Being a female can be dreadful, especially the part where we have a period each month. Periods are painful, gross and exhausting. However, I am mostly frustrated about how expensive it is to take the proper care in dealing with them.

Feminine products, like pads and tampons are expensive. The average box of pads cost $7-9. A period typically lasts 3-7 days, and occurs monthly from around the age of 13 to the age of 50. That means that the average women has approximately 444 periods in their life time. Let us say you buy a box of pads each period cycle, and your brand costs $8. That means for having a period you paid $3,552 dollars in your life. However, you also have to factor in how everyone has a different type of flow whether it be light or heavy, or how long it takes. You mostly would go through the boxes faster and so the price would be even more than the number I came up with. There are also different quality brands and some maybe more expensive than the estimate I have made.

Then, on top of that initial cost, pads and tampons are are still considered “luxury” items in most states, so they have tax. Periods are not a luxury, they are a burden. The word “luxury” also intales that we could survive without them, that we choose to use them. I can tell you, it is not socially acceptable or sanitary for a female on her period to walk around without some sort of pad or tampon.

Periods also cost more than just pads and tampons. There are girls who have to invest in a heating pad and pain killers for the severity of their cramps. Also to deal with the pain and/or dangerous amounts of blood loss, girls sometimes even have to go on birth control to help with the circumstances. Then, there is the cost for replacing stained underwear throughout the years, and acne medication due to the hormones present during periods. Hormones also cause craving for caffeine and sugar. The period process is expensive.

In doing more research into the “Pink Tax” I found even more frustrating information. For example, according to the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, in Dec. 2015 it was proven, with 800 clear female and male objects, that women pay more for the same thing in 42% of cases. So in general women are just paying more because they are a women. This is where the idea of the “Pink Tax” stems from. The idea is simply that companies will charge women more for personal care products simply because they will pay more. This applies to things like apparel, razors, shaving cream, deodorant and etc.

So, on top of the extra money we have to spend on pads and tampons, we are also being charged more in general just due to our gender. Just because I am female, I will have to pay thousands of dollars more in my life to live compared to our male counterparts. In the large scheme of things, due to my gender I lose money and in order to make money I have to spend more time at a workplace. And by giving my time to a job to make money, I lose time I could spend living.