Bloody Hell: Part 2

How Much Does a Period Cost, Anyway?

Oh, did you want to buy a house? Sorry, you spent the down payment on tampons.

There is a graveyard of menstrual cups in the bottom drawer of my bathroom cabinet. Every time I look at them — there are three, I think — I scowl and imagine what I could have purchased with the money I wasted. Maybe it’s my tilted uterus, maybe I just can’t get the placement right, but for whatever reason, menstrual cups do not seem to jive with me.

The leaks. Oh, the leaks.

Unfortunately, each of those cups — which, um, you can’t exactly return — cost between $15 and $30, plus shipping. I tried several because all my friends assured me that this is the one that really works. No, this one!

None of them worked. It was a pricey experiment in trying to cut down my waste footprint.

Not to mention, of course, the cost of the liners I still had to use in case of emergency and the emotional cost of never being sure what was going on in my jeans.

Which is to say: My foray into menstrual cups was an interesting reminder that having a period is very, very expensive. Which I knew already — I relied on stolen tampons throughout my entire collegiate life — but it’s really driven…