M’sian women share 5 times they had to DIY a sanitary pad when they got their periods.

So, a few days ago, I was on the train coming home from work when all of a sudden, I ran into my least favorite relative: Aunt Flo.

Fortunately, I had the sanitary pad that I kept in my bag for incidents like these – I had already mentally-prepared myself to ask other female commuters for help in the worst case scenario where I forgot to bring one along.

But while I managed to escape a potentially embarrassing situation, this  made me recall all the other times that I, or other friends of mine who weren’t as lucky… which then led to the conception (heheh) of this article where we’ll be recounting a few Malaysians’ own terrible tales of getting their periods without any sanitary products on-hand.

Starting with one of my very own…

1. Using toilet paper as a substitute pad for 6. whole. hours.

When blood starts flowing out of your nether regions, you’ll have to start looking for ways to stop the leak lest your bottoms look like the aftermath of a crime scene. If you have a sanitary pad/tampon/menstrual cup on hand, cool. But what if you didn’t?

You’d either ask a friend if they have any spares, or find yourself doing a MacGyver in the bathroom by trying to create a makeshift sanitary pad out of rolled-up toilet paper… and praying that it doesn’t leak.

To make things worse, this incident happened to me a month or two before SPM, when I had to rush completing some of my subject portfolios and going for tuition classes right after classes. Without anyone to ask for help from, I decided to make myself a makeshift pad by layering up a bunch of tissues that I happened to have in my bag which I ended up wearing for 6 hours, before I managed to head home and get changed.

While it was a miracle that the “emergency” pad kind-of-sort-of worked, let’s just say that (without going too in-depth), I realized why they tend to make these sanitary pads… scented. 🤢

2. Wearing a double layer of underwear to sleep (and hoping it works).

This incident happened to Trina, CILISOS’s very own social media person. She was staying over at an AirBnB with some friends when all of a sudden, her period decided to come a week early. She couldn’t get herself a sanitary pad cuz it happened in the dead of night, so she did the next best thing – she wore two layers of underwear hoping that it wouldn’t leak too badly.

“Fortunately, it didn’t and I managed to run down to the convenience store downstairs in the morning to get a pad.” – Trina, to CILISOS.

Though she was pretty surprised herself that she managed to not leak all over the bed while sleeping, she thinks that the pressure from her sleeping posture might have somehow prevented that. However, there are also sources that say that people tend to bleed less (or not at all!) at night due to gravity working its magic- y’know, since gravity basically helps the blood leave your uterus when you’re standing, which doesn’t work as well when you’re lying down.

3. Leaving a huge patch on the chair… during SPM.

Why do so many people have these experiences during SPM ah? Anyway, while most of us only had to worry about the exam questions in front of us when we’re in an exam hall, ex-high school student Anna had something else that was bugging her during her Physics Paper 2: Her menses.

It was the second or third day of her period, so she made sure to change her pad before the paper and even brought an extra one just in case she had to change in the middle of the exam. About an hour into the exam…

” …I could suddenly FEEL THE FLOOD GATES OPEN; but since I was more concerned with the physics paper, I decided to not walk out of the hall and hold it in the best I could.” – Anna, to CILISOS.

A few minutes later, she looked down at her chair to see a huge patch of blood that was left on the chair she was sitting on.

At this point, Anna knew that she couldn’t tahan it anymore and left the exam hall early. She ran to her bag to grab the ‘extra pad’ only to realize that it wasn’t even a pad at all… it was just bunched-up tissue paper.

4. The house warming prayer… gone wrong.

Nowadays, getting your period is generally thought of as a normal bodily function, but the whole concept of menstruation is still seen as a taboo in certain religions and cultures around the world. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that most ladies out there would probably rather not get their period out of the blue (out of the red?) while attending a religious ceremony. With that said, here’s Shreya’s story.

Last year, Shreya had to head over to her sister’s new house for a house warning prayer session.

“I was running quite late for the prayers, so I had to rush over to her new place.” – Shreya, to CILISOS.

Shreya noted that she didn’t have feel any weirdness nor had any concerns since she didn’t have any symptoms of PMS, pain, nor the usual aches she used to get. She thought that she was alright… until she wasn’t.

So, there was a part during the prayers where she had to carry a tray with sweets over to the priest who oversaw the whole thing, and that was when tragedy struck:

“All of a sudden, I felt like a HUGE GUSH (it literally felt like I birthed a goldfish) right as I was walking towards the priest.” – Shreya.

Her jeans ended up being heavily stained, and she didn’t bring any pads with her, so she had to use a ton of toilet paper as a makeshift pad with the hopes that nothing worse happened. On the way home, she had to lay a sheet of newspaper over the backseat of her Grab ride and awkwardly explain the situation to the driver, who was actually pretty nice about it.

5. BONUS: Getting your period in an all-girls school might not be so bad after all.

Okay lah. Despite all the horrific stories that we’ve shared thus far, we still heard about an actually pleasant-ish experience from Elza, who went to an all-girls school growing up.

“I went to Sri Aman, a girl’s school. If any of us got our period and didn’t have a pad on us, we could literally shout across the block and someone would toss it over. If you ever had a leak, someone would always be at the ready with a jacket/PE t-shirt or something to help you cover it up. Also we had (for a time) pad dispensers in the toilets that you paid I think 50c for. Perks of being in a girl’s school.” – Elza, to CILISOS.

There were many more stories we’d gotten, but we couldn’t include all of them cuz chances are, most women would have experienced this sorta thing at least once in their lifetimes. But from what we can see from Elza’s stories and the rest of ours, it seems like there was only one thing that made all the difference: Accessibility. Y’all might not have known this, but many people in Malaysia don’t even have access to proper sanitary products during their period.

Some women have to DIY every period.

It costs about RM10 ~ 15 for a single pack containing 10-15 sanitary pads. Tampons, on the other hand, average at about RM 20~RM 25 for a box of 30+ tampons; which comes out to around RM 1.04/per pad or RM 0.75/per tampon. And though this might seem like an affordable price to pay for some, in 2020, our absolute poverty rate rose to 8.4% in 2020, with the number of poor households increasing to 639.8 thousand, who struggled with making ends meet during the MCO.

Fortunately though, the ‘pink tax‘ (which basically imposed a 6% tax on sanitary products) was abolished in 2018, after GST was repealed and replaced by SST, where taxes on sanitary products were reduced to zero.

But despite the reduction of the ‘Pink Tax’ and several other one-off initiatives by the government to supply sanitary pads to women in poverty, it still seems like there still hasn’t been very much that’s been changed, since Kotex’s recent Period Poverty Survey reported that 5% of their respondents couldn’t even afford sanitary products, Some people have even resorted to using things like banana leaves, newspapers, and even coconut husks as a replacement for sanitary products. It looks like period poverty is an issue that might never truly be eradicated with the way things are going… with a portion of our Malaysian women having to continue looking for other ways to stop the flow.