I suppose everyone who has ever got their period has the same nightmare, though for most of us, it’s come true. Mine happened a couple of years ago while reporting at a festival on New York’s Governors Island. It was August, hot and sticky, and I was wearing a white linen dress and thin cotton underwear. I was interviewing people all day. Later, a woman came up to me. I thought she wanted to speak about the festival. It turned out she had something else on her mind.
“I brought you a bottle of water because I think you may have sat in something,” she said. Inside a portable toilet, I found a stain the size of a child’s football, the colour of rust and red grapes. I had got my period and hadn’t even noticed it until that dear woman saved me. It was the worst-case scenario, worthy of the “embarrassing story” section in a teen magazine, and yet I had been menstruating for 25 years. Who knows how long I had been walking around like that? I continue to be mortified by this story, and it’s a long way of saying that I should probably be someone who invests in period-wear.
By now, you may have heard of period underwear, if not tried it out: knickers made from some combination of anti-microbial linings and moisture-wicking fabrics (these companies tend to keep the exact formula a secret). The idea is that the fabric pulls liquid away from the body and traps it inside, allowing you to bleed freely. Depending on your flow or confidence or both, they are designed to be worn either as a back-up to sanitary wear, or in place of it.
Period pants have been around since the mid-1990s, though my first foray was just over a decade ago when I worked at a feminist magazine and we were sent Lunapads (now called Aisle). It didn’t go well. They were cotton pants with a thick gusset, as if a cotton pad was built in. It felt like wearing a wet sanitary pad and, if I’m honest, they had a certain scent about them. I wore them as back-up on planes or while camping, but didn’t exactly feel reassured. When they started to stretch out, I threw them away and never ordered replacements.
Times change, though. Period pants have much improved to become a booming market. They’ve branched out, too. There are now colourful period-leotards and period-exercise-wear, period-swimsuits and period-sleep shorts. One company, Thinx, even has a blanket that costs close to $370 using moisture-wicking cotton, presumably to have sex on.
“When we launched in 2013, there had been no innovation in period care since the 1930s,” says Shama Amalean of Thinx. “The category was dominated by single-use disposables, including tampons, 88% of which have single-use applicators.”
Period-clothing may be a relatively new market, but it’s a growing one. Canadian company Knix, which also sells leggings and bodysuits, amassed C$53m (£31m) in a round of fundraising last spring. The Period Company, co-owned by Hollywood superstylist Karla Welch, who counts Tracee Ellis Ross and Justin Bieber as clients, recently launched a line of affordable (from $12) shorts.
Others on the up include Ruby Love, which sells period-swimwear, and Dear Kate, which makes leak-proof athleisure. Wuka, which stands for Wake Up Kick Ass, bills itself as the UK’s first period-underwear company, founded in 2017, and sells period-proof boxers.
Period underwear is not just being sold to savvy millennials; it can now be found at Primark (its three-pack is £13), Boots (with Thinx for £17.95) and even at Left Bank Parisian pharmacies. This suggests they’re becoming normalised as consumers seek more sustainable, more comfortable, and cheaper solutions than tampons, pads or cups.
Period-clothing could probablyLD make my menstrual life easier, but when it came to testing it I had some concerns. Do they actually work? Can one pair of leggings hold five tampons’ worth of blood? Do you feel like you’re wearing an adult nappy? Do they … smell?
I started with pants, a Leakproof High Rise from Knix ($35), worn under jeans. They felt thick and sturdy – a little slip of underwear is my normal choice – but if I’m free-bleeding on the heaviest day of my cycle, I don’t want anything barely there. I felt a bit damp while doing errands in the heat, but never leaked. That night I slept in a pair of sleeping boxers from Karla Welch’s The Period Company.
“Looking at my own period, there was so much waste,” says Welch. “I hate tampons. I have a much better period if I let my body flow.” She partnered with Sasha Markova and launched the line in October 2020 with a round of angel investment. They were profitable by December.
Because I was mostly horizontal and asleep, I didn’t feel myself bleeding into the sleep shorts and I liked not wearing a tampon to bed. In the morning I searched for traces of blood on my sheets like a suspicious groom in a 19th-century novel, and found nothing.
Period pants certainly beat single-use tampons or pads in terms of waste. There are menstrual cups which can be rinsed out and reused for years, but decades of menstruating have taught me that people are either completely devoted to their cups or find them uncomfortable and prone to leaking.
Environmental issues aside, there are other reasons for switching. Two friends of mine adopted them after worrying about toxic shock syndrome from tampons left in too long. One gave me her tips: wear super-absorbent pants for the bulk of your cycle and lighter ones on the days leading up to it and after.
That weekend, I tried a pair of Thinx sport shorts for a tennis lesson. No, the pants didn’t leak or shift or smell (most of the newer brands have an odour-controlling treatment). But when I got home, I took a shower and reflexively used a tampon after. I realised that I missed feeling like liquid was being absorbed inside of me rather than bleeding out.
Maybe that comes from the same internalised shame and misogyny that makes the stigma around periods universal. And if it’s something that I feel, with all the attending privilege of a white woman whose hippy mother gave her a speech about menstrual pride, I can only imagine how difficult it is for trans men who menstruate; people who can’t afford tampons, and people who go through puberty very young.
Adults with incontinence are also adopting period underwear, which I imagine is infinitely preferable to buying adult nappies.
In many ways, period-clothing is simply an extension of the so-called menstrual revolution, which includes free-bleeding and Mooncups (see also: the period sex scene in Michaela Coel’s drama I May Destroy You and even the tampon that appears, momentarily, in the new Bond film).
The aim is to not simply bust taboos around periods, but to normalise them. If there’s still a certain discretion attached to period underwear, what could be more normal than free-bleeding into something everyone can see? (I should add that none of these swimsuits or shorts come in white.)
My last and greatest test was meant to be wearing nothing but one of Thinx’s period thongs under a pink silk slip dress to a party. But I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t so much the threat of leaks, but the anxiety that I would be constantly checking to see if one had made itself known while I was dancing to Dua Lipa. So I wore both a tampon and the period thong, and felt protected. The only undergarment I managed to forgo that night with complete confidence? My bra.
