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Dear GladRags.

 I've been a customer for seven years. I came across my first GladRags pad in high school while dusting shelves at the Knoxville Community Food Co-op (in Tennessee). After a few weeks, I braved up enough to try the Keeper. I've never looked back to plastic and paper since!  Meanwhile, I've seen GladRags products appear at a wider variety of stores, and found that more and more of my friends already know about alternative menstrual products before I launch into my self-inspired sales pitch.


This July, I'm leading a 2-hour discussion about women's lives and bodies for young women at the Southeast Unitarian Universalist Summer Institute in Radford, Virginia. SUUSI is a week-long intergenerational camp for UUs (and other quirky folks), and I've been going since I was a kid. This is my first year on Young Adult staff, and I'm looking forward to building a supportive community for other women ages 18-25. Much of the year, we cope with anti-woman advertising, strict gender roles, and sexual harassment, but SUUSI is a time for us to decompress, share hugs, and build friendships that are amazingly intense for only a week. The discussion is called Wonder Woman; meanwhile the guys have their own discussion called He-Manery.(he-he)

I'm writing to ask whether you can provide any materials for the discussion. I was delighted to find a lot of great links at your website that I'll be tapping into for discussion questions and information. My vision is to talk about some of the major issues young women face in a positive light, and I think having some GladRags around for show-and-tell would give us something concrete to celebrate. I believe that feminism is not at all abstract, and the way we treat our bodies is integrally related to the way we carry ourselves in society. I would love to show women pads and/or cups and sponges as a starting point for hearing their own stories about being women in the (southeastern) US today. Then at the end of the discussion, we would distribute the materials as door prizes. What do you think? Our budget is slim because the camp keeps costs low in order to be affordable, and the young adults don't exactly show up with bulging wallets. If you could provide anything, we would all be grateful (and excited)!

Thank you,

Isabel Call

And our answer to Isabel was a resounding "yes!" to her request for materials. We love articulate, caring women like Isabel who share the word about GladRags and other reusable options with other young women. Thanks, Isabel and have fun at camp!