So, why aren’t all the Usual Suspects out protesting in the street, decrying Brandon’s failures to be able to provide basic sanitary supplies?
The Great Tampon Shortage of 2022: The Supply Chain Problem No One’s Talking About
Sometimes when I am grocery shopping, even if I am there just for broccoli, I’ll swing by the aisle where they stock feminine products. Because, even though most of the things that disappeared during the pandemic like toilet paper, yeast, and flour have returned to the shelves, tampons are still in short supply. It’s become a strange fascination of mine, to see the large gap on the shelf, like a missing front tooth, where tampons are supposed to be.
In the last few months, I’ve visited stores in New York, Massachusetts, and California—no tampons. And it’s not just me. Dana Marlowe, the founder of I Support the Girls, which provides bras and menstrual hygiene for people experiencing homelessness, told me that her organization has seen a big drop off in tampon donations. “What’s been going on for a couple months is that organizations call us up and say, ‘we need tampons,’ and we go to our warehouse and there’s nothing there.”
Tucked away on a forum for DC-area moms, I found dozens of women complaining in April about not being able to find tampons. A similar discussion was happening on Reddit, where one poster said she checked eight stores looking for her preferred brand. Amazon sellers were taking advantage of the shortage; in January, one box of 18 Tampax listed for $114, about six dollars more—per tampon—than women usually pay.
“To put it bluntly, tampons are next to impossible to find,” says Michelle Wolfe, a radio host in Bozeman, Montana, who wrote a piece on her radio station’s website in March about not being able to find tampons in Montana. “I would say it’s been like this for a solid six months.”
Fortunately, Brandon will get right on this. Over the weekend, when he takes a few days off from the hard work of gaslighting and doing not much of anything.
The shortage is making some women angry that this simple product is so hard to find, especially at a time when the Supreme Court appears poised to rule on Roe v. Wade in a way that could allow states to mandate what women do with their bodies. “Why isn’t anyone speaking up about this?” Diamond Cotton, a 32-year-old mother of two girls, told me. “The government wants to put a strain on women having abortions, but they don’t know what a woman has to get through.”
Sign. Of course the author had to go there. Anyhow, just another case of the Biden Economy working wonderfully. Y’all glad you voted for him?
Read: Bidenconomy: Apparently There’s A Big Tampon Shortage »