The story of how tampons came to be is a little dubious in origin, but let’s visit it anyway, shall we?
John Williamson was alleged to have stuffed a condom with cotton. Tada, a tampon was born! It’s said that he worked for a manufacturing company in the 1920s; he showed the solution to his father and the father said, “Never would I put any strange article inside a woman!”
Ridiculous story, right? And pretty dubious since patent records show Earle Haas inventing the tampon in 1931 and Tampax using the design to produce tampons commercially.
Nadya Okamoto, the co-founder of August, a period care company, explained on TikTok that she designed new tampons designed for an actual vagina.
Which is to say: they don’t open cylindrically.
“Our tampons open axially, so they open to the sides,” she explained to Buzzfeed and in her TikTok videos. “This won’t put pressure on the sides of your vaginal walls. At the same time, it will fill up with blood from the top part, where the cervix opens, but it will still stay slimmer at the bottom so that when you pull it out, it’s more comfortable.”
During a period, the uterus lining is broken down and blood, tissue, and nutrients flow through the opening in the cervix and out the vagina.
Although vaginas come in many shapes and sizes, imaging studies revealed that most vaginas are narrower at the vaginal opening and wider at the cervix — a V shape.
August tampons and pads boast an innovative design, no plastic, and 100% organic cotton.
Nadya posts TikTok videos using period blood to dispel menstrual stigma and realistically show how period products work.
She explained: “This biological function is what makes human life possible. It’s a natural thing that over half of our global population experiences.
“It makes me sad when other young menstruators are like, ‘That’s disgusting,’ because I’m like, ‘But you menstruate; you see this. By you saying that, it’s like you also think that your own menstrual blood is disgusting. And that comes from the societal understanding that periods are gross and periods are shameful.”
Word, girl!