Women's underwear gets an upgrade | Hacker News Reader

Women's underwear gets an upgrade

artinfactmag.com

259 pointslisch70 comments

This is pretty amazing. I spent grades 5-12 worried about bleeding through to my pants in school. There's already so much going on at that age, dealing with 'learning to be a woman' was just more anxiety.

Even as an adult who can typically tell when my cycle is about to start I still end up with stained undergarments and sometimes pants. The worst is at night when things move around and you wake with stained sheets and ruined pajamas.

Considering I have cheap cotton underwear that is 2-4 years old, if these prevent leaking as they claim they could potentially save me time, anxiety, embarrassment and money.

I showed this to my girlfriend and she thought it was a brilliant idea (and priced well, too). She's had accidents, forgotten it was nearly here, and all sorts, so this is a great way of tackling that.

This is an interesting yet drastically different take on a similar story from India. Some of you may remember articles about Arunachalam Muruganantham, an uneducated man who lost his family, friends and whole way of life in order to bring affordable sanitary pads to girls and women in India. Now he helps rural villages install, run and make money off of machines which produce sanitary napkins for pennies on the dollar, and at the same time teach local women how to use them and break cultural taboos. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26260978

So when I read this article about THINX, while I want to be positive about anyone who works to make people's lives easier and less stressful, all I see is commerce. These are basically luxury items that are intended for people who already have access to sanitary pads. It almost seems like the whole story about being inspired by a girl in South Africa is a marketing ploy to get people to purchase their product by preying on people's sympathy for an unrelated issue. If they really wanted to help women around the world, donating a small portion of sales to one African country is not what I would consider a realistic approach to that goal.

If they really wanted to help women around the world, donating a small portion of sales to one African country is not what I would consider a realistic approach to that goal.

... but it's a good start.

On the reusable front, Diva Cups are the greatest thing to happen to menstruation. Been using one for ten years, which means I haven't had to buy or throw anything away every month. Saves a lot on waste and money. http://divacup.com/

I believe the purpose of the underwear is to prevent stains and leaking from accidents, and is not meant to be used INSTEAD of normal sanitary products. This is similar to those disposable plasticy ones that have existed in some countries for years, but I like what they've done with the fabrication and design here. It's silly that it's taken so long for someone to bring this type of product to market. I hope it's successful!

There is a huge movement towards reusable menstrual products. I use a menstrual cup or reusable cloth pads (have done so for the last 5 years and wish they had been around for much longer). I hate plastic disposable products that make you feel like you are wearing a diaper (note: I cloth diaper my son as well) and that these products and their chemicals have been scientifically shown to cause you to bleed more or even contribute to some cramps and also with tampons TSS. Reusable products dont have these problems and last a long time so are much more cost effective even if steeply priced off the bat as they last longer. It is not gross at all to wash these things if you think your body is gross in this way then you have some other issues you need to probably deal with and likely they come from our culture's deep rooted taboos on the topic. Periods and such used to be celebrated in many cultures as a coming into adult hood, it was a rite of passage type of thing. Now it really is seen as shamefull or taboo to talk about it in some ways. There are many small companies and people who are seeing this problem time and time again and trying to deal with it and get rid of the taboos and help other people out with products that work and are better. These resuable pads they are working with in uganda (I am familiar with afripads which was helped to be created by lunapada a local to me but widely known reusable cloth pad company)really do actually have a positive impact - there are lots of other movements and stuff that does similar things in other african countries. I would totally wihtout thinking about it in an instant buy a product like this underwear, it is a really genius idea and I think this company will do well.

Dear Kate is another company has been working in this space for years: http://www.dearkates.com/pages/technology

Their CEO Julie is great - studied chemical engineering at Brown, was very active in the local RI startup scene, raised a series A, and the company is now based in NYC.

This is actually a really good replacement for pads. They say their underwear can hold one to six teaspoons. There are five milliliters to a teaspoon, and according to Wikipedia, the average period produces one to six tablespoons total. There are three teaspoons to a tablespoon. So their underwear should be able to easily cope with one day's worth of flow, since it should be able to cope with half a period to an entire period's worth.

Assuming their manufacturing process isn't too toxic, this could be vastly more environmentally friendly than pads and tampons. The downside of reusable, durable items of this nature, is that it's gross and requires handwashing.

I think you neglected the factor that flow varies over the course of a period with a shape like sin(x) from x=0 to x=3.14. Or in other words it starts off slow, peaks, then peters out.

Being a woman, yes, I am entirely aware of that. Unless you have a single day where you're pushing out two tablespoons, though, which is very unlikely, my point still stands.

The average tampon will hold 5mL. Sanitary pads hold 5mL-15mL. These things hold 29mL.

And many women go through 3 pads a day during their peak. Which is much more convenient than having to change your underwear, and have somewhere to put them to carry them around with you until you get home.

Those "many women" may have menorrhagia and should consult with their doctor for treatment, yet very few realize this and just think they are "heavy flow" people, which puts them at risk for disease and other medical problems. I should think, though, that it's much more convenient to carry around one pad than three, and for the rest of people is probably a relief to not need one at all.

Odour would be one of the main concerns, but I love the idea of this as an incredibly transformative hack.

I question whether the top construction is wicking enough to be comfortable. Pads (and diapers) have a top layer through which the moisture goes through, keeping the top relatively dry. This is actually a lot more challenging for menstruation, as it tends to be considerably more viscous.

Speaking of antimicrobial underwear — it's not every day I get to use that segue — The New Yorker just had a fascinating piece about the world of extreme cave divers. Apparently, specially engineered underwear is one of the secrets to making it through the world's deepest cave: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/04/21/140421fa_fact_...

What an excellent article. Great Saturday morning in read with a coffee, thanks for the tip!

The article does not actually explain the technology behind this "upgrade." I was hoping to learn about that most.

The article links to the company's Technology page: http://www.shethinx.com/technology/

Basically it's underwear with a built-in sanitary pad.

The CEO, Miki Agrawa, has a book that's a pretty good read called "Do Cool Shit"

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0062261533

This doesn't seem like an upgrade from Dear Kate's (dearkates.com) products except for the partnership to give back. Love the few pairs I have from Dear Kate, they work really well.

Looking at there websites, this one claims to absorb 6 teaspoons; Dear Kate's claims to absorb 3 teaspoons. That's the only difference I can see, beyond the partnership.

I googled for stats on tampons vs. pads and according to a paper some 3/4 of all women prefer tampons anyway, so I'm not sure they actually need a replacement for pads? I'm amazed that almost everybody using the word "gross" in this thread seems to be a women. I thought if anything men would be the problem. While searching for the paper I actually found a lot of women calling pads disgusting which I though is a little harsh. I hope they're talking about the feeling rather than the blood? About the product itself I'm not sure what to think. It's patented tech so it's not all that helpful to women in poor countries and I'm not too happy about the language they're using either. They're kind of implying that all women have tried so far isn't sexy and now they fixed it. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm convinced the tech isn't the problem here (seems fairly obvious).

Where did you read tampons are more common?

I found this which sounds like pads are used more: http://lipglossandabackpack.com/feminine-hygiene-around-the-...

Here's the paper: http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8852185/Kohen.pdf...

The first sentence is: "Tampons are used by up to 70 percent of menstruating women in the United States today, and the average woman may use as many as 16,800 tampons in her lifetime."

Using tampons doesn't rule out using pads, too. If I use a tampon one day, I'm one of that 70% of menstruating women that uses tampons. If I use a pad when I swap out that tampon, I'm now also one of the x% of menstruating women that uses pads.

Realised that the second I pasted the text. It's midnight in Germany ... That's the original link I found: http://askville.amazon.com/AMERICAN-WOMEN-TAMPONS-PADS-PERIO...

And here is another statistic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22980411

They're both not clear though I do think it's fair to say tampons are preferred. Just google for "tampons vs. pads".

how do you use 16800 tampons over a lifetime? that's one a day for 46 years.

Well, if you change your tampon ever 2-3 hours, then you end up using 4-5 a day, which can run up to 30-35 tampons a month, which averages out to a little more than one a day.

That's US only.

Tampons vs. pads is like Ruby vs. Javascript. Not mutually exclusive; used in different circumstances.

FYI: Menstrual blood is not like, say, blood from a cut on your arm. It is clotty, nasty, disgusting stuff. Menstrual blood has been collecting in the uterus for some weeks, creating a lining on the walls intended to become a placenta should one get pregnant. And when a woman fails to get pregnant, the body decides to shed that lining.

It's really not pleasant stuff to deal with. Plus, it is contaminated by mucus of varying amounts and thicknesses.

"Not pleasant to deal with" is a lot better than "gross" :)

My first thought was "turns my stomach." I went with "gross" instead out of deference to the largely male audience whom I did not expect would understand my strong negative reaction. :-)

Interesting to me was that culturally even in the US, with native born women, there are clear lines sometimes. Example: I once, being the generally swell guy I am, volunteered to go on an errand to get tampons for my live in partner at the time, who was in a bit of a crisis. We lived in a laregly hispanic neighborhood, and despite the owners of the local store being family friends (they also rented our apartment to us), they were mortified that I was looking for them. I asked my (other white dude) friend who brought me into this circle of friends why everyone flipped out about it, and the general consensus was that in Latino-American culture, you just didn't use them. It was pads or nothing else, and that was disgusting to think of using tampons.

I've had little further discussion or interactions surrounding it, but that one anecdote basically reinforced my gender role of being weird about going to the store to buy them for my partner.

>While searching for the paper I actually found a lot of women calling pads disgusting which I though is a little harsh. I hope they're talking about the feeling rather than the blood?

I think what these women are saying is, "I personally find wearing a pad disgusting" and not "Women who wear pads are disgusting." I definitely would call pads gross or disgusting, and when I say that, I mean that is my experience with wearing them in comparison to tampons.

With tampons, the blood doesn't make it to the vulva, in general. So the vulva stays a lot cleaner. If you wear pads, the blood flows out, so it dies and cakes on your pubic hair, labia, and anus. In addition, you can feel the blood once it exits, so there's a continual "gooey" feel, squelching when you sit down, etc. I honestly don't know why women who wear pads prefer it.

To be clear, I don't have any hygienic concerns with pads, nor with women who wear them. It's just that both the mess and the felling caused from wearing pads vs tampons I personally find gross.

Lunapads has been making these kinds of products for over 20 years (est. 1993): http://lunapads.com/underwear.html

Really great people there too, and their products last for years so it reduces a lot of waste.

would be interesting to hear a woman's opinion here. My understanding was that panties are usually bought on the merits of fit and, especially, quality of material. Is the built-in pad an improvement or gimmick?

If all else was equal (fit, quality of material, looks), and they could actually be worn for a full day without getting "full," I'd give it a shot.

Not a woman, but its well known they buy several pairs of "period panties" as to not ruin their nicer ones. This seems to be tapping into that market by making an explicit "period panty" that'll last longer, come in dark colors, has a pad, etc. So instead of buying a cheap set of disposable panties and using those, you'd buy a few pairs of these that are specialized for the task.

No idea how pricing works out. In the end, it might be smarter to just buy a box of 10 granny panties at Walmart for 12 bucks than pay $20 a pair for these high-tech ones. (The 5 day set is $180.) Especially if they can only hold 2-6 teaspoons of liquid. Seems the 'help a girl in the third world' narrative is pretty disingenuous here at those prices. Pads cost a fraction of that. This seems like something a western woman would use on top of a pad or tampon.

Does every startup need to be about "changing the world" and "helping the third world?" Its practically self-satire at this point and was expertly mocked in HBO's Silicon Valley series. This is a luxury good, not a charity.

I don't think that the period panty product is actually what they're sending to Africa. They mentioned that "the purchase of a pair of THINX also buys seven washable pads for girls in Uganda."

I don't think the majority of startups are out to 'help the world,' though many are out to change/'disrupt' (even this one claims to be disrupting). I don't know that I find that such a bad thing, though. Many products try and fail to change what they see as a problem, but there's really no harm in that. They're just trying to help.

Never are they claiming it is not a luxury good. Why are you being so dismissive of them? It's like saying Tesla can't save the world because they're making $80k cars, it's short sighted.

The changing the world line and the bit about a 'week of shame' sounded like complete BS.

But leaks don't just affect panties, I've ruined many sets of sheets, expensive pairs of jeans and even a very nice dress. As a very frugal woman I would buy a pair.

You'll find, watching the video again, that the luxury panties are not actually what they're doing in Africa.

Menstruation varies much between individuals, not to mention with age. So I'm sure there are people for whom this will be an improvement, which is the question you really wanted to ask.

Having not tried it, I do not know the answer to your question. But, as a woman, I know one issue that is common for women is that pads often fail to cover, get accidentally repositioned, etc and then you end up bleeding onto your panties. This can lead to an unfortunate mess (leakage) even if you are not bleeding very heavily. Plus, some women have very heavy periods and find it a challenge to keep everything clean no matter how many precautions they take. Speculating: I can imagine it being something some women would prefer simply for potentially superior coverage.

But I suspect I will not ever buy them. I have a compromised immune system. If I bleed on my clothes, I throw them out. Washing blood out is not sufficient for my needs. So I am kind of grossed out by the idea of buying underwear with the intention of bleeding into them and then washing the blood out and then doing that again.

>So I am kind of grossed out by the idea of buying underwear with the intention of bleeding into them and then washing the blood out and then doing that again.

that probably it. Back in USSR times the single use pads were a luxury, and women frequently were getting by with kind of self-made and somewhat reusable pads. The moment [western] single-use pads/tampons became available they stopped using anything else.

In particular, i think, there is an issue with washing out as it is not only blood there, and all the stuff wouldn't be washed out completely, especially from inside built-in padding material. Things change of course, yet 30 years ago regular detergent in regular cloth washer wasn't enough.

The moment [western] single-use pads/tampons became available they stopped using anything else

Which is a shame, as it is not exactly ok for the environment. Same goes for diapers. Tons and tons of throw-away material every single day. Which is the reason my wife uses reusable pads and our (future) children will use reusable diapers. My wife has no problems with the pads whatsoever (not claiming no women will ever have, but it definitely indicates it can be a proper substitute - although in might be in contradiction with what marketing tries to make one believe) and none of the parents we now who are using cotton diapers have problems either (again, same remark).

Reusable cotton diapers are great, if you have access to a washing machine. Doing it by hand is not an option and you don't want to let them sit unwashed for long.

Another thing that's great, if they work for you anatomically, is the little plastic mentruation cups. They are to the tampon what the cotton pad is to the single-use one.

I have seen conflicting reports regarding the environmental impact of cloth vs disposable diapers. Cloth diapers have to be washed. They use water, detergent, etc. It isn't a clear "win" for the environment to forego disposable diapers.

For me, I have a genetic disorder. Treating it conventionally is extremely expensive (~$100k or more annually, which grows the older -- and sicker -- that you get). I have found that throwing out contaminated clothing is a drop in the bucket compared to what the medical expenses are supposed to be and far more effective in terms of giving me high quality of life (a la "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" -- it is just so much better to protect myself than to let myself get sick and then try to treat it).

Also, I am somewhat skeptical of self-reported anecdata concerning "we do x and it causes no problems" when someone has a stated up front agenda because of the tendency humans have to attribute "bad" outcomes to something they have decided is "bad" and "good" outcomes to something they have decided is "good" and do not confuse them with the facts. I have seen way too much of that in life. People are seldom objective or logical.

I have seen conflicting reports regarding the environmental impact of cloth vs disposable diapers

Me too. At least a couple of studies mainly took into account the amount of energy used for production vs washing. That is basically nonsense as it discards the waste. So even if both came out equally regarding energy consumption (hereby properly considering the washing machines these days use way less energy and water, latter might even have been collected from rain) there is still waste left with one and not so much with the other. And plastic isn't exactly that easy to get rid of.

Also, I am somewhat skeptical of self-reported anecdata concerning "we do x and it causes no problems"

Which is exactly why I also pointed out that I do not take it for granted that it works for everyone. And obviously for you it doesn't work, at all. And I'm fine with that.

If it prevents leaks like they claim it would be a huge improvement.

I analyzed this pretty critically with my girlfriend who is sitting right next to me and had heard of them before. She agreed that there was definitely a demand for this product, but that 1) the cost was too high 2) she would rather just buy regular panties + some tampons or pads to put in her purse 3) it may be more applicable for women who have had children and have more issues with incontinence/etc (we're both 23). We also both pointed out that regular panties are something like 6/$24 at Victoria's Secret... a sixth of the cost of these things.

And if we're talking period panties, I'd rather spend $8 on a pack of 8 cheapy Walmart panties than 6/$24 at Vicky's Secret.

Yeah, that too. I think women have already figured out cheaper/easier solutions than this.

There are a couple of companies on the market making leak resistant underwear now. Dear Kate is one of them and then Knix Wear is another. Seems to be a trend given there are a couple startups in the space. I agree though fit, quality of material and comfort have to come first.

DAMN that's some expensive underwear. $47 for one?

They give away like five pairs to women in need for every pair you buy.

it's five pairs of a cheaper kind

I think that would be a nice bonus if the panties were priced in say the $13 range. I wouldn't pay these prices though.

I wonder how much margin there is at the current price point. If it costs them $15 to make one their product might be DOA...

One you can keep. I know someone that ends up throwing away a pair of pants every cycle. That adds up!

I guess it will smell bad.

wow this is amazing. But how did they do it?

I chocked up when they pulled down their pants revealing their underwear. To make something for yourself; something so intimate, that you depend on everyday, to make it, not only have it on shelves but have it on you. That is powerful.

I like it when women wear underwear that isn't $47 a pop.

That way if you rip it, or lose it, or whatever... nobody cares. Plus... it's more exciting when women buy new underwear frequently. My girlfriend will text me, "I'm wearing new panties..." and I'm cutting out of work early.

Doesn't every woman carry a tampon in her purse?

Can't you just take a no-period birth control pill?

Ok, glad we're helping the girls in Africa, but wouldn't the $47 a pair be better spent directly on them if that's the real goal?

This product isn't for you, which is obvious from the astounding ignorance of your comment.

1. "Expensive underwear are bad because I gain sexual gratification from new underwear and money spent on expensive period underpants take money away from that." Could you be more self-involved? How about respecting women to know what products they want, considering they are the one actually having periods? But no, it's all about keeping your dick hard. Okay.

2. Yes. Women who use tampons carry tampons around with them. However, the way you know when your period starts is when you find blood in your panties. At which point there is already blood in your panties. You shouldn't put a tampon in prior to your period arriving as that is a) extremely uncomfortable and b) risks TSS, but wearing special underwear as a precaution seems reasonable. Also, when the tampon is full, it will leak. This can be pre-empted, but not 100% of the time, as flow varies. This is why many women wear panty liners in conjunction with tampon use. And yes, it is fucking annoying to make sure you always have a tampon with you 100% of the time, and isn't 100% successful, thanks for your concern.

3. Again, your ignorance astounds me here. For one, spotting is common with continual use of birth control. So actually these panties would be pretty helpful with that as spotting is completely unpredictable, unlike actual periods. Secondly, did you seriously just suggest that every woman who menstruates go on continual hormonal birth control as an alternative to expensive panties? You do realize that BC a)has side effects and b) costs money?

4. No, that's not the real goal. They're making a product. For people to buy. Which should be obvious. The charitable link-in is a common marketing technique.

The fuck I just saw.

The next product is obvious: Pants.

http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-tee...

Huh. See, I thought this would be about the pajama jeans. But that makes more sense.

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