2007 Archives: Diva Cup: Green, Recycable and Reusable Feminine Hygiene
We love the DivaCup so much we re-wrote the review for “Best of 2007.” Okay, in all honesty, we also need to correct one small, rather inconspicuous inconsistency. Like you can’t really have sex when you’re using it or your partner will get poked and probably never want to get busy with you again. Ever.
Speaking of partners, you might not want to discuss the DivaCup with him. In fact, you might just not want to mention this little number at all. Because as we discussed in our last glowing review of the menstrual-solution-to-end-all-solutions, it’s a little difficult to suppress our inner fifth-grader and get over the squeamish factor. Men, as well all know, rarely suppress their inner fifth-graders at all, and are, as a rule, decidedly squeamish in the menstruation department. But we women are above all that, right? We’re open to change and progress, right? Oh so right, EcoStilettoista!
So work with us, here. We like to think of the DivaCup in the context of menstrual evolution. Talk to your mothers and grandmothers who lived through the era of the gartered maxi, a veritable couch cushion of pad that they waddled around with five days out of the month. Ask them how they felt when they discovered tampons. That Eureka moment was probably tempered by a wee bit o’ fear. Will it leak? Will it hurt? Will people know? Will they laugh? They got over it, and quick, when they figured out that tampons made their lives a helluva lot easier and they no longer had to waddle.
That’s how we feel about the DivaCup. After centuries of rags, pads, and finally tampons, we’ve seen the future, and this is it. DivaCup takes the freedom of tampons one giant step for womankind further: It doesn’t leak, it doesn’t hurt, nobody knows, and you only have to deal with it twice a day. That means this: In the morning you empty and replace the DivaCup. At night you empty and replace the DivaCup. In between? You don’t think about it at all. In fact, you forget you have your period. Seriously. You can walk, jog, do Pilates, yoga, whatever (trust us, we put this baby to the test)—it does its job, even upsidedown.
And it’s green. The DivaCup is made from recyclable silicone and you only need one. Put that in context of the approximately 12 billion sanitary napkins and seven billion tampons American women throw into the landfill each year (stats are from 2000).
If the average woman menstruates for over 40 years, and there are 60 million women using disposable feminine hygiene products in this country each year—can somebody please calculate that for us? Now stack that gigantasaurus number in one column, and position the DivaCup in the other. One. Small. Cup. Versus billions and billions of paper, pounds of dioxin-producing chlorine used in conventional materials, and the sheer volume of cotton used in the products themselves.
C’mon, even if your fifth grader is kicking up a storm, it’s worth a try, isn’t it? This is the new frontier! Just don’t tell your man about it.
