Danielle Campbell – Copy Editor
A group of women sat around the room to listen to Reign Sanitary Napkin representative, Sharon Lomax, discuss menstrual health. A taboo topic the women in the room were not shy to admit they were not taught much about.
“I feel like when I was in high school, and even in college, if that’s not your major, you don’t really get those options. So, it’s important for me to promote women’s health and feminine and menstrual care and things like that because I personally don’t hear about it as much and having an open discussion about it is definitely needed,” said president of Hermandad de Sigma Iota Alpha, Inc. Kayloni Hall, a senior.
Hall brought Lomax to campus for the event “menstrual health and feminine care discovery” on Wednesday, Oct. 5 in the Adanti Student Center. She used the sanitary napkins Lomax represents and brought education and alternative menstrual health option to the students of the university.
“So, I actually used her sanitary napkins before and I actually felt a difference,” said Hall, “I usually use maxi pads how I mentioned in the event, and her products actually helped with like my cramping, my back. I have really bad back pain. So, I thought that made a difference in my health.”
Lomax talked about the dangers of certain feminine products, including conventional pads, and wanted the women to know what they were putting near their bodies each month.
“The way they made a lot of them [pads] starts off with recycled trash out of the landfill, old newspapers and wood pulp fibers,” said Lomax. “[It] goes through an eight-step bleaching process to make them white and make them look like cotton and pure but the residue from that, is that dioxin.”
“Has everybody heard of dioxin?” Lomax asks the room. They all nod their heads no. “Okay, dioxin is a carcinogen.”
According to the World Health Organization, “Dioxins are highly toxic and can cause reproductive and developmental problems, damage the immune system, interfere with hormones and also cause cancer.”
Students learned more about feminine care and better options. Information that can help themselves and others.
“I basically learned a lot about like feminine care. A lot of stuff I didn’t know; tips and tricks to help alleviate like cramps and stuff. And then stuff I can teach other people,” said psychology major, Diamond English, a junior.
Graphic Design major, Glenda Marcelin, a senior, was on her way back from the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship meeting, where she is one of the leaders, when someone told her about the event. “I was kind of forced into silence, but I have endometriosis and there’s nobody to talk to you about that. So, I thought it would be a nice community,” said Marcelin.
Lomax covered a plethora of topics including an article handout about Jesse Thompson, creator of the Kill the Pill campaign. According to Lomax, Thompson had fibroids and infertility issues and used natural remedies to help heal her body.
“And prior to her doing her research of going a natural route, she went through numerous surgeries, infertility treatments and it took a good long while and it wasn’t until she went natural and started shrinking those fibroids herself through her diet and lifestyle that she was able to strengthen, get rid of them and conceive,” said Lomax. “So, she has a campaign called kill the pill. Are you gonna kill the pill? Again, this is information, knowledge. Any birth control that has a high estrogen level is going to manifest something in you. And like I said, everybody’s different. So, the manifestations will be different.”
Marcelin was inspired to take charge of her health. “I learned that my mom is not crazy when she tells me that organic products might be the way to like stop all my cramps and all that. And I kind of got motivated I guess to kind of take control over my health,” said Marcelin. “Because I know a lot of the time, I know the things that I eat affect it [menstrual health], but I don’t do anything about that. And I think indifference is honestly a little bit of a pandemic. Sometimes too many people don’t care, and it ruins their lives without them even seeing.”
