Tampon Wrappers- The New Fortune Cookies For Girls

Playtex Sports Tampons

Obviously tampon companies work hard to appeal to women and girls, but Playtex Sport Tampons really irk me. I purchased a box on a whim, and to my surprise, each tampon wrapper had an insprirational message on it. Fabulous. Which makes me wonder what inspired them to do this.

I suppose they may claim their intention is to positively support women/girls who play sports while selling their product, which is the gist of what I get from looking at some of their website, but many of the sayings are absolutely ridiculous. How many male athletes are told that it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game? Sure, that sounds nice, but playing competitive sports is NOT ONLY about playing your hardest. It’s playing your hardest TO WIN.

And it’s hard for me NOT to correlate the sayings as being related to my period, because, umm…I’m changing my tampon. The sayings are something related to being "sporty" and the tampon is cheering you on! Woo hooo! I certainly get really pumped up when I change my tampon now, because while doing so I get to read:

"Victory! " or "Game on! " as though I’m in a fight against my period?

"I’m on your team "— creepy.

or "Celebrate your efforts " (huh? is that similar to "Winning isn’t everything, as long as you do your best"?)

and similarly, "Who cares if you win or lose – play the game! " Which kills me, because alot of the sayings are all about doing your best but it’s ok to lose. Fuck you, in my book, I’m a competitive person and so are other female athletes, and no, I’m not going to smile if my team loses a game and hug everyone and say oh well.

How those could be related to my period, I have no idea. Celebrating my efforts to use the ‘right’ tampon and not worry about my period while I’m playing a sport? lol

But my absolute FAVORITE is:

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"You can play hard and still be girly "

oh good. phew. I was worried about that. Especially playing competitive soccer at college level, I know the first thing I worried about before I played a game was if I was still going to be girly (barf). I just couldn’t believe I was even reading this. I know for a fact that my gf, as well as a number of my friends, who are athletes, and very much boi’s, have also never worried about playing hard = not girly , and were insulted by the idea that this should be somethign they should be worried about. As for non-boi’s, the girls I know who are athletes are more concerned with winning than looking hot. In fact, playing hard = hot .

I understand that maybe some (especially young) girls are afraid to be "overly athletic" for fear of losing their femininity, but I’m not sure having my tampon wrapper reassuring me not to worry about this is the best action to take to rectify that. It shouldn’t be the first thing girls worry about when being athletic and having to deal with their period. And I do NOT think a tampon wrapper is the appropriate medium to discuss femininity and athletics, (which I do think are important topics in relation to female athletes etc).

Let’s be honest, Platex has a goal = $$$ .

And I just have my damn period.

duh.