Heavy Flow
8/14/15 - We discuss the early days of the 2016 presidential race, our love for Planned Parenthood, free bleedin’, and period feminism. Plus, a user review of period underwear.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
LINKS
Rebecca Traister on how women are so hardcore
this week in menstruation: free bleeding marathon period feminism
TRANSCRIPT: HEAVY FLOW
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman. On this week's agenda, our first take on the 2016 presidential race, or maybe the first of many takes, we talk about how much we love Planned Parenthood and why women are the most hardcore humans alive, plus free bleeding, period feminism, and a user review of period underwear.
[Theme Song]
Aminatou: Hey Ann, how's it going?
Ann: I'm sweating in my closet. I'm standing here in a sports bra.
Aminatou: Man, I am the opposite of sweating. The weather is nice.
Ann: I mean it's about to get even worse. I feel like all L.A. weather smugness ends in late summer. But other than that I am, I don't know, I'm just working. My no summer travel is really paying off I feel.
Aminatou: Man, my . . . yeah, my summer travel came to a halt last week so I'm staying put for I think one more week. It's been good. It's been good. There's nothing like sleeping in your own bed. Who knew?
Ann: You know, I have fallen out of love with my bed recently. I feel like I have never in my life bought a quality mattress that has for more than three years made me happy.
Aminatou: My mattress is the most expensive thing I own and it's the best investment I ever made.
Ann: I mean maybe you would feel comfortable endorsing? If not I will ask you offline for a recommendation.
(2:00)
Aminatou: Oh, I bought it from a complete kook in New York but he's the king of mattresses. [Laughs]
Ann: Wait, is he one of those guys that sells mattresses made of chopped-up other mattresses?
Aminatou: No, this is a fancy brand but I will tell you on New York Yelp he's the only person that has five-star ratings, like not a single bad one. Just this is his thing. He's really into mattresses. When I went to his showroom I thought he was going to kill me because I was the only one there and you have to call for an appointment. What kind of business makes you make an appointment to come that's not fancy clothes? I show up. I was really scared. The man sold me on it. He sized me up and he was like "Yeah, you're a side sleeper," and he showed me mattresses and I got one and it's the best. I spent so much money on this thing I'm embarrassed but it was a good investment.
Ann: See, I had some fool tell me that I bought a good side sleeper mattress too and I can attest that that was a lie.
Aminatou: That's because -- I'll give you some offline recommendations.
Ann: Please. Please do.
Aminatou: From the low to high-end. But people are disrupting mattresses now so I know a little about this.
Ann: I'm not . . . you know, I also need new glasses. That's the first . . . for me, as poor as my eyes are, new glasses is an equal investment to a mattress almost just in price so it's got a weight on my list of old lady, big ticket items.
Aminatou: Yeah, no, get a new mattress. Change your life. Bought some new sheets. I'm doing great.
Ann: Great. I mean the sheets . . . so once a house guest of mine who shall remain nameless commented that my sheets were appallingly low thread count.
Aminatou: Truth. It was not me for the record. [Laughs]
Ann: I know, but I just -- I'm just like I don't feel I was raised to appreciate good sheets.
Aminatou: That's wild. I will also send you some good sheet recommendations. Amanda Mattos (?), cool lady friend, sent me some good sheets the other day and I'm actually sitting in them right now. It's perfect.
Ann: Great. So I have a lot of shopping to do after this. What else is going on with you?
(4:05)
Aminatou: You know, not much. Spent a lot of time yesterday with babies at the park and then saw hero Elton John and it's just life-changing.
Ann: Did you cry during the Lady Di song?
Aminatou: I mean, listen, I cried at all the songs. [Laughs] One because, you know, period. But two, I went with zero expectations. Somebody invited me last-minute. I was not super excited going in. And then I just remembered. I was like oh, wait, Elton John is amazing. What am I thinking? And it was the best. Two hours earlier Sam Smith played so it was just like Sam Smith had opened for Elton John in my mind which is perfect.
Ann: [Laughs] The circle of life. That's what that is.
Aminatou: Yeah, it was like a really solid Sunday overall I will say.
Ann: Excellent. I went swimming in my friend's parent's pool which is an L.A. thing as well and then I ate some bad dumplings so I feel like I paid for all my hedonistic pleasures with bad dumplings.
Aminatou: Wait, you're saying that swimming in your parents' friend's pool is an exclusively L.A. thing?
Ann: Oh my god, nowhere else I've lived have I known people whose parents have pools. This is just the only place.
Aminatou: Ann, that is very sad. I'm glad that you are enjoying all these things now.
Ann: Iowa people don't have pools. Like growing up . . .
Aminatou: Okay, I think that's a more realistic thing [Laughs] than saying that it's an L.A. thing to go to your friend's parent's pool.
Ann: For me it's an L.A. thing. I mean, I don't know, friends' parents . . . I guess friends who grew up around D.C., I don't know any of them whose parents have pools. Maybe I was just never invited.
Aminatou: It's okay. I would've invited you to the embassy pool parties. It's cool. Okay, what are we talking about this week? What's on our agenda?
(5:52)
Ann: I mean basically the first of what I expect to be many, many 2016 presidential pre-race race conversations.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: If that makes sense.
Aminatou: Tell me, did you watch the GOP debate?
Ann: Oh my god, I didn't, and it was the best thing I did for myself all week. I just watched Netflix and colored in my coloring book and made collages and then read all the news in one sitting later that night/the next morning. I'm on a long-term plan for staying calm throughout the whole 15 months to come and I can't leap right in with watching in real-time.
Aminatou: Counterpoint I watched both the JV losers' debate and the actual debate because did you know this? There are so many people running for Republican president they had to have two different debates.
Ann: I was aware of this.
Aminatou: The JV debate was amazing and I'm so glad that I watched it. I've been talking so much shit about the 2016 election and how I don't want to be a part of it or whatever and then two seconds into the JV debate I was like "Yes!" [Laughs] This is my heroin. We're back. I had so much fun. First of all the Fox News website was broken. It was the only place where you could watch this garbage. And then they have the most terrible UX so I had to find some weirdo European stream, like illegally streaming Fox News which is great. Yeah, it was so depressing. The whole thing is so depressing but I laughed so hard. I was like all ten of these people really pretending that they can one day be our president which is not going to happen. It can't happen.
Ann: But like it will be one of them. Like was that enough to scare you? One of them has a shot.
Aminatou: I mean barely. Not from what you saw on TV, like it's impossible. And this is not even because I'm a die-hard Democrat because I have my problems with Democrats but it was such a shit-show. It was perfect. I had a very successful tweet that night. It's the first time I've been proud of a tweet of mine. [Laughs]
Ann: Would you like to read it for the record?
(8:05)
Aminatou: I mean I can't read it. It literally was the hashtag #GOPDebate and it was a picture of Barack Obama laughing next to a picture of Hillary Clinton laughing. [Laughs] That shit performed really well for me.
Ann: As it should.
Aminatou: It was -- yeah, it was madness. I have missed the election. I will say this. That was a very delightful interlude.
Ann: How do you feel about Megyn Kelly's new status as feminist hero? I'm smirking.
Aminatou: Yo, I will say this: I have always given Megyn Kelly props when she needed props. You know, she's beautiful, she has great legs, and she's as sharp as anything. And give props where props are due. I thought everybody on Fox actually asked really tough questions. That was one thing I was really surprised by. I was like oh, maybe these guys can do the Democrat debate too.
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: But it's such a hypocrite nonsense to watch all these people double over and talk about, you know, like defending Megyn Kelly. Reminder, Megyn Kelly is a bad person.
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: She's very smart but she's a bad person. You know, granted it was really childish and sexist for Donald Trump to say that she had blood coming out of her wherever, but here's the thing, especially these Republican men that are coming to her defense, like LOL, who knew red state was a bastion of feminism?
Ann: I know, right?
Aminatou: But here's the thing, I think that they're more offended that Donald Trump made a vagina comment than actual like -- you know, than they're upset about sexism.
Ann: I mean I think that's part of it but I also think it's like we have a pledge collectively to never be that overt about the fact that we hate women and you broke the pledge which makes it harder for all of us to enact our actual anti-woman agenda. That's kind of how I feel about it.
(9:55)
Aminatou: Yeah, Donald Trump is crazy. I'm fascinated. I've been reading all these old spy magazines -- I ordered them from eBay -- to just kind of go back into Donald history because I'm like how long has he been a sideshow? And the answer is actually like forever.
Ann: Forever, yeah.
Aminatou: [Laughs] This is -- yeah. Like I wasn't really aware of that. Spy is amazing. What did they call him? Oh, a short-fingered Vulgarian? It's the best. [Laughs]
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: The best, best, best. But the thing that's nuts is he's still leading in the polls which just goes to show your angry uncle who just wants real talk, that guy's going to vote for Donald Trump.
Ann: I mean I feel like there are a lot of people who especially at this stage are like oh, Donald Trump is the one name that I know that's not Hillary Clinton. I'm into it. I really think that that's part of what's at work here.
Aminatou: Yeah. I saw a headline somewhere, I was too sad to click on it, about how Omarosa was endorsing Trump. [Laughs]
Ann: I know.
Aminatou: And that really hurt my feelings because . . .
Ann: What if Omarosa was his running mate? What would you do?
Aminatou: [Sighs] I would just . . .
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: Listen, the biggest struggle that I have right now is that Donald Trump in his store has an item that I want, namely the Make America Great Again hat.
Ann: Oh, I have a tip for you. Our mutual friend Tim Hodgen ordered a knock-off version on eBay of that hat which is delightfully even jankier than the Trump version.
Aminatou: I want it so bad. I just want to make sure that none of my money goes to Trump at all, like not even on accident.
Ann: He sent a message and was like "Can you guarantee that none of this money will go to Donald Trump?"
Aminatou: Okay. Okay.
Ann: So maybe inquire with him.
Aminatou: Ugh, this'll be great. Some like Chinese person on eBay will sell it to me. Perfect.
Ann: 100%. I mean his was so flammable that if you took a lighter to it I'm sure the whole thing would melt instantly which kind of added I feel to its Make America Great Again appeal.
(11:55)
Aminatou: [Laughs] That's so perfect. Okay.
Ann: See if you can find one with a misspelling maybe.
Aminatou: Make Amercia Great Again. That's a throwback Mitt Romney joke for you.
Ann: Ugh, yeah. Okay, well also we should talk about what's happening with the Democrats.
Aminatou: I mean I don't know what's happening. You know, Bernie is running now so you don't know what's going on. [Laughs]
Ann: I mean I would say that Bernie and his non-response to the -- well, in the short-term, non-response to the Black Lives Matter protest at Net Roots followed by him adding a tab on his website that says racial justice is a pretty awesome triumph for Black Lives Matter in the short-term context of what does a non political party social justice movement do during a political primary? I thought that was pretty awesome.
Aminatou: Yeah, I mean except that yesterday he got protested again by Black Lives Matter activists and it's very clear what it was specifically that they wanted in that instance because he's the only Democratic candidate that actually has a social justice platform.
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: I mean I want to be down for Bernie but I don't really understand the point of Bernie. I don't like Martin O'Malley. Hills is complicated. Obviously I love her for her, but you know, there is history there. So I feel like with the Democrats nothing is going to happen for a while. I'm not invested until there's a real opponent, you know?
Ann: But see, I feel like that's my point-of-view on the whole thing is that I'm going to be enough of an observer that I understand my friends' hats when I see them on the weekend but not so involved that my blood pressure is spiking every time I see a new offensive quote or I see a Democratic candidate ignoring an activist movement. I don't know, I just feel like at a certain point it's going to get not ignorable -- that's not a word -- but I don't feel like I'm there yet. I'm biding my time.
(14:00)
Aminatou: Yeah, it's coming. It's coming. America is the most ridiculous place. It's like people don't even vote but somehow we run campaigns like two years at a time. It makes no sense.
Ann: I know, and still don't manage to convince people to vote/enable them.
Aminatou: Yeah. It makes no sense. I will say the one thing that you've been missing if you're not following the campaigns, some of the Hillary emails are the jam.
Ann: Oh, fill me in.
Aminatou: Every time they release her -- you know, because she had a private server, LOL. [Laughs] And who knows the legalities of that thing? So anyway she has to release all her private email and they have a timetable I think now. It's like every six weeks or something through January.
Ann: Oh right, and she missed a deadline.
Aminatou: Yeah, you know, because that's not shady.
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: But some of her emails are gold, like last time there was one where it's like literally her and Huma just having a back-and-forth about how you work a fax machine. It was great. [Laughs]
Ann: Wait, who was explaining to whom the fax machine instructions?
Aminatou: So I think Hillary had like a conference call and she was like they're not picking up and Huma was like "Just hang up the fax."
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: And I'm like oh my god, I've had this exact exchange with my boss before. And you could tell Huma was just getting so frustrated, like just drop the fax. And this other one -- I think in this release there was like an email from Patti Solis sending Hillary a video of herself and she goes "Shake your tail feather!"
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: So I will say you're missing some gems.
Ann: Ugh, yes. And this is why I feel like I rely on friends and social media to bring me what I really need until I go deep and actually start checking political news first thing in the morning.
[Ads]
Aminatou: Yeah, it's like the only thing that made my blood pressure rise recently was obviously the Planned Parenthood attacks.
Ann: Oh my god.
(17:15)
Aminatou: You know, that stuff will get me out of bed any day and I was really disappointed that Planned Parenthood felt like they had to explain themselves over and over and over again. For people who don't know this conservative group basically released a series of videos showing Planned Parenthood providers discussing with doctors fetal tissue and with every video it looked more and more graphic, you know? But it's like hello, this is how we do medical research so, you know?
Ann: Did you see that -- well, various news outlets have attempted to contact the science -- all the scientists and researchers who are registered to use fetal tissue in their research and none of them will speak on the record.
(18:00)
Aminatou: Yeah, because it's such a polarizing issue.
Ann: But I feel like you need people in the scientific community to say "Listen, this is actually something that's legal and here is the result. Here is the positive research that comes from us . . ."
Aminatou: Yeah, like Mitch McConnell voted for the legislation that makes that stuff possible, you know?
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: Like big Republican honcho Mitch McConnell. But it's so frustrating that this conservative group was basically able to be like "Oh, look, abortion is yucky so therefore you shouldn't be -- you shouldn't support it."
Ann: Yes.
Aminatou: And so many people were turned off by that. It's such a reminder that women just deal with so much viscera that we're not grossed out because it's our bodies but for everybody else, you know, I saw a lot of liberal dudes just being like "Oh my god, look at the arm. Look at the bone. It looks like a fetus." And I'm like well, when you're passing blood clots on the regular that are the size of your fist you learn to -- you know, that stuff isn't weird for you.
Ann: Yeah. I mean and also you know what else is gross to see videos of? Knee surgery and any other procedure that is, you know, the human body open and being real and it's not just the kind of what I actually feel like Planned Parenthood opponents would call a gross-out over the issue or legality of abortion. It's just like human viscera is hard to look at.
Aminatou: Yeah. I don't know. One of our mutual lady friends sent me a picture of her fibroids, her uterine fibroids, and I was literally shocked. That was the first time that a body thing has shocked me in a long time.
Ann: By the size?
Aminatou: Yeah! One of them was the size of a grapefruit.
Ann: Ugh.
Aminatou: And she had more than ten of them.
Ann: Wow.
(19:48)
Aminatou: And they're all in your uterus and my first question is is this a normal amount of fibroids to have? And the answer is yes, absolutely. This is the normal amount of fibroids. Like in my head when you have a fibroid it's literally one, you know? I was thinking like a cyst, this is a thing. No, these suckers just grow in your uterine walls and they're ginormous. Yeah, the grapefruit one was like two pounds.
Ann: Oh my god.
Aminatou: And, yeah, she had like dozens of them in her body and just like living her life. I was like women are hardcore.
Ann: So hardcore.
Aminatou: Women are so hardcore. And this ties really well into this great piece that Rebecca Traister wrote in New York Magazine about how women already know how all this stuff works, abortion, pregnancy, viscera. It's our body. We know.
Ann: Yeah, absolutely. And also I feel like speaking about it in a way . . . I mean, yeah, it's our body and we know. But also you should be able to say -- I want to live in a world where you're like oh, yeah, my friend had some uterine fibroids removed and I . . . because women are comfortable talking about their bodies I already know that that means some crazy shit went down in her uterus because I'm familiar because women are talking about it. I want to live in that world.
Aminatou: I know, right? No, absolutely. And in her piece she makes this point of talking about the first time a friend joked about period chunks -- she was in high school -- and then just the whole cycle that women go through, anything from like stillbirth to abortions and out-of-control breathing. Like we've seen it all. Like we know about discharge. It's not weird to us.
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: So trying to gross us out by telling us that our bodies are gross, that shit's not going to work.
Ann: Right, exactly. It's one of those things too where the alternative is often grosser. I wish Planned Parenthood would just be like "Yeah, it's gross sometimes." [Laughs]
Aminatou: Yeah, right? Like bodies are gross. Just deal with it.
Ann: Yeah, sometimes abortion is kind of gross.
Aminatou: Yeah, that's basically the end of this piece. It's like abortions are yucky. A lot of life is yucky. That's like shoulder shrug.
Ann: Right.
(21:55)
Aminatou: It made me so angry. So for that at least, whenever that sort of stuff happens during the election, my ears perk up really fast. I'm such a huge supporter of Planned Parenthood. After college I was very poor and had no health insurance and Planned Parenthood literally kept me alive and it's some of the best medical care I've ever received and I think it's such garbage that these men always want to defund it and they don't actually know the role that it serves in our lives.
Ann: Right. I mean I remember having conversations about this when the Affordable Care Act was being debated about essentially like much of preventive care for women is not an option. And at the time I think it was being talked about in terms of oh, shouldn't women pay higher premiums then because they're in more regular contact? But I am sort of like no, needing to see a doctor regularly is sometimes just what it means to be a woman.
Aminatou: Yep.
Ann: Yeah.
Aminatou: Ugh.
Ann: On that note . . . [Laughs]
Aminatou: On that note let's carry on with the period talk.
[Music]
Aminatou: What else is next?
Ann: Oh my god, This Week in Menstruation. Everybody wants us to discuss the free-bleeding marathon runner.
Aminatou: That lady is hardcore but I have a lot of questions.
Ann: I have so many questions.
Aminatou: Can you explain to people who the free-bleeding lady is? Because somebody said that she was a drummer for MIA and I really need to get to the bottom of that.
Ann: Okay, so I also saw this but it was on Tumblr so you can't verify that. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Exactly, right? I'm just like the teens said.
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: I did not see this anywhere.
Ann: Her first-person account is what I'm looking at right now.
Aminatou: Oh, People Magazine says she is a drummer for MIA.
(23:52)
Ann: Oh my god.
Aminatou: If it's in People, it's real.
Ann: Well this is something that my sister is a marathon runner, she runs multiple marathons a year, and I am ashamed to admit it never once occurred to me to say "Huh, what happens if you have trained for months for this marathon and you show up on the day and it happens to be day two of your period and you are forced to do this thing that's already kind of difficult while wearing a bunch of cotton up there?"
Aminatou: Yeah.
Ann: And this woman was like "I just won't. I'm just going to run." And she said -- let's see. "I ran through my options. Running 26.2 miles with a wad of cotton wedged between my legs just seemed so absurd. I honestly didn't know what to do." Basically she decided to "just take a Midol, hope I wouldn't cramp, bleed freely, and just run." She was wearing red which seems . . .
Aminatou: I know. I love the picture of her -- the pictures of her throughout the marathon where they're just like, you know, you just see the blood at the crotch level. It's amazing. But, you know, I'm like as someone who's a heavy bleeder I don't think that's a possibility for me. I'm just like lady, who knew that you could . . . you could make it look so effortless?
Ann: I feel like people who run marathons, I already don't understand some of their, I don't know, bodily points of endurance and how they do it, and maybe this is just a separate thing. Although there's this part where she runs past her dad and her brother who are watching and she says "I kept trying to awkwardly pull my shirt down to my knees so they wouldn't see that I was bleeding but as I approached them I realized they just wanted to scream and hug and take a photo and celebrate together," which I feel is a similar lesson to free boobing.
Aminatou: Yeah, no, it's real.
Ann: Yeah.
Aminatou: You know, it's like more power to this lady. I just -- you know, it's like Big Chunks McGee over here. I don't think it's possible I could do that ever at all.
Ann: Yeah.
Aminatou: But that's pretty amazing.
Ann: It is pretty amazing, and like the photo of her at the finish is also incredible.
Aminatou: Yeah.
(25:50)
Ann: And I hope every girl who has just started getting her period and has been either horrified by staining her skirt or pants or whatever or is like, you know, terrified by the idea, sees this photo and is like "Oh, you know, whatever."
Aminatou: Yeah. You know, but at the same time I was like man, that is a ruined pair of pants.
Ann: That's true.
Aminatou: Can't go nowhere.
Ann: But also do you know what happens to pants that you run marathons in? Gross things. So maybe it was a one-wear situation.
Aminatou: Yeah. [Laughs] It's definitely a one-wear situation. You know what, though? Somebody that I was talking to the other day, a woman of color, was telling me that she is really tired of period talk because she perceives it as being a very white thing to do.
Ann: To talk about periods?
Aminatou: To really elevate period feminism. And I was like oh, this is a perspective I've actually never considered. And talking about how, you know, she's like "I suspect that for a lot of white women your period is the first time you're told your body is being transgressive or whatever," and that that's not true in her experience and for a lot of people. And I was like hmm, interesting. Something I had not considered.
Ann: Did you relate to that?
Aminatou: I mean it hit me really hard and I was like no, you're right, because I . . . you know? That's why I was really into the marathon runner because she was a woman of color, because if I'm really honest the people in my life that are really into period -- just yeah, the period feminism, are always white. It's always like some white girl doing an art project with her tampons. And so whenever I see women of color talk about it I get really excited. But yeah, it was just like a different perspective for me and I was like something to be mindful of.
Ann: Yeah. I mean I feel of these sort of projects that we've talked about that highlight . . . that are definitely art projects but somehow deal with menstruation, I feel like there have been a number of them by women of color. Like the Instagram . . .
Aminatou: Yeah, the Instagram project. Yeah.
(27:55)
Ann: And there are -- I mean I can't recall the full list, but that is a super-interesting point. It also might be something not just about the first time you feel shamed because of your body or threatened because of your body, but ongoing in life that even as an adult you feel like it's one of the only things about your physical self that is shameful or judged by society. And so wow. She should . . . I mean maybe I'll look. Maybe somebody has written about this. I would love to read about it.
Aminatou: Yeah, somebody has. I will send it to you and post it on our thing.
Ann: Excellent.
Aminatou: But anyway, more powerful to the marathon runner because I can barely walk when I'm on my period so the thought of running 26.2 miles is insane.
Ann: Yeah, I mean incredible. Incredible woman.
Aminatou: Ugh, women. So strong.
Ann: And also at the finish line with lots of other ladies so we can call it shine theory too. I'm just going to call it that.
Aminatou: Yeah, no, most definitely.
Ann: I mean she said "We ran in sisterhood" so obviously.
Aminatou: Yeah, most definitely. This is amazing.
Ann: Ugh, incredible.
Aminatou: Amazing.
[Music]
Ann: So we've gotten lots of requests to talk about period underwear, specifically a brand called THINX because I think they've been doing a lot of advertising or gotten some media attention lately. And as it turns out we've already discussed this a few episode ago but what has changed since then is one of our friends has given these a try and we sat down to talk to her about it. So here I am chatting with our mutual friend Carrie about her period underwear user experience.
[Interview Starts]
Ann: So we're here with producer . . .
Gina: Hi, I'm Gina.
Ann: And our friend Carrie.
Carrie: Hi.
Ann: Talking about two different brands of period underwear that Carrie has given a very extensive day-two menstrual bleed try and I have given a really light day kind of half-hearted experiment with.
Carrie: [Laughs]
(30:05)
Ann: So the ones that I tried very briefly are a brand called Dear Kates which are a little bit more swimsuit-like, don't really have the lace trim, to be totally frank don't really look like underwear that I would wear if I were not menstruating, and the inside is not cotton-lined the whole way up. It is just the between-the-legs portion that is sort of extra reinforced. But everything else, it's sort of like that nylon fabric against your skin. Carrie, tell me what inspired you to order these period panties.
Carrie: I have really heavy periods and I often bleed through and ruin my clothes so I was like what the hell? I think I might need this. I'd also recently talked with a friend who was really having a problem with this issue of ruining clothes and she's a teacher. They're a little bit expensive, but yeah, I ended up liking it.
Ann: Okay, I have so many questions. Tell me on the gnarliest day of your period, I don't know, day two? What is the gnarliest day of your period, two? Yeah. She's nodding and holding up two fingers. [Laughs] Day two. Could these panties . . . I have to say, they're lined with cotton on the inside. They're kind of plasticy on the outside. But like . . .
Carrie: They're like a set. What is it, nylon?
Ann: 100% polyester. So could these cheeky light days size medium panties hold up to day two flow? Please describe.
Carrie: Let me tell you, so I did not wear a tampon at all. I wore these. But I did change it out halfway through. So they didn't take me through an entire day, and I work from home these days. This particular day I was definitely working from home, thank god. But they totally held up.
Ann: So was there like blood -- I'm going to get real. Was there like blood running down your thighs?
(31:50)
Carrie: Never. Never, never, never blood on my thighs. No blood got on my thighs at all. Like I didn't even really . . . I saw blood in the bottom of the underwear a time or two, but I didn't even really feel that -- I mean I felt wetish, I guess, you know? But not terrible.
Ann: Okay, wait, so did you just spend -- this experiment day, did you just spend the entire day going to the bathroom and checking status updates? Because I feel like I would be like oh my god, I'm going to lose track of time and then all of a sudden I'm sitting in a puddle.
Carrie: I pee a lot.
Ann: [Laughs] Hydrate well during your work day?
Carrie: 100%, and I kind of like -- especially when I'm on my period I think I pee a lot.
Ann: Other than sort of maybe nervousness about potential bleed-thru how would you rate the overall comfort? Because I have a different brand here that I received that they're almost like those plastic things that you put over a baby's diaper when you put them in the pool or something. [Rubbing plastic] They have this plastic coating on parts of them and I just felt like maybe I would not have to wear a tampon but also then I would probably get a yeast infection or something, like this shit does not breathe. So interested in overall comfort. How many out of five stars for comfort?
Carrie: I honestly will say five stars. I found them to be very, very comfortable. I don't think I'm tampon-free or anything but on a light day I would just wear this for sure.
Gina: Would you abandon the pantyliner?
Carrie: Yes, and I fucking hate pantyliners.
Ann: I do too. Why are they the worst? Why are they either too sticky, it's like gross shit in your underwear, or it's not sticky enough and you're repositioning that/your butt is eating it? It's the worst. Like they are the worst. [Laughs]
Carrie: I don't want to wear a thick-ass pad, no fucking way, but a pantyliner is super necessary. Unfortunately. But I'm very into finding some way around that because I think they're gross.
Ann: Awesome. Thanks, Carrie.
Carrie: You're welcome.
[Interview Ends]
Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet, on iTunes where you can feel free to leave us a review, on our website callyourgirlfriend.com, on Twitter at @callyrgf, and I believe that's it. [Laughs]
Ann: Awesome. Oh wait, did you shout out to our podcast witch?
Aminatou: And shout out to our podcast producer Gina Delvac. Yeah, see you on the Internet.
Ann: See you on the Internet.