Student Spurs Brookline, Mass., Will offer free tampons and tampons in public buildings: NPR

When you enter a public bathroom, you expect it to be filled with toilet paper, hand soap and paper towels or a hand dryer.

But tampons and towels?

Brookline, Mass., Wants to create menstrual products as common as other bathroom essentials. In May, she voted to become the first municipality in the United States to offer free tampons and towels in all of her city's washrooms, in places such as the town hall, libraries and recreation center. Schools should do the same.

Sarah Groustra is the one who started everything. Last year, the elder then wrote a column in the Brookline High School newspaper about the stigma surrounding the times.

"Everyone had these strategies to hide their menstrual products," she says. "When I changed after dance classes, I would close boots with pads so I would not have to take them out during class to go to the bathroom."

Groustra called at the end of the "menacing rules".

"It should not be a brave gesture or a kind of self-confidence to take a tampon in your backpack and go to the bathroom," she says.

Rebecca Stone, an elected member of the Brookline Legislature, read the column. Even for the self-proclaimed feminist, it opened the eyes.

"It was talking about things that had to do with pretending to be a period that … just never came to mind," she says. "And of course, once you start seeing it, it becomes more and more obvious that it's a fundamental problem for gender equality and for dignity." women and people with female bodies. "

Stone worked alongside Groustra and other Brookline students who drafted the proposal. The elected representatives took and the vote was unanimously adopted on May 23rd.

Brookline has until July 2021 to install the dispensers and store them with the product. The city is estimated to cost $ 40,000 a year and about $ 7,500 a year for the products, which Stone calls a decline of more than $ 300 million in Brookline's annual budget.

But according to the lawyers, it is worth putting an end to the stigma – and the pressure – on those who have their period.

"In the United States, girls learn very early that it's their problem," Stone says. "You are supposed to keep it from others, so that it is unobtrusive, and so we get the stamps in, and if we have problems, we try to find friends, and we talk about it softly, and we use euphemisms, and we do it. " not impose that on others ".

The toilets in Brookline buildings will have menstrual products all the toilets – because not all people who have a period of time identify themselves as women.

What the city does is part of Nancy Kramer's dream. She is the founder of Free the Tampons, a national organization that she founded in 2013 after talking about the fairness of the period for years.

"I told my children that before I died, I hoped to change the social norm so that these menstrual products would be freely available in the majority of public toilets," she said.

To achieve this, you need to equate tampons and towels with other bathroom supplies.

"Since forever, my position is that tampons and tampons is the equivalent of toilet paper," she says. "And so, wherever there is toilet paper, there should be tampons and tampons."

Efforts like Brookline are deployed in Massachusetts and the country.

The Boston City Council has issued a measure Wednesday to hold a hearing on put menstrual products in public schools, libraries and other municipal buildings. Students from a school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, helped launch a pilot program allowing students to start receiving pads and towels in school bathrooms.

California, Illinois, and New York have passed laws imposing menstrual products in many public schools.

Other laws, such as New York, include jails and homeless shelters, where people may not be able to buy tampons and towels.

In Massachusetts, a bill to provide free menstrual products in schools, prisons, prisons and shelters is pending at the State House and has more than 70 co-sponsors.

Sasha Goodfriend, president of the Massachusetts section of the National Women's Organization, said the Massachusetts bill focused on the access of the most marginalized populations. But it is also about removing the shame of periods.

"We are really excited about being able to eliminate this stigma and barriers around something natural and to be truly authentic in all spaces," she said. "And that means recognizing that we have our periods for about a week, every month, for decades, for many of us."

For Brookline & # 39; s Stone, it is not just an economic problem: it is a problem of public hygiene. Almost every man she talked to understood that, she said. Instead, some women seemed uncomfortable.

"Some women were the ones who sort of said," I do not understand why it's a big problem. I'm busy, why can not everyone? " " she says.

Groustra, who sparked the conversation at Brookline, is now a student at Kenyon College in Ohio. She says that the stamp should not only be there when you need it. It is an acknowledgment of receipt of the rules, a sign of acceptance of your city of origin.

"By asking the community or this community space to provide you in this way," she says, that sends the message "we understand that it's something that happens and we want to be there for you and you provide this information ".