Sanitary Towels Quotes

As for the so-called (sanitary) towels, wearing one soon felt like having a sizeable dead hamster tucked between her legs

When she first arrived, Mi-ran was impressed. The dormitories were modern and each of the four girls who would share one room had her own bed rather than use the Korean bed mats laid out on a heated floor, the traditional way of keeping warm at night while expending little fuel. But as winter temperatures plunged Chongjin into a deep freeze, she realized why it was that the school had been able to give her a place in its freshman class. The dormitories had no heating. Mi-ran went to sleep each night in her coat, heavy socks, and mitten with a towel draped over her head. When she woke up, the towel would be crusted with frost from the moisture of her breath. In the bathroom, where the girls washed their menstrual rags (nobody had sanitary napkins, so the more affluent girls used gauze bandages while the poor girls used cheap synthetic cloths), it was so cold that the rags would freeze solid within minutes of being hung up to dry. Mi-ran hated the mornings. Just as in Jun-sang's school, they were roused by a military-style roll call at 6:00 A.M., but instead of marching off like proud soldiers, they shivered into the bathroom and splashed icy water on their faces, under a grotesque canopy of frozen menstrual rags.

People think the wrong things about sewers. They think piss and shit, a sludge of brown. That’s not it. That’s just the scum that skims along the surface, that’s just the loathsome icing on the cake. It’s the cooking fats, the congealed remnants of washed-away meats, the scrubbed-down rotting husks of vegetables, and yesterday’s mashed potatoes. It’s sanitary towels flushed into a toilet prone to blockages, it’s old tissue paper never quite disintegrating, and it’s human hair that tangles like spider silk and doesn’t break. It’s detergent from the washing machine and soap from the dishwasher, it’s baked-bean grease and uneaten leek soup that has grown mould on its surface from being left in a broken fridge. It’s the fat they fast-fried the chips in, and the remains of old rotting onion. It’s pregnancy tests that gave the wrong answer and the condom that split; it’s used nappies and puke and the bleach they tried to use to take away the smell. It’s everything you’ve ever not wanted it to be, running busily away downhill through brick-built tunnels, towards pits of rotating slime or the wide open sea. The mask wasn’t there to stop the smell; that would

The excuses for female exclusion per se are strikingly parallel to those for breastfeeding couples. Women are ‘shrill’; babies are noisy; women need special provision (separate toilets and sanitary towels); babies need their nappies changing; women distract people by their looks; babies distract people (gurgling charm); women arouse men and make them feel uncomfortable; babies irritate people and are out of place.

I’m going to shower, then you boys can have at it. The water heater is small, so you’ll have to be quick. I’m all for energy conservation, so once again, feel free to join me,” she says with a wink before walking out of the kitchen and into the bathroom. “We can share a towel, too!” “That’s not sanitary,” Madix calls after her.