I never would have guessed T-Pain would teach me about tampons
"T-Pain's School of Business" is one of the most underrated shows for entrepreneurs and health tips
It’s not that my mother never spoke to me about vaginal health or puberty. We talked about everything from painful pap smears to mammograms. But I honestly have to give credit to the “Church” and “Sprung” rapper for teaching me a valuable lesson about feminine hygiene products. From a field trip at the age of 11 (the most dreadful Santa’s Village experience ever and I initially blamed the roller coaster) until my mid-30s, I was somehow oblivious to a considerable amount of ingredients in popular brands of feminine hygiene products.
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More specifically, Honey Pot co-founder Beatrice Dixon taught him about all the potential dangers of mainstream hygiene products that I never even considered. As a pre-teen and onward, I used to buy whatever was on the shelf that was leakproof and didn’t make me feel like I was wearing an adult diaper. I had zero other consumer specifications — until I learned about Honey Pot from season one’s winner of “The Masked Singer.”
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If you’ve never watched the two-season series (2018-19) on fuse, I’m not surprised. Although it was one of the most interesting, honest and comedic looks at entrepreneurs, it deserved way more attention. (In all fairness, the show did win the NAMIC Vision Award and was nominated for the Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards and Critics' Choice Real TV Awards.)
Luckily, the "Honey Pot” episode (Season 1, Episode 102) from fuse is available to be watched on TUBI for free, along with all the rest of T-Pain’s entrepreneur interview topics, ranging from instant noodles, robot delivery, animation and gaming to sex toys, Black Santa and vegan cheesesteaks.
But why should women watch this “Honey Pot” episode first?
With UC Berkeley’s recent study about tampons in the U.S. and European market, including organic and non-organic tampons, researchers are confirming that both may contain toxic metals, such as lead and arsenic.
Unlike the cancer and fibroid risks of hair relaxer, which I still believe shouldn’t be much of a shocker considering the horrendous burns that happen when leaving those chemicals on a scalp for too long, feminine hygiene products aren’t something women have a choice in wearing. We must find hygiene products for a minimum of four decades of our lives.
Recommended Read: “Respectfully, you must be really bad at sex ~ How did this father equate tampons to penetration?”
Women don’t have the option of going “Team Natural” in one category versus the other. Sorta. Darryl George’s lawsuit continues to prove why the CROWN Act is needed, especially after a judge ruled against almost all of the teenager’s discrimination claims. And while this teen boy, along with a slew of black people through the years, are fighting this draining hair fight in Corporate America and schools, women also have to consider the lower region too.
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Honey Pot, which self-identifies as the “first complete feminine care system powered by herbs,” has products that are dermatologist-tested, intended to be “kind” to your vulva and plant-derived. Of course, Honey Pot isn’t the only brand of feminine hygiene products that doesn’t treat women’s genitalia like science experiments.
But it’s safe to say that if the founder suffered from bacterial vaginosis for eight months, she’s not going to put any old product on the market for other women. For more information on Honey Pot, click here.
Should women use organic tampons instead?
While GoodRx states that, “toxins, like dioxin and glyphosate, found in regular tampons, are too low to be considered harmful,” staying away from fragrances and plastic could be one major step in the more vagina-friendly direction.
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