As long as menstruation remains the great taboo, the perfect product eludes us

This video was produced by Arizona O'Neill as part of the CBC Creator Network. Learn more about the Creator Network here.

The word "taboo" comes from the Polynesian "tapu," meaning "sacred" and "menstrual flow."

That's right. Menstruation is truly the original taboo.

In medieval times, menstrual blood — considered dirty — was believed to cause leprosy in anyone who drank it. In the Victorian era, periods were associated with madness and "hysteria," that mysterious condition, derived from the Greek word for uterus, which only afflicted women.

These ideas persisted into the 20th century, the era that ushered in the "sanitary napkin" — so named because, after all, menstruation was still considered unclean and unsanitary.

Is it any wonder we don't talk about menstruation products?

Objects of shame

Even today, the stigma lingers. I experienced it first hand when I was 12 years old and, as far as I know, the first in my class to get my period.

A classmate at my all-girls' school went into my school bag looking for a pencil and came across a tampon in the little pouch my mother had packed for me.

She gasped as if she had uncovered a great secret, came over to me with a smirk on her face and whispered that I should be more careful to hide my tampons. She handed me back the offending object in front of the other girls. 

I was mortified. Tampons were to be hidden and never discussed openly.

Where is the consumer outrage?

Our silence on the subject of staunching period blood goes a long way to explaining why each of the most commonly used products — the pad, the tampon and even the menstrual cup — is so poorly engineered.

Pads are bulky and uncomfortable. They chafe. In tight leggings, you worry a pad will be noticeable through the thin material.

My grandmother says the Kotex pads she wore were so thick, she could not even get into her pants with one on. I associate them with an older generation that wore a lot of skirts and dresses.

Tampons come in different sizes: light, regular, super, super plus and ultra. But sizing is far from a perfect science. It is difficult to predict your own flow. Sometimes they hurt. Sometimes they leak.

Then there are the horror stories: I know one woman who accidentally put in a tampon, forgetting she already had one in place. The first tampon stayed lodged inside her for two weeks before she had to be rushed to the doctor in severe pain.

She's not alone. It is easy to forget you have a tampon in, and leaving it in too long can lead to infection and, in rare cases, toxic shock syndrome.

Finally, there are menstrual cups, commonly known by the brand name DivaCup. They are not exactly user friendly. They are tricky to put in, as they need to slip directly over your cervix. An imperfect fit can cause leakage and a mess. They are also hard to take out without spilling blood.

And while silicone menstrual cups are environmentally friendly, since they are reusable and create no waste, some women are shy to use them because to clean them, you need to boil them openly in the kitchen. There's that stigma again.

It took a war

So how is it, since people have been menstruating since the beginning of time, that this is the best the marketplace has to offer?

As with many historical facts related to women, I knew almost nothing about menstrual products: how they had evolved, and what women had used before pads and tampons were commercially available.

I decided to do some digging.

What I found was surprising.

It turns out menstrual products as we know them are a fairly new invention, and like many innovations, it took a war for someone to come up with the idea.

The Creator Network, which works with emerging visual storytellers to bring their stories to CBC platforms, produced the piece. If you have an idea for the Creator Network, you can send your pitch here.