CROWN HEIGHTS — For the past year, Diandra Kalish’s full-time job has been talking to women about their periods.
Specifically, Kalish has made it her mission to break taboos associated with menstruation by offering health education and sustainable menstrual products to women in need — through the nonprofit UnTabooed, which she runs from her Crown Heights apartment.
“My room is full of menstrual cups,” she said with a laugh.
As the group began its work last year, the affordability of pads and tampons became something of a hot-button issue, due in large part to public outcry over the so-called tampon tax. Opponents of the tax want to reclassify sanitary products as sales tax exempt "necessities" like bandages and other medical purchases.
Kalish, 24, says she supports the idea of making menstrual product more affordable, but her group goes one step further: giving women truly reusable — and, therefore, sustainable — period products.
“There's all this effort to get disposable products into shelters for free, into correctional facilities for free, into public restrooms for free, all of that, which would be helpful, but … disposable products aren’t a long-term solution,” she said.
Instead, UnTabooed aims to teach women and girls about how to use cloth pads and menstrual cups — items that can each be cleaned and reused many times — at free and optional menstrual health workshops the nonprofit holds at city shelters and in parts of Connecticut.
“A lot of people take for granted that you can just walk into a drugstore and buy a $7 box of tampons. And some people might have to choose if they can afford the tampons or if they need to buy dinner or soap — something for their whole family,” she said.
To alleviate that choice, UnTabooed partnered with companies that make reusable menstrual products — including Diva Cup and GladRags — to provide free products to women who attend the group’s workshops, which aim to help women feel “more empowered because you understand your body more and you’re not thinking of your period as this disgusting thing,” Kalish said.
Reactions are mixed, but positive overall: 80 to 90 percent of participants take free samples of the menstrual cups and reusable pads afterwards.
“Some people won’t look at me and they don’t want to talk to me about it and it’s that embarrassment factor or that ick factor. But some people open right up. You’d be amazed at the number of people who just start telling you their story,” she said.
Though UnTabooed has reached a lot of women since its founding almost exactly 12 months ago (their one-year anniversary party is set for Monday), Kalish said she does not yet have enough money or products to give a complete set of reusables to every woman she meets.
“We don’t have the funds to give people who just like pads enough pads to last them their whole cycle. So they’ll be like, ‘Yeah I used it for two days and then I had to use disposables,’ which is the unfortunate nature of being a start-up,” she said.
Kalish estimated it would take about $20 to outfit a woman or girl with a complete set of reusable products, and that UnTabooed is looking for more partner companies who'd like to donate. The company also needs volunteer teachers to help run its workshops.
“Both NPR and Cosmo magazine dubbed 2015 as the year of the period," Kalish said. "So the question is, what’s next?”
The UnTabooed anniversary party will take place at the LMHQ event space at 150 Broadway in Manhattan on Monday, May 23 at 6:30 p.m. with a panel discussion, raffle and open bar for ticket-holders. Visit the group’s website for more information.
