Lunapads Blog

The Girls Rock Camp Alliance is a volunteer-run, non-profit organization where girls 8 to 18 can learn an instrument, form a band, write music, and rock out with other girls. If that’s not rad enough for you, it’s also a place where girls attend self defense, body image, zine making, screen printing, and other self-esteem building workshops led by female mentors.

The very first ever Rock n’ Roll Camp for Girls took place in Portland in 2001 — since then, camps have sprung up all over the world, and now more than 700 girls are mentored every year. This year, we’re sending gift certificates and Teen Booklets to the Girls Rock Camp Vancouver campers, and gift packs for the volunteers and organizers, too.

My own experience of being so profoundly influenced by the riot grrrl movement as a teenager makes it easy for me to wax poetic about how heartening and inspiring this all is.. but I’ll let the girls speak for themselves:

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I’m guessing that most of you will by now have seen one of the videos by the U by Kotex marketing campaign, in particular the widely circulated “Apology” video and television commercial, in which a young woman delivers a hilarious deadpan skewering of feminine hygiene advertising clichés.

I’ll be upfront in admitting my initial shock and mildly jealous irritation at seeing what has essentially been our message for the past 10+ years being trumpeted by a disposables manufacturer.  Realizing that widely broadcasting these kinds of messages to the mainstream is simply not within our financial means, I was consoled by the fact that at least somebody is doing it.

I had decided not to give the campaign more airtime than it was already getting until I happened to view the TV ad for the Australian version of U by Kotex - “Platinum”. The ad, in which a young woman (whose hair is “great”, an attribute mocked in “So Obnoxious”, another of the video series) breathlessly sighs “Only U can take me there”, is completely absurd and falls squarely within the tradition that the other videos nominally seek to confound. The ad is so bad, in fact, that it made The Frisky’s “12 Stupidest Menstrual Advertisements, Period” list. If Kotex is genuinely sincere about presenting “a whole new attitude in protection”, why create a different message for Australian women?  Is it because Australian women are still falling for the same old message, or is this an attempt to play multiple sides of the field: those who can still only deal with blue liquid and leaping around in white spandex, and those who are ready to call a spade a spade?

I feel certain that the American campaign’s message was drawn straight from some pricey market research that told them that young women were (surprise!) pretty ok with talking about their periods and vaginal health, enjoy humorous online videos and are of the view that old school menstrual marketing clichés are kind of dumb and over. While it would be nice to think that Kotex is sincere about wanting to “Break the Cycle” (U’s social media campaign dedicated to eroding the decades of shame its own marketing has heaped upon women and girls), their mixed message to Australian women tells me that it’s more a clever move driven by the research speculated about earlier. What really gets me is that despite this new marketing campaign, the products haven’t changed, (unless you count sleek black boxes and brightly colored wrappers as meaningful innovation, which I don’t so much) - still the same, bleached disposable junk heading to a landfill near you.

Last but not least, a little sleuthing at Drugstore.com reveals that those bold, cycle-breaking neon colored wrappers are pretty pricey - while OB and Tampax are $0.19 and $0.18 each, U by Kotex are a whopping $0.30 apiece. I guess progress (or rather, fancy packaging and expensive marketing campaigns) has its price.

Suzanne and I are just back from an awesome road trip to Portland OR and Stevenson WA, where we attended our first Social Venture Network (SVN) conference. SVN is basically the North American nucleus of progressive business and social profit enterprise thought, and we are thrilled to be newly minted members of this fine organization.

But first, a word about Portland - how cool is that town?? We loved the unpretentious (yet deeply cool), crafty, entrepreneurial vibe (Vancouver is busily taking a page from its food cart culture), architecture and vintage signage, and excellent beverage selection (beer or coffee lovers, hello!) We visited our pals at Bitch Media (left - note the cool sign above the awning) and explored their artsy neighborhood along Alberta Street.

There were all kinds of extraordinarily clever and passionate people at SVN: I’d like to tell you about some of the women we met there.

I loved meeting Patti Moreno of Garden Girl TV, who 11 years ago decided to eat healthier by learning to grow her own food and ended up with a new career in helping urbanites connect with nature in their own back yards. Her shows are accessible (“I don’t like to use the Latin names for plants, it alienates people” she told me), entertaining and inspiring a new generation of youth and families to get some dirt under their fingernails.

Most American parents will recognize the Hanna Andersson label of children’s clothing - it’s basically synonymous with long term quality and sustainability infused with Swedish style (Suzanne’s boys will accept no other brand of PJs and underwear!). While founder Gun Denhart (right) sold the business in 1996 after 13 years, she is still active as a mentor and volunteer with Ecotrust. She generously gave us the benefit of her wisdom (“Talk to your customers more!” she exhorted us) and thoughts about how best to manage our own growth.

Most social entrepreneurs have a personal motivation for starting their businesses, and Eve Blossom is no exception to this rule: while working as an architect in Vietnam she witnessed a man selling his daughter and decided to created economic alternatives to fight sex trafficking. Today her products (sold under the label Lulan - the gorgeous ties pictured at left are just one example of the fabulous wares available) are sourced from 650 artisans in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, India and Thailand. Lulan supports these artisans and their communities through paying sustainable wages, creating economic stability, growing local economies and assisting with other social benefits - such as education, housing, healthcare - as well as opening up new markets for their products.

Jensine Larsen started World Pulse, a print magazine and online media portal, to explore “Global Issues Through the Eyes of Women”, to quote its tagline, as a young journalist in Burma and the Amazon who was urged by women there to tell their stories. She returned home and created a way for them to be able to do it for themselves. I urge any of you who have not already engaged with this extraordinary community to check it out immediately - you will be blown away by the diversity and power of this uniquely female version of citizen journalism. Whether you consider yourself a writer or not, just tuning in to World Pulse will help to, in Jensine’s words, “turn up the volume of women’s voices around the world” - sounds good to us.

Got tea? Four years ago Monaqui Porter-Young was traveling in Sri Lanka and felt moved by the country’s beauty, poverty and political turmoil. She started MPGlobal Connect to provide jobs and a safe community to women from both sides of the conflict by marketing organic, fairly traded green tea under the Srina label. Watch for it at a store near you!

A piece of good news for us more northerly types is that Eileen Fisher will be opening her first Canadian store in Vancouver this year (you heard it here first!) Being a mildly lapsed fashionista, I have long coveted her comfortably elegant line of eco-friendly clothes and admired her marketing approach that often features the company’s employees (where do you think that Dove got the idea for its “real beauty” campaign?) It was a privilege to meet Amy Hall, the company’s Director of Social Consciousness (it really tells you something when a business has titles like this) who served as Suzanne’s “buddy” (us newbies were teamed up with more experienced members - mine was Tina Sciabica, Executive Director of READ Global, lucky me!) and gave us great encouragement and information about making things in a socially responsible manner.

Last but not least, we were honored to be invited to co-facilitate the Women’s Circle alongside Pam Chaloult of Renewal Partners. The theme, aptly, was Sisterhood, and Pam was quick to set the tone with her honoring of SVN’s awesome ED (with whom she was co-ED of SVN for many years) Deb Nelson, as her role model for Sisterhood. As for us, Sisterhood is a theme that runs through Lunapads in everything from my and Suzanne’s relationship to our workplace to the experience we try to give our customers. Needless to say, it was amazing.

Enjoy learning about these awesome women, and support their ventures with your dollars!

Organic Bikini Lunapanties

Welcome to our next installment of our International Women’s Month celebration! This time it’s for Moms-to-be.

Here’s lovely photo of one of our longest-term (pun intended!) collaborators, the lovely Emira Mears of Raised Eyebrow and The Boss of You, taken mere hours before the arrival of lovely little Lena at our recent Lunapanties photoshoot.

We have 3 sets of 2 Organic Mini Pantyliners, so anyone out there who is currently expecting, comment below to tell us where you are, how many weeks you’re at, and what your favorite thing about being pregnant to be entered. Winners will be announced in our April newsletter.

Organic Mini Pantyliner

While I’m here, check out the blog of one of my favorite pregnant gals: the one and only Chloe Jo Berman of the fabulously green Girlie Girl Army. If you’re expecting and wondering about eco positive diapering choices, I have just written a guest blog post for GGA about cloth diapering and more - check it out!

 Good luck, and don’t forget to smile at a pregnant gal today!

As you may be aware, we have declared March to be International Women’s Month here at Lunapads, and as part of that we are focusing on different groups of - (well, that part’s obvious!) Today, it’s time to send up a cheer for the future women out there: girls.

Where to start with the subject of girls? Our view is that girls are nothing less than the world’s greatest hope for healing, progress and peace. At Lunapads, we support them by supporting and spreading the word about a variety of organizations working with and for girls including Scarleteen, the Girl Effect (don’t miss their awesome video!), Camfed, Not For Sale and of course Pads4Girls. We also love progressive girls’ media like Shameless, New Moon and Teen Voices.

At Lunapads, 100% of the proceeds of the sale of Teen Booklets goes towards Pads4Girls. We also distribute free copies to organizations that are working with girls and teens.

What especially warms our hearts is when we get emails, phone calls and ‘live-chats’ from girls (or moms of girls and teens) asking great questions and telling us their stories. The day before yesterday we were visited by a Mom and her daughter who was on the second day of her first period - we felt really lucky to share some time with them, on International Women’s Day, no less!

Here’s a wonderful example of a girl’s self-expression about her first period - a bittersweet poem written by Lacy Hale. Lacy says: “The following is a poem that I wrote a couple years ago when I decided to make my change from commercial menstrual products to healthier, greener alternatives. When I was a teenager, I definitely thought of my period as a curse and dreaded it each month. Now that I’m older, I find that I actually enjoy my period, taking the time to reflect on my art, my life, and what it means to me to be a woman. “

My River

The summer that I started
Was desert-like and dry
Yet I awoke that morning shrouded in wet red rivers
Of which I had yet to learn the ebb
And flow.

Yelling for my mother,
It was no surprise to her
Because of the complaints
Concerning the belly
Of the 13 year old girl
The night before.

I suppose in some sort of celebration
She made a breakfast that morning
Of the likes I had rarely seen.

But my stomach was full
Of other things and pains
So new I barely touched
My biscuits
And gravy.

My father came home that evening
And without words or glance
Tossed my necessities on the counter.
A look of fear and anger in his eyes.

Or maybe I just misread it
Out of my own embarrassment.

This week we are giving away 3 Teen Kits: leave a comment here telling us about your favorite girl or teen (this includes you, if you happen to be one of these fabulous beings!) to be eligible for the giveaway. Be sure to include your age, location, relationship (ie sister, friend, daughter, Mom) and what you love about this person. Have fun and good luck! We’ll be announcing the winners in our April newsletter.

Just when you thought “hey, today is International Women’s Day!” we have decided just for fun to declare it to be International Women’s Month! This is Lunapads after all, and a month just seems more appropriate - a little more womanly, if you will. Plus, with so much to talk about and celebrate, why rush it?

The timing this year is truly extraordinary, with the recent Olympics here in Vancouver having shone a light on women’s superb athleticism, not to mention Kathryn Bigelow’s ceiling-busting Oscar wins just last night. As great as all of this is, though, it’s important to remember that comparable success is not necessarily being shared by our sisters in developing nations, and that we still need to keep working for change even as we celebrate, a theme I will be developing in upcoming posts this month.

Longtime Lunapads customers will be anticipating our annual International Women’s Day sale to take place right about now, but for various reasons this year it’s going to look a little different (and last longer!)

My advice to you right now is if you are not already a Lunapads.com Facebook fan or following us on Twitter, in order to be in the loop for the series of contests, giveaways and specials that we are brewing up, now would be the time to sign up or follow us. In case you are not on our e-newsletter list, I highly recommend signing up there as well to learn about other news that will happen before the month is out!

To start off, for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week (March 8-10) we will be donating 10% of sales to Pads4Girls, as well as MATCHING all Pads4Girls Kit and Birth Kit Maxi donations. Here’s a great opportunity to help girls in developing nations get the education they deserve and/or improve maternal health. You can learn about our current recipient groups here:

Sexual Rights Centre (Zimbabwe)
Lugari Community Resource Centre (Kenya)
Kibaale Community School (Uganda)
Imagine1Day (Ethiopia)
Pads for Prisons Project (Sudan)
Rafiki Africa (Kenya)
The Passion Foundation (Kenya)
Shanti Uganda (Uganda)
Afri-Pads (Uganda)

Please donate generously, and don’t forget to pick up something nice for yourself as well!

Have a great day, ladies, thanks for your support as always, and stay tuned!

Love from the Lunagals:
Madeleine, Suzanne, Lisa, Morgan, Sara, Goni and Sandra

Time for our promised followup to the “Pretty in Pink?” post a couple of weeks ago. I’ll start by saying that I can’t believe how much I have ended up thinking about this. What started as a basic rant has proven to be far more involved and nuanced than I could have predicted, and at the very least has stirred up some provocative conversation and interesting self-reflection.

First off, a big thank you to Ritz, founder of I Love My Muff products. I do not think that I could have handled Lunapads being under someone’s ideological microscope nearly as gracefully as she has. I placed an order for a “Maintenance Kit” to find out what I was missing and received a second kit on the house, a classy and generous gesture. I should also add that I think that Ritz has done a fine job with site design and the ecommerce shopping experience. Finally, I have it on excellent authority that she is a woman of considerable entrepreneurial moxy, personal style and good intentions.

So… how were the products?  I have tried them several times now, and am still feeling somewhat ambivalent. I’m not a big one for perfume or aromatherapy so I can’t really say if I liked the scents or not, but they didn’t bother me, and certainly lingered. Did I feel clean? Yes. Fresh? Sure. Soft? I guess. Pure? Still have issues there, but never mind.

The products “work” just fine (an informant claims that they take care of post-shaving little red bumps, so there’s that to consider as a potential benefit as well), and seem to have integrity as far as the ingredients and overall quality are concerned. Organic ingredients would be a great next step in product development, along with more eco-friendly packaging.

There do seem to be rather a lot of “steps” (I use fewer products on my face), but I can’t see the harm (if used prudently - more on this in a moment), and can further see how using these products could help some women get more in touch with or feel more loving towards themselves. If nothing else, actually trying the products gave me insight into my own biases, for which I am grateful.

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It’s not very often that a book dedicated to the subject of menstruation gets published. So when I heard about the impending release of FLOW; the cultural story of menstruation back in November, I was pretty excited to get my hands on a copy.

At first glance, FLOW is quite the aesthetically pleasing little book, filled with images of vintage pad and tampon adverts and other “feminine health products” dating as far back as the late 1800s. Due to its visually compelling nature, FLOW would make the ideal coffee table book. And hey, aside from rinsing your menstrual cup in a public washroom, what better way to get the conversation about menstruation flowing (couldn’t resist!) than to nonchalantly leave a book about its history lying about the house?

Few healthy bodily processes have had such an effed-up history as menstruation and this book covers a broad range of topics from the archaic “disease” Hysteria and the origins of the vibrator, to the medicalization of periods and the recent introduction of Menstrual Suppression drugs. I often hear women linking the origins of our collective shame surrounding menstruation to fem-care advertisers and the negative language used to hock their products. FLOW digs deeper into the sources of the menstrual taboo weaving a history that is biblical, medical, pre-historical, cultural, spiritual and political in scope. It’s pretty engaging if you aren’t already aware of the history of menstruation and even if you are, there are sure to be some surprising tidbits that leave you quietly scooping your jaw up off the floor.

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I feel a bit conflicted about this post, as I am typically a huge fan of women-owned businesses. So what happens when the businesses in question are marketing products that I don’t feel are necessarily in women’s best interests? Let’s talk!

The products in question are basically cosmetics for your vulva - one to make your girlparts “clean, pure, soft and fresh” with the help of a 4-step collection of soap, lotion, spray and wipes, and the other to lighten the color of the outer labia. Leaving questions around the safety and rationale for these products aside for the moment, what’s particularly troubling about these new takes on what the marketers of Lysol and Massengil have schilled in the past is that they have adopted (some might say co-opted) the language of empowerment and enlightenment in order to do so, presenting the case for vulval “freshening up” as a bold act of savvy self-love.

While the cheeky brand name “I Love My Muff” on its own is eerily reminiscent of a Lunapads standby: “I (heart) my period”, who can argue with its wisdom? Ideally women “love” (or are at least at peace with) our muffs, but do we need these products in order to get there? Of course not, and yet ILMM’s copy tells us that “informed” (if only I knew the “truth” about feminine hygiene!) “modern” women are literally clamoring to make this “savvy and empowered” choice.  And how’s this for courageously breaking the taboos that have kept the topic of “feminine care” locked away in the closet? “It’s no longer taboo and with it’s (sic) clean packaging and bold message these products are a statement of confidence and a must have for every woman.”

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Before we ring in some news about what’s new for 2010, we wanted to reflect upon 2009, and how it brought Lunapads some great new people, products and inspiration.  Here are a some of the highlights:

Pads4Girls expands:  During 2009, we expanded our Pads4Girls program by eagerly partnering with new groups that reached out to communities in Cuba, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia.  Thanks to customer support and the work of courageous individuals and NGOs, hundreds of girls and women are now able to stay at work or school while menstruating, and deal with their periods safely and with minimal environmental impact.

Recognizing there are practical solutions closer to home, we created our  “Make your own cloth menstrual pads” video series that has been viewed by thousands. These videos are regularly used by women in Africa (and here in North America) to make their own cloth pads. And in December 2009, Lunapads partnered with Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE) by donating 20% of holiday sales for 2 of our top-selling gift items to their program, which makes biodegradable disposable pads from agricultural waste in Rwanda.

Fabulous folks and adventures abroad: One of the perks of our work is choosing to take some strategic business trips and while doing so, connecting with some truly amazing people.  During 2009, we had the good fortune to meet some real treasures and leaders in our community: In March 2009, we attended the always mindboggling Expo West Natural Products Trade Show in Anaheim CA and reconnected with our friends Francine and Carinne Chamers, founders of the DivaCup and also met Sarah Kraft, founder of the online Mindful Mama community.

While walking the trade show, we spotted Mothering Magazine Founder, Editor and Publisher Peggy O’Mara and couldn’t miss the opportunity to stop and tell her how much we adored her.  This conversation led to the plans for a personal visit from Peggy right here at Lunapads the following month.  Leveraging off of Peggy’s rock star status as a natural parenting pioneer and leader, we brought together a group of friends and colleagues to hear Peggy speak at a warm and inspiring tea party benefiting Pads4Girls.

In September 2009, I took a first-time trip to the ABC kids expo in Las Vegas, where I also had an insightful visit to Zappos.com’s headquarters.  Meanwhile Suzanne had yet another transcendent experience at the Social Venture Institute (SVI) at Hollyhock, BC.  In November 2009, we both attended the Green America Business Conference and Green Festival in San Francisco.  While we were there, we had the great fortune to meet up with  SHE founder Elizabeth Scharpf and one of our business heroes, Reusablebags.com founder Vincent Cobb.

New products and fabrics: We expanded the Lunapads collection with several new products and fabrics: the P-style, Wysi-wipes, Cloth Wipes (which elicited one of our most discussed blog posts of the year) and our first-ever custom 100% organic cotton print, Magenta Mandala.

Lunapanties, our very own period underwear, made a long awaited comeback in November 2009, with the introduction of our new Hipster style and magenta colored organic cotton.

Staff changes: We bid a tearful and fond farewell to Sandra, one of our longest-term employees, as she moved on to continue her work as a bicycle safety educator. While it is hard to replicate Sandra’s incredible personal flair for customer service, Sara, the newest addition to the Lunapads team, is doing a fantastic job!

Media and accolades: In the summer of 2009, we learned that Lunapads and the DivaCup were featured in an entertaining and informative book by Canadian journalist Vanessa Farquharson called “Sleeping Naked is Green”.  At the end of 2009 Lunapads was profiled in our of our local papers, featuring a funny photo of Suzanne and I having a “tug-of-war” with a clothesline of Lunapads and Lunapanties.

By far the biggest highlight of the year was being voted into the top 10 of Green America’s People Choice Awards and so you can imagine our reaction when we found out that we had placed in the top 3 and received the newly-minted Shining Light award.

While Suzanne and I celebrated our award San Francisco, we never lost sight of the unsung heroes in the exercise: staffers Lisa and Morgan (whose idea it was in the first place), Facebook and Twitter (follow us! @Lunapads, @Luna_Diva (me) and @Luna_gal (Suzanne)) for providing the forums to drum up votes, and last but far from least, YOU, our awesome customers, for taking the time to cast your votes - it couldn’t have happened with you.

On that note, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank you all for a great 2009, and wish you all the best for 2010 from the Lunagals!