Or is it just commercialism? Or convenience? Sometimes a carrot, said Freud, is just a carrot. I was wandering around Walgreens on my semi-annual drugstore stroll. This is a ritual I do in order to make sure I am well-stocked with band-aids, anti-biotic ointment, vitamins, supplemental or seasonal vitamins, antiseptic wipes, toothpaste, acetaminophen, ibuprofen…you get my drift. I also enjoy drugstores because of course I do. Doesn’t everyone?
Regardless, I perform this ritual not simply because I need stuff, but also because having grown up in a drugstore family, it took me at least two decades to realize that in fact my dad wasn’t there to fill my medicine cabinet anymore when it needed filling, largely because I was in NYC and he was in the Catskills. This also applied to my sock drawer, my supply of toilet paper, my paper and pen supplies, tampons – anything and everything he stocked at ye olde pharmacy or that my parental units had stocked as a matter of course because decent parenting required it.
Buying bras and underwear for myself felt like adulting in those days; it was also a release, as my mother’s taste and mine could not have been more different. But I digress. The latest Walgreens I visited, where I was struggling to find the cushy inserts for my shoes that I like, had the ‘Feminine Care’ aisle clearly marked. Why I noticed the primary item stocked there was condoms, I don’t know – a high level of radar for irony? Or for that casual, institutional sexism I see in so many places, like changing tables in the women’s bathrooms but not the men’s, or the men’s room being both closer to access and twice the size of the women’s in so many buildings. Yeah, yeah – old buildings, but there is such a thing as renovation, updating, repurposing.
There is such a thing as taking care of female employees. Or smply making both lavatories unisex? If that freaks you out, maybe at least make the women’s bathroom the bigger one? It’s a thought!
But maybe it was simple commercialism: put the condoms there at the aisle’s end, and the tampons and pads in the middle of the long display avenue. In this way, women will purchase condoms, thinking oh yes, in order to keep from missing periods like the one I have now or am expecting this week/month (on average, women spend 30 years of our lives avoiding pregnancy), thereby upending my entire life, destiny, health, plans – you name it – I will pick up condoms because shit-for-brains never does. Or maybe even women will pick them up because we also enjoy sex?! Revolutionary idea!
Oh wait. That’s not it, or rather that’s not always it. Or more honestly, that’s rarely it. The truth is women take responsibility for preventing pregnancy much more often than men. How do I know this? Because I am a woman. Also, this: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6115298/
I actually thought about asking the druggist or manager about this display on the feminine care aisle, ‘Um, why are these placed here’ – yet you can’t argue that preventing pregnancy or the spread of STDs isn’t ‘caring for women and girls’, can you? Although I have argued that pregnancy is the most common STD women are attempting to avoid – an argument that never fails to upset persons more delicate than my rough and tumble self.
I said nothing, filled my little basket, paid, and left. But I took this photo because in time, this will change, right? Or maybe it won’t matter, as certainly among all the sexist stupid patronizing idiotic and downright harmful things going on in the world right now – who cares about minor stuff like this, which is really just a symptom of larger ills. Sigh.
