I shouldn’t be charged for being a woman

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Lily Berggoetz, Reporter

As girls grow up and mature into women, they experience change mentally and physically. While even though everyone experience puberty, girls have it worse.

According to ‘Teens Health from Nemours’, most girls have to cope with cramps, bloating, headaches, acne and mood swings. Those are just a few of the common side effects. Not only do we have to deal with these miserable side effects, we also have to attempt to manage the blood that comes out once a month for an entire week!

With all of these terrible things happening to our bodies, what really makes me sick is the high prices of tampons, pads, birth control and other useful utilities that may give us a little relief on our week of unrelenting torment. Women cannot help the fact that they have a period. Why should we have to pay for something that we cannot control? Tampons and pads should be free!

Okay, I am not a mathematician, but I  did some calculating. Tampons, pads, and medicine costs about 30 dollars. 30 dollars multiplied by 12 (the number of months in a year) is 360. That means 360 dollars a year is spent on things that we should be provided for free. As of right now I do not even have a dollar on me.

According to Huffington Post, women spend well around 18,000 dollars on period related items. I could go to college for that much! We could cut this significantly if we just make tampons and pads free. Some people say that tampons and pads are luxury items. This is so far from the truth. They are meant to keep you from bleeding everywhere. Did you know that in India women who cannot afford pads use newspaper, ash, wood shavings and/or cow dung as pads? This could lead to infections. Also, women all over the world share one thing in common, period pains. Sanitary pads and tampons being free would make it so much easier to be a woman. We would not have to worry about price tags and money, instead we could concentrate on staying sane during the worst week of the month.