Ep. 16: It's Tough to Be A ... Woman

We think most of us can agree: it's tough to be a woman. Today, we're drawing inspiration from Disney’s “A Bug’s Life” because, let’s face it, sometimes being a woman feels like dodging giant grasshoppers and navigating a world designed for someone else. We'll tackle serious issues like the staggering $300,000 more it costs to simply be a woman in the United States. And maybe, if we're lucky, Bri will sing the theme song from "A Bug's Life."

What is We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism?

We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe God wants more for women than we've been taught. Join us as we dive into the intersection of faith and feminism, learning together as we go.

Welcome to the We Are More podcast.

My name is Alyssa.

And my name is Bri.

We are two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism.

We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach His

word.

And apparently that's controversial.

Get comfy.

Hello my name is Brianna.

Is it?

They haven't figured that out by now.

Hello.

If there's anybody out there who is, you know, a podcast creator and they know more about

technology than we know.

Please help us.

There's too many chords here and we're confused.

We're going to call today on this episode that we're not going to name because we've

learned that lesson.

I thought we did name it.

Oh, we're not numbering.

We're not numbering it.

We named it though and it's a good name.

It is a good name.

It's a good name if you're an old Disney addict and also you might be related to us.

So we're going to call today, it's tough to be a bug.

I mean, I mean, woman.

And if you don't get that reference, it's from Disney.

Of course it is.

A Bugs Life.

And that guy, I forget his name, but he sings, he was like, was a bug, little bug, hardly

there.

You were going to find an opportunity to sing that song today.

And this is it.

In Disney, if you go to Animal Kingdom, it's actually not going to be there for very long.

They're, they're re theming, I guess.

I actually didn't know that, but it needs to be rethemed.

So in the tree of life inside the big tree, there's a performance and it's called, it's

tough to be a bug.

And it scarred me as a child.

It scarred my daughter also.

Honestly, last time we were there, I hadn't gone into it's tough to be a bug in a while.

And I did last time.

That did scar me too.

There's like a stink bug and there's little ants or bugs that crawl onto your butt.

And there's big old spiders.

You'd think as an adult, that wouldn't be as effective because it's just like little

air pockets that are blowing up under your seat and kind of at the bottom by your feet

or whatever, but it's still terrifying.

It's horrible.

And if you don't like bugs, get out of there.

Just get out.

If you don't like bugs, maybe going to a performance called it's tough to be a bug was not your

best life choice.

I do like the movie though.

I like the movie a bug's life.

Cause they collect like seeds and berries and there's something pleasant about that.

It scared me as a child because they've got the grasshoppers and they're straight up evil.

They're scary and mean.

And then doesn't like the one gets eaten by a bird at the end, right?

Well, it deserves it cause it was mean.

But yeah, it's really scarring.

Old Disney was scary and scarring.

So today instead of a bug, we're talking about womanhood.

It's hard being a woman.

And like you'd think 2024, okay, we probably should have figured some stuff out.

I get back in the day, you know, you had to go to the desert to bleed.

Sorry.

Maybe we need a warning before we, we're going to be talking about womanhood.

So if you're uncomfortable with that, maybe stop listening.

If you haven't figured out the topic of the entire podcast, now is the moment.

It's the thought of, you know, tampons and feminine hygiene makes you uncomfortable.

The exits are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,

here.

Dad, just go ahead and log off right now.

Just skip this one.

Sorry dad.

Hey, a new meme.

A new one.

Sorry dad.

Tampons.

One time I scared Brandon, but he was gone and he, we were pulling pranks on each other.

He turned my whole dresser upside down.

Yada, yada, yada.

I strung pads and tampons like streamers so that when he opened his door, they just went

pow.

I'm sure he loved that.

I think he did.

We grew up in, our dad in particular is very sensitive when it comes to talking about periods

and any of the feminine hygiene stuff.

He just can't.

He just can't.

And he has two daughters and a wife.

Like a tampon commercial comes on the TV.

Okay.

And I'm not talking about the modern ones where they actually use like red liquid.

Like when they were using blue Kool-Aid.

Okay.

And it would come on and he'd go, oh, and either pause it if we had DVR at the time.

Or he would literally run out of the room.

So this is going to be a rough one for dad.

You need to grow up.

This is happening and you can't stop it.

So we read an article or I read an article, we talked about it, that was essentially,

does it cost more to be a woman?

Just from a financial standpoint, does it cost more money to be a woman?

And we'll dive into each individual topic, but the conclusion, so we could just skip

to the end, is that-

Yes.

Yes.

But not just because of pads and tampons.

No, for many reasons.

It costs on average $300,000 more throughout your lifetime to be a woman.

A woman.

Just to be a woman.

Just to be without a ween.

And I think when people think of that, a huge stereotype on women is, well, you guys just

spend way too much on clothes and on trips and on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But we're not talking about optional items here.

We're talking about necessary things for living as a woman.

Yes.

And as I was reading the article, just the thing that popped out to me from that first

initial 300 grand, what could you buy for $300,000?

For $300,000, you could send yourself to college.

You could buy a house.

You could buy a boat.

You could, depending on where you are, buy multiple houses.

You could go on luxury vacations multiple times.

Literally for your whole life.

You could go to Disney so many times.

How many times could we go to Disney?

If every time we go to Disney-

Twice!

Cost us $5,000.

I'm like, hold on, Brianna!

Calculator time.

Alright, Bri, talk while I calculate.

Well, what else could you buy for $300,000?

I'd tell you what, 300,000 items at the dollar store.

No, because it's $1.25 now.

If you stole them though.

If you stole them though.

So if for an average family of four- now this might horrify you if you've not been to Disney,

but for an average family of four, like for my family, it costs around $5,000 to go to

Disney with airfare and whatever.

I don't want any of y'all to judge that.

It is necessary, okay?

Get over it.

Do you want to experience magic in your life?

That costs money, okay?

I don't know what to tell you.

Stop judging us!

Gosh, dang it!

I'm sorry, headphone users.

So anyway, if it costs $5,000 for a family of four to go to Disney, based on that amount

of money, your family of four could go to Disney 60 times.

And not enough.

It's just not enough.

I mean, you know, can you put a price on wonder and joy?

I don't think you can.

I don't think you can.

So those are some of the things that you could buy for $300,000.

Casually.

Casually.

But then I was also wondering, how much earlier can you retire?

Could you stop working, say, three years earlier based on the ability to invest that money?

Just in general, say you don't have to commit to working 40 hours a week.

You could have good work-life balance.

Right.

Well, and that was the other question I had is like, how much more does a woman have to

make to live comfortably as a woman, to have the same lifestyle as a man?

Let's say as a single woman, you need to make X amount of dollars to be able to pay for

all of this extra crap.

And a man doesn't have to make that much.

Now again, statistically, there's a wage gap.

And so men are making more anyway.

And so we're even further away from an easier lifestyle.

They say that's because men will apply for jobs if they are like 62% qualified for that

job.

But a woman will only apply for that job if she's like 85% qualified for that job.

Well, I think that ties in because we'll talk about this a little bit later too, but women

are taught to be meek and mild, to not ruffle feathers, to not rock the boat.

I don't want to make that person uncomfortable.

Exactly.

If I don't feel that I'm qualified for a job, I may not apply for it because I don't want

that person to judge me or to feel like they have to hire me or to whatever.

So we're going to come back to that.

We'll circle back to that.

We'll circle back.

So the article goes through quite a few different pieces of that $300,000 amount.

Just in case you don't believe us, there's lots of stats.

Don't believe me?

Ask the dishes.

Disney has really filtered into the last three episodes, guys.

We're going in 42 days.

We're very excited.

Honestly, they can sing, they can dance.

After all, this is France.

So one of the first things that she talks about in this article, and if you want to

look it up, it's on hermoney.com.

It's called Why It Costs $300,000 More to Be a Woman Than It Does to Be a Man.

So you can look that article up.

She's got some wonderful sources in here.

Wonderful.

The first thing she brings up is just a singular example of a singular item, and it's shampoo.

Shampoo.

In French, it's shampoo-y.

Thank you for that information.

So she says that shampoo for women is 48% more expensive than it is for men.

That doesn't mean it's better.

It really doesn't.

And that's just a singular problem.

We're not even taking into account the fact that stereotypically women are buying shampoo,

conditioner, a hair mask, 7,000 other things, and men are not necessarily doing that.

So just strictly shampoo.

So that means that if a man was to spend $6 for a bottle of shampoo, a woman would spend

$9.

I don't know about you, but it's a lot less than I'm spending on shampoo.

I know.

Shampoo's stupid.

It's expensive.

But I don't have to buy as much because curly hair is dry.

So that doesn't sound like a crazy amount right off the bat.

Six to nine dollars, okay, three dollar difference, whatever.

But over a lifetime, and I think she considers a lifetime from when you become, not that

this is your whole lifetime, but she's counting from when you are 18.

So you're going to start buying your own products.

And people might start earlier than that, but 18 on average.

And then she goes up to, I believe, 78, which is the average lifespan of a woman in the

United States.

So that's $1,260 more in our lifetimes on shampoo.

And that doesn't seem like, oh, like a crazy amount for a whole lifetime worth of shampoo.

But that's, like you said, that's one product.

And you know, for certain, there's lots of other products we're using.

Well, let me tell you about them, Bree.

Oh, Alyssa, I would just love you too.

Shoot, dang.

So the next one we'll go into is period products.

Oh, warning.

Bree, oh, do our transition music.

I'm always ready for a transition.

So period products, according to the National Organization for Women, most women spend about

$20 a month on period products.

Easily.

Yeah.

I don't know if that rings true for everyone, but for Bree and I, we were talking about the

different products that we have to buy.

And it's not just one thing.

No, because if you didn't know out there, there's a lot of different products.

It's not just a tampon.

There are days where you want to use tampons.

There are times where you just want to use a pad.

There are times when you want to use those little menstrual discs because that's more

comfortable.

Some people don't want that, but some people do.

And also you got to think of mitol and Tylenol and new underwear because gosh dang it, you

bled through it again.

A couple other things too, I'm sure.

So this is, this number, this $20 a month, I think is just period products though.

So your box of tampons for the month or whatever.

Your harpoons, your lagoons and your whatnots.

But obviously there are so many other costs.

And that's, I mean, forget even things like birth control, stuff like that.

So many just feminine care products.

Well, I would say what the average price for a box of tampons now is like $8.

That's on the cheap side actually.

Yeah.

And that's just one product.

So then if you're also getting pads and say that's $8, which I think they're even, if

you get the nicer ones, they're more than that.

Yeah, if you want one set, don't contain arsenic and lead.

We'll get into it, Bree.

We'll get into it.

Then you do need to spend a bit more.

So over a lifetime, moving on.

Over a lifetime, that $20 a month.

So that again, she counts from age 18.

Obviously this one doesn't go until 78, but I think she counts it from like age 18 till

50.

So that's like age 50ish.

That's $18,000.

Just because we bleed.

And this is not, if you want to make this argument of, well, women just spend more in

general, this is non-negotiable.

We don't get to decide whether we use period products.

Because let me tell you, if I show up to work bleeding through my pants, I think someone's

going to say something.

Maybe they just want us to go back to the desert, bleed in the sand.

There was an episode of Naked and Afraid we watched not too long ago.

I don't know if you watched it with us.

I do not watch Naked and Afraid.

It is quite a show.

I didn't realize it was still going.

But this woman, she was on her period while they were filming.

And I don't know why more women are not on their periods during this show, because a

lot of them are there for a full month.

But it definitely addressed the fact that she was just bleeding all day.

And wow, what an experience.

A little offshoot there.

All right.

Alyssa's eyes just glazed over and she looked into the distance like she was terrified.

I was terrified.

I just can't imagine that.

Can you imagine the mosquitoes having a field day?

Stop.

But another thing that I was reading about, because this was, this is a really big topic

and this could obviously be something that we go into deeper later, but this is just

part of what we're talking about today.

A huge part of having to spend this $18,000 throughout our lifetimes is that a lot of

women can't.

And so that's called period poverty, which is something that's uncomfy and that people

don't like to talk about.

But you get someone who is already impoverished, who's already struggling, and then you take

inflation into account.

You take how expensive housing is into account.

And do you think they are sitting on an extra $20 a month to buy proper, safe, healthy period

products?

So instead, they are trying to use less.

So they're maybe using their tampons for too long.

Which can lead to toxic shock syndrome, which can kill you.

They are overusing a pad, which means embarrassing leakage, which means the potential for infection.

The list goes on and on and you can say, we'll give them something reusable.

The reusable thing might only cost $40 or $50.

But that's the hard thing about being in poverty is if you can't afford the $5 box of cheap

tampons, you certainly can't afford the initial cost, even though it would save you money

long term, of a $40 or $50 reusable disc or cup or any of those things.

Additionally, for homeless shelters, things like that, these are not necessarily items

that are thought about and donated.

There's just a huge lack there.

So just having a period is incredibly difficult.

And it's an expense you don't have a choice.

And forget about the emotional things going on.

There's so much more that you could talk about, but we are 20 minutes in.

So move on.

Well, shoot.

So the next thing that she talks about, I'm going a little bit out of order, but one of

the other things she talks about is home ownership.

A single woman is likely to spend 2% more on her home than a single man.

And then she is likely to sell it for 2% less than a single man.

2% you don't think is huge until you realize how much is the price of a home.

It's a lot.

The average price of a home in the US is what, like $375,000?

$375,000.

I'm really knowledgeable, thank you.

So that means that 2% more is $7,500.

And think about when you buy a new home, all of the expenses that come with it.

Maybe you need a new couch, maybe you need a new bed, maybe the house needs some renovations.

$7,500 goes a long way.

So then the question becomes why?

Why is that the case?

And she says it's a failure to negotiate.

And so as Bri and I were talking about that, we said, well, why are women less likely to

negotiate?

And this ties back into why there's a wage gap.

Women are taught, particularly to tie this back into our whole aesthetic, Christian women

especially, religious women especially, not to say that this isn't all women, but from

our little corner of the woods over here, are taught be meek and mild, be unassuming,

don't be an inconvenience.

And the way that that plays out here is a wage gap.

Is a gap in how much you're going to pay for your home.

Or even if you do try to negotiate, they don't always take you seriously.

In my experience with buying many, many cars, bought a lot of cars, they just don't want

to hear it from someone that they think is weak or weaker than them, or someone that

they don't feel they can even respect.

That's my feelings on it is they're not even going to give you the time of day.

Well, I think oftentimes in these situations, women are seen as less knowledgeable.

I remember when we were looking for our house, and I did like our realtor a lot, don't get

me wrong, but he would turn to Nathan to talk about this and that and the other thing about

the house.

And in my past, I was a real estate assistant and so I took a lot of the classes to become

an agent.

And so I had a lot of knowledge.

And eventually he got to a point where he would talk to me too.

But it took a lot for him to talk to me.

Because I was seen as less knowledgeable just because I'm a woman.

I mean, he didn't know us at all, so that had to be the only reason.

So then she talked about clothes.

Now women get crap for clothes all the time.

I have a lot of clothes.

I enjoy purchasing clothes.

I'm looking around my room right now.

I'm thinking I need to burn everything.

So this number for clothing within that $300,000, so we're still working within that.

All she calculated for is shirts.

She was like, I'm not even going to go into formal dresses or wedding clothes or maternity

clothes or any of that stuff.

So we're just talking about shirts.

And she calculated out only as if a woman bought a new shirt every two months.

Now women pay on average $5 more per shirt than a man would.

So over a lifetime, that's a $1,500 difference.

Just in shirts and not to an excess.

We're not talking about a woman that loves to go shopping a ton or a man that loves to

go shopping a ton.

We're just talking if every two months reasonably you're replacing one shirt because good heavens

you've probably worn through them.

Or you've spilled countless times on your white clothing.

And stained it irreversibly.

So that's how clothing calculates into that number.

And I think if you did start to calculate out maternity clothes, like the millions of

other things that women have to buy.

I'm going to start on maternity clothes.

I haven't even had a baby.

I just think it's so frustrating that you go to try to buy maternity clothes and they

cost so much money.

It's insane.

Oh my gosh, just because there's a little extra fabric in your bump.

And sometimes there's not even extra fabric.

Sometimes it's just that it's ruched on the side.

Like a top is just ruched.

Or it's just branded as maternity.

Or it's slightly bigger in size.

So then she talks about the pink tacks.

Anytime I go to Victoria's Secret, I get just hit with a ton of tacks.

No, just kidding.

Rihanna.

So this is the concept that anything pink, not necessarily pink, but made for women,

costs more.

And there's an estimate, let me look back at where she found this estimate.

Things like razors for women.

Really, there's no difference between men and women's razors, but they're pink.

And so they cost more.

So I looked it up on Amazon to find examples of it.

And Gillette has...

I was going to say that.

Yeah.

Disposable pink razors.

And they were 1997.

And I looked up the same razors.

Now these are cheap, disposable, whatever razors.

For men, 14.97.

I was thinking about pens.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Like, Bic has pens for her.

And they're like pink and purple.

And they cost way more than just a regular set of pens.

So a study in...

It was conducted by the state of California in 1994.

So it was a long time ago.

This has been going on for a while.

It wasn't that long ago.

And shut up.

Long ago.

When the dinosaurs roamed the earth.

So long ago.

They have to dust off the pages.

So they estimated that the pink tax costs women an extra $1,350 a year.

So in today's money, that would be $2,200.

Yeah.

And I believe it.

Now, I would almost estimate that to be more, but that was what the study said.

So in approximately 60 years, so from age 18 to age 78.

Now some people would say that's a long time.

Maybe not 30 years.

But others might say that 30 years was a long time.

And then she killed her sister.

She murdered her dead.

And the police had to come and haul her away.

This is going to get flagged.

Brianna ran into the forest, which she's never seen again.

And she had her period there.

And she bled and then a bear ate her.

And she said, dang, I'm glad it wasn't a man.

Wow.

And then she died too.

The story has layers.

Sneak and cut this out.

No, I'm keeping this part in.

So over a lifetime, that $2,200 equates to $132,000 more spent than men.

So I'm going to speed through the next couple, even though they are really, really important.

So the next one is beauty products.

Beauty products.

And I think this one's huge.

So she says that there's a study done by the online retailer Skin Store.

And it showed that women in the US, on average, spend $300,000 in beauty products over the

course of their lifetime.

Now she didn't take into account all of that 300 grand.

She said, let's assume that you're real thrifty and you don't spend a lot on beauty products.

Still, you're probably going to spend 100 grand on beauty products.

So that's what jumps into that $300,000 number.

Because we need to be young and beautiful.

So that, yeah, I'm sure that this number in particular gets criticized.

Well, you don't need to spend that much.

Women are too over-makeuped anyway.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

And yet, we talked about this in the last episode.

You show men a picture of a girl with no makeup on, and they're like, oh, she looks terrible.

You show them a picture of a girl with natural makeup on, and it's like, oh, see, that's

what I want.

A natural woman.

Do you know how much it costs to look like a natural woman?

Or say, heaven forbid, you go to work and you didn't do your makeup like you usually

do and people are like, are you okay?

You look exhausted.

Do you need to go home and rest?

Yeah, so there's this huge pressure to purchase all of these things.

This is just my freaking face.

I am sorry.

I am exhausted.

You exhaust me.

Get out of my face.

You're very emotional this episode.

Maybe I'm on my period.

Do you know?

I don't know.

But I think also, again, from this Christian standpoint, women are told that they have

to look a certain way to please their husbands.

We're supposed to look youthful and put together, and our hair has to be done just so, and our

makeup has to be done just so.

Otherwise, his eyes may wander, and it will be your fault.

And that costs money.

I'm looking at a $30 lip mask right next to me.

It does cost money.

You're talking about even for the simplest self-care routine, right?

A cleanser, a moisturizer, just to keep the wrinkles at bay, because if you look too old

too soon, it's liable to just leave and run off and find a younger woman.

And then for makeup, you're talking foundation, powder, eyeshadow, eyebrows, lip color, and

that's at the very simplest.

I've got at least 30 additional products in my bag.

For your hair, you're talking about shampoo, conditioner.

Hairspray at bare minimum.

And then blow dryer, a straightener, a curling iron, all of which need to be replaced fairly

regularly.

It's just so hard because I really think this is probably the most contested part of the

whole article of just like, you don't need to spend that, you don't need to whatever.

But based on what we are told by the media, by men, by other women, by our churches, by

ourselves, we do.

This is not optional.

And maybe you're not buying the top of the line of everything, even if you're buying

drugstore brand makeup, that still costs a lot.

Men, do you know that a bottle of foundation that lasts you, what, if you're lucky, two

months?

Oh, very lucky.

From the drugstore can cost $12, $13, $15?

And that's just one thing.

And that's potentially the cheapest end of things.

When you start to go into the cheapest end, and again, you're starting to look at really

toxic, scary ingredients.

Yeah.

Bre, tell me more about toxic, scary ingredients.

Ladies and gentlemen, I've been waiting for this moment because guess why?

I've been on TikTok again, and I discovered that there is lead and arsenic and other kinds

of metals and chemicals chilling out in our harpoon tampons.

People don't know what harpoons are.

They're chilling out in our tampons.

There you go.

And I was like, no way.

This is crazy.

This is TikTok.

It can't be real.

No, there are studies on it.

University of Berkeley?

Yep.

Is that what?

University of Berkeley?

Yeah, they did a study on it and they found traces of all these different metals in the

tampons.

Like why?

Probably honestly, because it's cheaper for the, for Kotex and whoever else to make things

that way.

But you think about that going into that part of your body where the skin and whatever down

there absorbs so much more.

It's leading to dementia.

It's leading to cancer.

It's leading to all kinds of different diseases.

And we don't know that it's happening to us.

How many tampons do you go through in a period?

You don't use them, so you don't know.

But I'll tell you a lot.

Well and that's the scary thing is this is just a regular thing that you're, it reminds

me of back in the Victorian era where they would put lead makeup on.

And then like their skin was literally falling off their face, but they would just keep putting

more lead makeup on.

Because they didn't know what else to do.

Or their teeth were falling out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because what else are you supposed to do?

That's what you have.

That's what you have access to.

And you think that's just one product.

Think about all of the other stuff that we use on a day to day basis.

We have, I'm getting a little crunchy now, but like I don't know what's in my, I do use

a drugstore brand foundation.

I don't know what's in there.

Yeah.

I don't know what's in there.

And I put it on my face every day and now I have a giant pimple on my face right now.

And probably it's that.

Probably it's that.

I think that leads great into her last point.

And that's healthcare.

Ooh la la.

Look at us transitioning into topics.

So women spend significantly more on healthcare in their lifetimes.

Because we care.

Well, not necessarily.

Not necessarily.

We haven't been to a doctor in a while.

Part of it is certainly seeking medical attention.

But in the numbers that she talked about, this was like men and women seeking out healthcare

equally.

However, there was a study that said women aged 19 to 34 in 2015 spent a little over

$3,400 on healthcare costs per year.

So that's doctor's visits, medications, surgeries, anything you need in your life, right?

Between ages 19 to 34.

Compared to that, men only spent a little under $1,900 on their healthcare per year.

If you take those actual numbers, I kind of rounded them.

But that's a difference of $1,511 in one year.

If you take those years and you kind of like push them out, assume that that holds true

throughout your lifetime, that is $75,550 over the course of 50 years.

I'm not sitting on that kind of cash, honey.

I mean, you're not, but it's because you require more healthcare.

And why is that?

There is the gap coming in.

If they're both seeking healthcare at the same level, what's going on?

So they said it's largely due to female wellness visits, like gynecology appointments, which

we need regularly because we have more systems down there that can get screwed up.

We're complicated.

We are complicated in there.

And then the fact that women are the ones that give birth.

That's huge to me.

Yeah, it is.

It's not fair.

Well, she said that in the United States, and this article came out in 2022, and I'm

not sure what year she got these numbers from because I think it's significantly higher

at this point.

But she says that women who give birth can expect in the United States without insurance

to pay $13,000 for a simple vaginal delivery.

Easily, I would say.

Yeah, for sure.

And that obviously depends on where you are.

And it's going to go up based on what you require.

If you get an epidural, skyrocketing the price.

Yeah.

Do you have any complications at all?

Do you need to have a C-section?

Then you're talking about triple the cost.

Are you having one baby or are you multiple?

Right.

And with insurance, you can expect to spend $7,000.

And that's just one kid one time.

So those numbers, they're going to add up.

And you may have a spouse that helps pay for those things.

You may not.

You may not have someone able to pay for those things or willing to pay for those things.

You may not have a partner at all.

At the end of the day, literally no one in the country is expecting men to pay for part

of the cost of birth.

The father is never being asked to pay.

So if you're not married and on the same insurance plan, it's all on her.

On the same insurance plan and have combined incomes.

Right.

So those are just a lot of the ways it's more expensive to be a girl.

It's tough out there, ladies.

And I think it's really important.

We were watching a YouTube video earlier and it was like, men guess how expensive it is

to be a woman or something like that.

They kept giving these guys all these feminine products.

So they gave them a tampon and-

Shapewear.

Yeah, all kinds of different things.

A bra.

And they were like, well, what do you think this would cost?

How much do you think a woman would pay for this throughout her lifetime?

Whatever.

And it was, now I don't necessarily expect men to know what a tampon costs.

I do.

It's not something that they regularly have to buy.

So okay, you might not know what it costs.

But just to realize how in the dark these men were, in my mind, at least if you've ever

had a partner who is a woman, that you would have some concept of that.

But no, they did not.

It was sad.

But I hope that that opens their eyes.

And we hope that this opens your eyes too if you aren't experiencing having to purchase

these things.

We think that we're in 2024 and things are all hunky dory.

I think really, we've just hidden the inequality better.

Yeah.

Did you know Scotland?

Scotland!

Back in 2022, Scotland was the first country in the world to make period products free

for women.

Now I understand that there's tax implications.

There's things like that when you make something free.

I do hear that.

And it's a very political thing.

Because recently, within the last couple of years at least, Michigan was trying to take

tax off of period products, like sales tax.

And I remember hearing these arguments from these male politicians of like, if you take

the tax off, who knows how many tampons they'll buy?

I'll just buy so many!

I'm gonna build a house out of tampons and then I'm gonna sell them on the black market!

It's just so absurd.

But it's tough on women.

Do you remember when they sent a woman to space?

Yes.

There was a comedian that made a song about it.

She was on her period, so they were sending her with tampons and they sent her a hundred

tampons.

For one period.

Will that be enough?

They didn't know!

And these are scientists, okay?

These are smart people, in theory.

Will that be enough?

How many do you go through?

You're just popping them in and out like tic tacs?

Just every ten minutes, like, meh.

Every ten minutes I have a timer on my phone that says, time to change it!

Alright, well, on that note, on that really exciting, fun note.

One hundred tampons!

That's a good song.

Thank you guys for holding out this long.

We appreciate you.

Comment, questions, concerns?

Have you noticed any of this?

What's the silliest thing you've seen branded specifically towards women?

I would love to know that.

Branded?

I thought you said Brandon.

I was very confused.

We wanted to- well, I guess I didn't ask you.

I wanted to say thank you guys too because we just hit a pretty cool milestone.

We hit 800 downloads overall.

Hooray!

And we're seeing you guys engage with us over on tic tac and Instagram.

And we just appreciate that people are out there wanting to hear us goof off and talk

about serious things sometimes and have fun.

Join your welcome.

We celebrated with Cosmos.

We did.

It was a great time.

And Alyssa threw up.

I did throw up.

But I think it was not the Cosmos.

Alright, we love you guys.

Goodbye!

I'm sorry!

Bye!

Bye!