Text/Tan Hailong
Editor/Yin Xu
In Jiangmen, Guangdong Province, a museum dedicated to sanitary napkins has been open for half a year.
In the past six months, nearly 10,000 people have visited here. This sanitary napkin museum tells about the physiological structure of women and the past and present lives of menstruation and sanitary napkins.
Most of the decorations and ornaments in the museum are made of sanitary napkins, tampons or menstrual cups, and the sanitary napkins that are usually kept secret in people's mouths are the only protagonists here, and everything revolves around it.
Sanitary Napkin Museum
Walking into the museum, you will be greeted by an introduction to the global state of menstrual poverty, and in underdeveloped areas, the hygiene products used by women are still quite rudimentary. In addition to a brief history of the development of women's hygiene products, menstrual knowledge science, menstrual health care and other knowledge introductions, the museum also set up an interactive experience area and a product performance experiment area, visitors can independently test the performance of different material sanitary napkins, men can sit on the pain experience chair to feel the feeling of simulating women's dysmenorrhea and childbirth.
For a long time in the past, women's menstrual-related topics were so secretive that even they seemed ashamed to take the initiative to bring it up in public. But fortunately, in the past two years, the topic of sanitary napkins has continued to enter the public eye, and at the same time, their physiological problems have gradually moved from the obscured dark box to the sun.
1. Their intimate and secret "partners"
Mai Xiaoyang, 24, remembers not realizing it was "menstruation" when he had menarche. After seeing the red mark on her pants, she hurried home as soon as school was over, thinking she had an incurable disease. Her mother simply taught her how to use sanitary napkins, and she hastily broke into her own puberty.
Li Yu, a 23-year-old freelancer, remembers that he would read Yang Hongying's "Girl's Diary" in the second grade of primary school and learn about the "small thing" of menstruation. At that time, Li Yu's parents were more reserved, would not take the initiative to mention sexual knowledge to her, the Network was not developed, under the hazy desire for knowledge, she could only rely on some reading books to understand her physiological structure from the side.
In the memories of many women, these secret and reckless fragments of adolescence are not unfamiliar. In the United States brand public welfare short film "Menarche is coming, please congratulate me! Some girls think that the first menarche is that they have a terminal illness, and tearfully write a suicide note; some girls dare not take out sanitary napkins in the classroom, looking left and right for fear of being discovered by the opposite sex; some girls accidentally dropped sanitary napkins, and were kicked as football by boys of the same age...
Lu Yanqun, chairman of Bingbing Group
Lu Yanqun, chairman of Bingbing Group, has been engaged in the research and development, production and trade of hygiene products for more than 20 years, and the sanitary napkins produced in her factory are exported to more than 80 countries overseas. In her view, women have been experiencing menstruation for 30 to 40 years in their lives, using tens of thousands of sanitary napkin products, but for menstrual care knowledge, menarche education and health towel quality and safety cognition, almost all of them are rarely involved, coupled with a variety of products and selling points on the market, resulting in users lack of the most basic identification and safety cognition of products. On the other hand, due to the lack of knowledge of menarche, when girls have menarche, many parents throw a sanitary napkin at random and let them grope for themselves.
The child of a relative of Lu Yanqun encountered a "crisis" in adolescence: the girl was very panicked when the first menstrual period came, was ridiculed by boys of the same age at school, and the elders were not around, and she gradually fell into depression, and her grades plummeted.
This incident touched Lu Yanqun a lot, "All the discomfort or ridicule is due to ignorance." In Lu Yanqun's view, it is precisely because people do not understand and avoid menstrual problems that the concept of "menstrual shame" is more and more deeply rooted. "Instant noodles have museums, cars have museums, why can't we make sanitary napkins a generous thing?"
In order to break people's prejudices against menstruation, stimulate women's free expression and release, and allow male compatriots to participate in and understand this knowledge, Lu Yanqun led the creation of the world's first public welfare "Sanitary Napkin Museum", which is set up on the sixth floor of Jiangmen Company Park, covering an area of 1800 square meters and 14 exhibition areas.
Interior view of the Sanitary Napkin Museum
For a long time, people avoided saying the word "menstruation" and found nearly 5,000 implicit expressions for it, such as "unlucky", "bloody Mary", "Shark Week" and so on. Lu Yanqun introduced that in the sanitary napkin museum, the names of menstruation and sanitary napkins will be solemnly proposed, and it is expected that the crowd that comes to visit can have a clear understanding of the physiological characteristics of this woman.
For example, the interactive section of the dysmenorrhea experience area is set up to allow male compatriots to better and more deeply empathize with women's feelings of dysmenorrhea and childbirth, from acquiring knowledge to personal interactive experience, to help everyone better build awareness of menstruation and women's menstruation. Menstrual poverty and menstrual shame reflect deep-seated problems such as sex education, and the sanitary napkin museum can just fill people's cognitive blind spots for physiological knowledge.
At present, the museum has received more than 10,000 visitors, most of whom are social groups or school teachers and students.
2, "women know more about women"
Since 2001, Bingbing Group has been a processing agent for more than 80 countries and more than 200 brands. Lu Yanqun remembers that in the 1980s and 1990s, Chinese women began to use sanitary napkins universally. Before that, she herself, her friends around her, and the women of the older generation used homemade "sanitary napkins" such as menstrual belts, toilet paper, and coarse cloth when they came to menstruation.
In the 1990s, the sanitary napkins that women could buy on the market were usually thicker, and the surface of the sanitary napkins was mostly made of mesh. But with the development of the material and economic economy, more lighter, thinner and more comfortable sanitary napkin products have appeared on the market. In recent years, the basic quality of domestic sanitary napkins has been greatly improved, many domestic brands have risen, consumer needs have begun to become diversified, and their choice of space is also greater.
Lu Yanqun believes that as a woman, she is more able to empathize with consumers of sanitary napkins and better understand what women need and do not need during menstruation.
"In the summer, especially in Guangdong, it can be very uncomfortable to use an impermeable sanitary napkin. We should consider the dryness and comfort of sanitary napkins. Lu Yanqun often integrates his feelings and "pain points" into the research and development and production of sanitary napkins, such as considering the needs of different seasons and different occasions for the use of sanitary napkins, combined with market research, and producing targeted products, so that the product attributes of the market segment can better meet the diversified product demands of modern women.
Bingbing Group has a "100,000-level clean workshop" and a pharmaceutical-grade high-standard production line. The Group's production qualifications meet world-class standards, and the product quality has passed a number of standard certifications (such as mechanical brand standard certification, WCA certification, halal certification, etc.).
Ice Ice Group production plant
While ensuring high-quality products and innovative development, the Group also continues to explore the environmental protection and sustainable recycling of Eisai. According to Wei Zhiguo, manager of the quality department, the group has successfully realized the healthy, safe and pollution-free natural fiber as the raw material for hygiene products with the unique "patented process of fully biodegradable sanitary napkins" as the core technology carrier. Most of the sanitary napkins on the market are non-degradable materials, and it takes decades to complete the degradation after disposal, and the fully biodegradable sanitary napkin products produced by the group can be biodegradable within 216 hours, and can be used for composting to gradually achieve the purpose of ecological recyclability, reduce white garbage pollution, and protect the earth's ecological environment.
At the beginning of 2020, Lu Yanqun and the team incubated the Group's own national brand "Meibuji", hoping to continue to provide high-quality products for female user groups, while also passing on the values of women's uniqueness and self-appreciation, the undefined new generation and new propositions.
For a long time, society is accustomed to "labeling" on women, "good wife and mother" and "strong women" seem to be clear and clear, water and fire, with a certain pejorative color, women's main light has become dim under various labels, and the positioning of the "beautiful" brand is to break prejudice and convention, and reject various label definitions of women. "We are to be a new cutting-edge female brand that insists on speaking up for women and passing on the positive energy of women's values." Lu Yanqun said so.
As a new brand that has just "broken into" the sanitary napkin ocean, there are many challenges facing the united states, in addition to the precipitation of the brand, but also to establish continuous contact with consumers, obtain the trust of consumers, launch more vital products, etc. Lu Yanqun's attitude is relatively optimistic: competition is not necessarily a bad thing, standing out in the fierce competition, becoming a solid social force, is the value of the brand.
3) "As a new generation of women, we should not be defined"
Good businesses need to produce good products, but they are not limited to producing products.
As an organic part of society, enterprises need to take the initiative to assume social responsibility and social mission. In addition to the production of women's hygiene products, Bingbing Group also hopes to carry out a long-term public welfare project of "Beauty and First Appearance Action" through the establishment of the Sanitary Napkin Museum to popularize physiological knowledge and sex education to the public and young people. The "First Appearance Action" is mainly aimed at the group of adolescent girls who have come to the beginning of menarche, on the one hand, to provide them with support for practical hygiene products, and on the other hand, through the opening of "menarche teaching halls", to provide informative education and guidance, improve the understanding of menstruation among adolescent boys and girls, and break blind spots and misunderstandings.
Lu Yanqun at work
In August 2021, Meibuji Brand, together with the Shenzhen Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the sex education public welfare organization Berry Spicy, held the country's first cool "sex education" interactive exhibition in Shenzhen - "I have asked many people about you". At the interactive exhibition, after watching a sexual assault video in the screening room, the audience will be taken to another room, and the staff will educate and guide them on what to do when they are faced with the situation of the short film, such as shouting for help. At the exhibition, Lu Yanqun was deeply touched by a girl's reaction. She remembered the girl who had attended the event being very emotional. The girl said that due to the lack of sex education before, she did not know how to deal with the abuse and did not dare to tell her parents. The "shout for help" method made her finally realize the way she needed to ask for help, and also released her long-stored emotions.
It is understood that at the sex education interactive exhibition, the number of offline visitors exceeded 13,000, the number of online "cloud shopping" reached 120,000, and the number of readers on the whole network exceeded 16 million. Breaking ignorance can lead to understanding, the Meibu brand takes feminism as the core, and always cares about women's growth and the improvement of women's rights and interests with practical actions.
With the mission of speaking up for women, promoting women's rights and eliminating menstrual discrimination, Lu Yanqun joined hands with public welfare organizations and social groups to launch the "First Appearance Action", which has also become the first region-wide and undifferentiated public welfare project for the free distribution of sanitary napkins for women in junior high schools, and has now entered dozens of schools and provided more than 230,000 sanitary napkins for adolescent girls free of charge.
Beauty is just beginning to show action
When it comes to the issue of women in recent years, Lu Yanqun believes that now the public's thinking is more open, and society is moving in the direction of being friendly to women, but there is still a long way to go to truly eliminate "menstrual poverty" and "menstrual shame", "more socially responsible enterprises and individuals are needed to actively participate (among them), only when everyone invests in practical actions, we can continue to spread this positive positive energy of female friendliness." ”
"When our company was still very small, we wanted to do women's public welfare as a lifelong undertaking, so as to practice corporate social responsibility." In Lu Yanqun's view, on the basis of ensuring the quality of sanitary napkins and promoting the development of the green industry and the utilization of resources, enterprises should do some more remarkable things to benefit more and more groups, which is the mission of enterprises.
Lu Yanqun introduced that in the entire Bingbing Group, the proportion of female employees has reached more than 75%, and the proportion of female executives accounts for 2/3. Using the right people in the right position is the group's employment strategy, lu Yanqun firmly believes that women understand women better, and they will create products that are more suitable for women.
Li Yu likes the three packaging of beautiful sanitary napkins, the three female images are not stereotyped and solidified, but diverse and imaginative, "Women can choose any kind of image, we should not be defined." ”
(Mai Xiaoyang and Li Yu are pseudonyms)
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