Summary: a young woman, probably Canadian, spends five minutes explaining how women in Japan deal with their periods.
Was amused to learn that pads are described (at least in part) by a number referring to their length in millimeters. At around 2:27 into the video, she introduces the “420”, which is - yes - 420 millimeters (16.5 inches) long. Seems like that would pretty much reach from the front waistband to the rear waistband. :eek:
Women come in different sizes, like different than this little Canadian girl and her pals.
Period flow comes in different amounts for different people, on different days.
Pads shift during the day and at night. You can’t/shouldn’t wear tampons overnight lest you leave it in too long and get toxic shock syndrome. Sometimes it’s better to have a diaper on than wake up with your undies, jammies, sheets and mattress pad soaked through with a stain.
People use pads for things other than period blood. Like after giving birth, after gynecological procedures and for poor bladder control.
When some women change positions in any way during a heavy-flow day, the blood leaks forward or back (or even sideways ). I have yet to encounter a pad that was too large.
No, it’s perfectly fine to wear tampons overnight. The toxic shock syndrome myth came about because of a particular brand of tampons that was removed from the market in the 1980s and FDA issued new regulations to tampon manufacturers to prevent it from happening again. I didn’t even know anyone still used pads, what on earth for? A tampon should be good for 12 hours, so two a day unless you bleed very heavily in which case I suggest you visit your doctor and/or consider a diva cup you can empty frequently.
The current rate of women developing toxic shock syndrome during menstruation is incredibly low, 1 per 100,000 women, and seems to be linked to an inherent immune system problem in the affected women more than anything else.
I apparently have some anatomical quirk that makes it pretty much impossible to install a tampon in such a way that it won’t leak. They’re also highly uncomfortable for me.
Pads have their own downsides, but suit me much better than tampons.
The inserts in the boxes really do say “no more than 8 hours.”
Empty, rinse, and reinsert, in a public toilet? no thanks. I have an old diaphragm so I can take my son swimming when I have my period. In and out in my own bathroom.
Other than that, pads, and if that’s my choice, it’s no one’s business but mine.
I must have the same quirk, because I bleed right past them. I have had one in for an hour, bled like crap into my underwear, and then removed the tampon, looking almost pristine.
This bit right here straight up made me laugh out loud. Never in my life, not even as a teen just starting out, would 2 tampons a day have been enough protection.
When I was living in Japan I found that in general their sanitary napkins were smaller front-to-back than American ones, presumably because Japanese women tend to be smaller than American women. I’m not a particularly large woman by American standards – I’m on the tall side, but for much of my time in Japan was bordering on underweight – but I soon learned the hard way that regular Japanese sanitary napkins were small enough that they shifted around a lot while I was wearing them.
I wound up having to buy the longer size overnight pads for daytime use even though they were thicker than what I needed. IIRC a Japanese overnight pad was about the same length as a regular American daytime pad, maybe a little longer. I never encountered one anywhere near as long as 16.5", but that sounds like a great product for overnight use for women who have heavy periods and tend to change positions in their sleep.