No, not an iPad — a menstrual pad.

We were reading that article the other day about the big biz of vaginal products — how marketing and advertising industries aren’t shying away from female genitalia anymore, now that their target market has a million and one shameless blogs about the comings and goings of their vulvas.  We mean, power to the punani and all! But that still doesn’t mean any vaginas out there need douching, no matter how hip the packaging or presentation.

Now, pads and tampons on the other hand — whole ‘nother story. Unless you’ve got a moon cup (and you should, for many reasons, not the least of which is environmental impact), pads and tampons are a pretty standard and handy product for the average menstruating gal. And — call us suckers — we kinda fell for the U by Kotex brands’s new artsy fartsy patterns and colors of their pads and tampons. Why should your utilitarian feminine products be all sterile white and, well, utilitarian? Of course, you may not want dyes in your sanitary napkin but the white ones are bleached anyway. (Again, go diva cup!)

But for those of you who aren’t gonna give up your pads or tampons, at least there’s now an option for your inner teen artist to express herself once a month. The U by Kotex site allows girls who like to draw on their book covers the chance to design their own pads (for display, not ordering) and has a “declaration of real talk” they can sign that encourages young women to reject body shaming and own what they’ve got. For every design and every signature they get, one dollar (up to $150,000) will be donated to support over 3,000 hours of social change training (which sounds like it goes right back into the marketing campaign, if you ask us). But hey, how can we poo-poo the promises of this declaration?:

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