
In “Une histoire des produits menstruels“, the researcher Jeanne Guien appears to be like at how these polluting merchandise turned so profitable.
Consumerism is sneaking into essentially the most non-public corners of our lives, leaving its mark on even essentially the most mundane of habits. That is what researcher Jeanne Guien has brilliantly proven in her newest e book, “Une histoire des produits menstruels” (revealed by Divergences).
Disgrace as a gross sales approach
Imitating the “disgrace campaigns” (described in Jeanne Guien’s earlier e book) that launched the toothpaste and deodorant markets, the trade skilfully created and nurtured a sense of “concern and disgrace” amongst menstruating folks. Early Twentieth-century ads went as far as to assert {that a} girl who was menstruating (and never utilizing their merchandise) may very well be “recognised (and humiliated) by the scent”, says the researcher.
The menstrual cloths used till then have been described (with out proof) as “harmful”, out of date, and answerable for “60% of ailments”. “Disposable pads,” writes Jeanne Guien, “have been in comparison with the phone, to electrical mild, to girls’s entry to college […], and menstrual cloths to grandmothers.”
This advertising technique relegated reusable menstrual merchandise to the fringes and allowed a handful of multinationals to determine a monopoly on the brand new “interval market”. The factories of one of many trade’s leaders, Procter & Gamble, have dumped a lot wastewater into Florida’s Fenholloway River that it has turn out to be the third most polluted river in the US, the researcher says. In the UK alone, plastic-laden tampons and disposable pads generate almost 200,000 tonnes of waste per yr.
Evaluating reusable options to a “darkish age” has allowed these corporations to current themselves as revolutionary, pushed by the relentless pursuit of technological innovation. The trade, explains Jeanne Guien, practises “advertising technowashing”: it consistently invented new phrases to recommend the arrival of latest, supposedly extra environment friendly and absorbent designs and strategies.
Poisonous supplies
Too unhealthy if these “technological improvements” have value customers their well being and typically their lives. Jeanne Guien remembers that warnings have been issued as early as 1975 concerning the hyperlink between bacterial toxins and a few of the supplies used to make tampons.
Procter & Gamble however continued to promote “tremendous absorbent” tampons till 1980. When the gels in these merchandise liquefied, they launched glucose, which feeds Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium answerable for poisonous shock syndrome, an infectious and typically deadly illness. This case, the researcher analyses, “is typical of the over-emphasis on innovation, secrecy and safety that characterises this sector, which advantages straight from the disgrace it encourages in its promoting”.
This disregard for well being continues right now. The trade is unregulated and the substances of the overwhelming majority of tampons are unknown. Chemical bleaching of cotton remains to be widespread, regardless of the well being and environmental penalties. There’s additionally a neo-colonial dimension to this downside, which is explored at size within the e book. In 2019 and 2020, for instance, assessments confirmed that At all times pads bought in Kenya contained polyethylene, a plastic that was faraway from American, Canadian and European sanitary pads in 1996 as a result of it was unsaf…
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