I am sick of people telling me to clean up. I am sick of being told I am dirty. Every time I walk down a “feminine hygiene” aisle, I plan ways to commit minor acts of arson. So far, all I’ve figured out is that cardboard tampons are the place to start because pads don’t burn as fast.

I understand not everyone is willing to be a hardened criminal, so this column is about other ways to express a deep hatred of being told your vagina is a mess you need to take care of.

First of all, hating periods is nothing new. Jesus probably hated periods. In the time o’Christ, women were considered unclean for the duration of their menstruation and were forbidden from entering any place of worship for fear of contamination. Contamination, you know. Because periods are dirty. Also a common practice of the time: ostracizing women to specific huts while they bleed and having them squat over holes in the ground to catch their dirty, dirty periods.

So technically we have it pretty good. In the ’50s women wore belts under their clothes which pinned pieces of cloth to stirrups on the woman’s leg. There is probably a fetish attached to that somewhere in the world. Today all we have to do is walk down aisles and aisles of pink flowers and scented motherfucking panty-liners whenever that time of the month rolls around.

But we also have to endure constant references in pop culture which make menstruation something that turns women into crazies and ruins good sex everywhere. Plus, people are not afraid to talk about SOMETHING COMPLETELY NATURAL AND PART OF BEING A WOMAN on TV and in movies anymore. Negative, it’s usually because a woman is complaining about it or a man is wondering why his wife is so goddamn testy. Never is it to discuss how, oh, I don’t know, the ENTIRETY of human EXISTENCE hinges on women everywhere having their periods.

Mostly this shit is just not that bananas. Women shed some uterus. It’s what they do. It happens pretty predictably. It doesn’t last long. And it’s just not that bad. We know it’s coming, and we know what helps with cramps, and the lucky ones know that period sex is actually just about the best thing there is. A few enlightened minds have even thought of alternatives to chemical-ridden tampons and landfill-clogging sanitary napkins.

Yes. There is more to life than tampons. Bear with me.

I use the Diva Cup. I might get the words Diva Cup tattooed on my ass, I think it’s that good. Instead of being cotton covered in chemicals (like Rayon) that actually make women bleed more so they buy more, Diva Cup is made of silicone and fills not a single landfill because you don’t throw it away. Each Cup is guaranteed for TEN YEARS. It is odorless and colorless and makes getting one’s period just something that happens. It’s just this little unassuming thing that looks like a cup. You wash it every time you empty it and then you use it again and again and again. For 10 years.

I’m willing to bet the woman that invented the Diva Cup has also wreaked some havoc in the feminine hygiene aisle in her day. She walked around in the Target of her hometown and thought about landfills and the 20 billion (not exaggerating) pads and tampons going into them every year. She thought about how women believe they are dirty because the pads are called sanitary, and smelly because the pads come scented. She knew this wasn’t true and that the products on the market (created and sold by men…with penises, men…) actually create messes and bad smells. And she did something about it. Maybe someone in her school wrote a really good column about it or something. Who knows.

But the change was made. Women don’t have to feel dirty anymore. Now they can just wash their Diva Cups and get back to the perpetuation of the human race.