Aimee Marks Friday 3 August 2012 10:31am

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Carrie Bradshaw was an applicator girl

by AIMEE MARKS

I don’t do applicators. The thought of ‘injecting’ my own tampon kind of scares me; when I first got my period I had a phobia of needles (long story) and applicators looked a bit like a giant syringe.

I was a swimmer and didn’t want to miss training, so I skipped the pad thing and went straight to tampons. I was familiar with them; I’d seen them in my Mum’s cupboard growing up. With all the new changes happening to my body I remember feeling most comfortable with the ‘foreign’ object that I was MOST familiar with.

I spent a lot more time than your everyday gal thinking about tampons. At 18, fed up with the lack of organic options available, I started TOM, an organic fem hygiene business (another story for another time). I’ve spent over seven years researching this category, I KNOW tampons.

Women use over 12,000 tampons in a lifetime (yes, that many!) I have always felt that the excess packaging for applicator tampons is unnecessary – it’s triple the waste to do the same job. Plastic applicators (used in many countries) are one of the most common forms of rubbish to wash up on beaches all over the world. {Editor’s note: You can buy organic applicator tampons, for example here}

Aimee Marks, founder of TOM Organic certified feminine hygiene products

Have you ever thought about what an applicator tampon does inside your body? Probably not. Try this at home: remove the tampon from its applicator and pop it in a glass of water. It looks more like a jellyfish than a tampon, notice all the loose fibers floating in the glass? It’s the applicator that keeps the tampon round and intact… until it’s inserted into your body.

Many women choose applicators for hygiene reasons – and while I understand this, what  I’m putting inside my body and the environmental impact will still win every time. And on the hygiene front, we should all be washing our hands regardless of what tampon we use, right?

When a young woman first uses a tampon, she is often guided towards an applicator. I’ve never understood why this is, personally, I’ve always found them harder to ‘navigate’. But more importantly, we seem to be sending the wrong message, surely this is an opportunity to be encouraging young girls to get to know their own bodies rather than simply handing them a ‘tool’. Isn’t there already enough of a taboo around periods and tampons? Shouldn’t we be breaking down these barriers, instead of teaching young girls that they need a device to insert a tampon?

I use my finger to insert my tampon. There I said it.

We all have 12,000 opportunities to make considered choices for our body and the planet…what will you choose next time of month?

Aimee Marks is the Founder of TOM Organic certified feminine hygiene products. TOM is the first Aussie organic fem hygiene brand to be ranged by Woolworth’s nationally; giving women a choice every ‘Time Of Month’.

Editor’s note: this is not a sponsored post. We wanted to do a post about applicator vs non-applicator so we thought someone who works INSIDE the industry (yes, the pun is intended) would have an interesting perspective. This is, naturally, just one opinion. Feel free to express your own in the comments below.

We don’t want to sway the debate one way or another but according to the guys over at The Art of Manliness , an applicator tampon COULD save your life. Take a look.

Apparently, a tampon has have a ton of uses to a survivor.

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Over to you. Applicator or non-applicator tampons?

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