“One time, I noticed that the little waxy strips you peel off the maxi pad adhesive were printed, over and over, with a slogan: ‘Kotex Understands.’ In the worst moments, when my period felt like a death – the death of innocence, the death of safety, the harbinger of a world where I was too fat, too weird, too childish, too ungainly – I’d sit hunched over on the toilet and stare at that slogan, and I’d cry. Kotex understands. Somebody, somewhere, understands.”
