A ‘regular’ period. Who came up with this term?
I don’t use a ‘regular’ tampon because it doesn’t work for me on my cycle, so I am irregular and I have non-normal periods.
I am one of those abnormal women who each month is faced with the embarrassment of buying super, super plus or ultra tampons. If I am unlucky enough, I’ll get caught out and have to ask a friend, or any female for that matter, if they have a tampon, and then when they present me with their dainty ‘regular’ sized tampon I can’t help but feel shy and self-conscious about myself. Should I ask if they have anything bigger? Only to be faced with a sad and sympathetic smile, ‘oh, poor you’, but also a slight grimace of, ‘I only ever use regular…’
I am glad to say that I know I am not the only abnormal menstruater. I have a friend who prefers to use two ‘regular’ tampons rather than one that actually fits her purely because she doesn’t like buying the ‘bigger sizes’ in the shops, or having them in her bathroom or handbag, where, at any moment they could be seen by someone – either a woman who uses ‘regular’ tampons, or event worse, a man, both will obviously presume her nethers to not be delicate.
Is this a biblical time, also where anyone who touches a menstruating woman will become unclean, and perhaps while we’re at it, any women not bleeding ‘regularly’ should be locked in the attic as a precaution… Maybe a bit OTT, but who can blame a girl on her period, especially a girl on a super period, or an ultra-period, she must be hysterical too, with her irregular, strange, odd, malformed, peculiar, unbalanced bleeding.
Perhaps it’s time, we stopped using the term ‘regular’, and as with shoe size, dress size and bra size, we understand that no woman is ‘regular’. She just is what she is.
Mercedes, from London.
