Why Aren't Tampons and Pads Free?

My bathroom is humungous. It can be transformed into a bedroom. In it, a toilet, a shower, a bathtub, two sinks - one much wider than the other - a washing machine, and a large area for a dressing table. It honestly is a huge bathroom. And because of its vast size, I have a lot of things to look at - not mentioning my mother or sister's buttocks, inevitably because we believe in sharing this large space in the name of hygiene - but I have deodorant cans to observe, mirrors, toothbrushes, perfumes, the two bathroom mats which change from red to purple, and the amount of pads we have.

We have a lot of pads. We have enough pads to suction up the pacific ocean and store water for later. We have enough pads to stop an amputee suffering from type two diabetes from bleeding to death. We have enough pads to start a blood donor storage revolution. The fact that we have this many pads frightens me, because of all the money we have been spending on these pads. The three of us, mum, my sister and I, overrule my father's space in the bathroom with pads - yes, it has gotten to that point. And Lord help the man when we mistakingly drop a blood clot from our insides in the shower and leave it exposed, out of the drain, mistakingly of course. I am sure this has happened to just about every woman with a bloodied flow. It is disgusting yet factual. An entire shelf, in fact, is designated to just our pads. We do not use tampons, both for cultural and personal reasons, so yes, we have hybrid nappies awaiting our leakages in our times of menstruation.

And it has got me pondering, whilst on the toilet, looking up at that special area in the shelf above the large bathroom mirror, how much money do we spend on pads a month? A year? A decade? It has been a decade since I have first gotten my period, as frightening as that sounds, more frightening than the thought of a blood clot on the floor in the shower - probably not - yet the number is approximately, yes, I calculated it, probably around fifty dollars. Fifty dollars, multiplied by a decade, noting that we spend around fifty dollars a month which is six hundred dollars, around six-thousand dollars a decade for just pads. Not to mention, of course, the sanitary wipes when we urinate or do the latter on the toilet, for the squeaky clean feeling which is taken away moments after one leaves the toilet, or the toilet paper spent wiping away the excess blood and wrapping closed the pad for respect of the male member in our family and for possible visitors and for the garbage collection man. With the added costs of toilet paper and wipes, then I suppose the total would rise up to around eight-thousand dollars.

Eight thousand dollars a decade goes to pads and assistive things to do with female hygiene in my family. That is a frightening thought. That is almost one-thousand dollars per year spent on hybrid nappies for women. Which brings me to my question - why does the government not provide these necessary female things for free? They provide us with immunisations, paid leave in pregnancy, and all other useful things amongst the not-so-useful things that they do or do not provide, yet they do not assist us in the suctioning of our bleeding genitalia? 

It would be a form of true assistance, a way of saying, Hey, we'll be mailing your pads and/or tampons out to you every month, don't worry about that extra eight-thousand dollars! Only in a utopia. Maybe it appears as though I am complaining, but this really is one of my strange daily inquiries. I think a female's expenses would be spared if the government paid for general hygiene. It only makes sense, because we then have more money to spend on shoes we do not want, and makeup that we wear as a mask and mask the mask with the label 'beauty'. 

Honestly, though, all my ladies out there, let us start a petition! Add up your total expenses for tampons or pads or both and see if it matches mine on a decade basis, perhaps I have unraveled something beneficial for our inflated-chest species. This surely will not solve the problem of potentially leaving behind pieces of our wombs on the shower floor, but it will assist us money-wise.