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."
We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism
Ep. 16: It's Tough to Be A ... Woman
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the We Are More podcast. My name is Alyssa. - And my name is Bree. We're 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. (laughs) (upbeat music) - Hello, my name's Brianna. - Is it? (laughs) - 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. - There's too many chords. - Today on this episode that we're not gonna 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. (laughs) - It's a good name if you're an old Disney addict and also you might be related to us. (laughs) - So we're gonna call today, it's tough to be a bug. - I mean, woman. - I mean, woman. (laughs) - And if you don't get that reference, it's from Disney. - Of course it is. - A bug's life. (laughs) And that guy, I forget his name, but he thinks he was like, ♪ What a bug, little bug, hardly there ♪ - You were gonna find an opportunity to sing that song today, and this is it. - In Disney, if you go to Animal Kingdom, it's actually not gonna be there for very long. They're re-theming, I guess. - I actually didn't know that, but it needs to be re-themed. - Yeah, 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, hadn't gotten into It's Tough to Be a Bug in a while, and I did last time, and it did scar me too. There's like a stink bug, and there's little ants or bugs that crawl under your butt. - Yeah. - And there's big old spiders. (laughs) - You'd think as an adult, that wouldn't be as effective, 'cause it's just like little air pockets that are blowing up under your seat, and kind of at the bottom by your feet, 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 of bugs, 'cause they collect seeds and berries, and there's something pleasant about that. It's 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 that 'cause it was mean. (laughs) - But yeah. (laughs) It's really scarring. Old Disney was scary and scarring. (laughs) So today, instead of a Bug, talking about womanhood. (laughs) It's hard being a woman. And like, you 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. (laughs) Sorry, maybe we need a warning before we... We're gonna be talking about womanhood, so if you're uncomfortable with that, maybe stuff listening. - If you haven't figured out the topic of the entire podcast yet, now is the moment. It's a thought of, you know, tampons, (laughs) and feminine hygiene makes you uncomfortable. The exits are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here. (laughs) - Dad, just go ahead and log off right now. (laughs) - Just get worried, Dad. - This one. Hey, a new meme. - A new one, sorry, Dad, tampons. (laughs) - Girl time. - Girl time. - He's scared Brandon by... (laughs) He was gone and he... We were pulling pranks on each other, he turned my whole dresser upside down, yadda yadda yadda. I strung pads and tampons like streamers, so that when he opened his door, they just went pew! (laughs) I'm sure he loved that. I think he did. - We grew up in, (laughs) our dad in particular is very sensitive when it comes to talking about periods, 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 then I'm not talking about the modern ones where they actually use like red liquid. Like when they were using blue Kool-Aid, okay? (laughs) And it would come on. And he'd go, "Oh!" And either pause it if we had DVR at the time. (laughs) - DVR? - DVR. Or he would literally run out of the room. - Oh my gosh. - So this is gonna be a rough one for Dad. - You need to grow up. (laughs) - This is happening, and you can't stop it. (laughs) - 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. (laughs) - Yes. (laughs) But not just because of Pads and Ted Knows, that 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. (laughs) 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 bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep. But we're not talking about optional items here. We're talking about necessary things for living as a woman. - Yes. (laughs) - And I, 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. (gasps) How many times could we go to Disney? If every time we go to Disney-- - Twice! (laughs) - Cost us $5,000. (laughs) I'm like, hold on Brianna. (laughs) - I was just doing that. (laughs) - All right, 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, 'cause 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-- (laughs) - Four. (laughs) 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 wanna experience magic in your life? That costs money, okay, I don't know what to tell you. Stop judging us, gosh, dang it! (laughs) Come out here! (laughs) Sorry, headphone users. (laughs) 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. (laughs) 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. (laughs) So, those are some of the things that you could buy for $300,000. (laughs) They 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 just 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. - Uncomfortable. - Exactly. So, 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, like, so we're gonna 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. - Seriously, they can sing, they can dance. After all, this is France. - Okay, so, one of the first things that she talks about in this article, and if you wanna 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. - Wonderful. - The first thing she brings up is, just like a singular example of a singular item, and it's shampoo. - Shampoo. - Shampoo. - In French, it's shampoo-y. - Thank you for that information, you're welcome. (laughs) 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, it's 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 'cause curly hair's dry. So, that doesn't sound like a crazy amount. Right off the bat, $6 to $9, okay, $3 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 gonna 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, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, warning. Bree, oh, do our transition music. I'm always ready for 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 do. 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've got to think might all in Tylenol and new underwear because gosh dang it, you bled through it again. And a couple other things too, I'm sure. So this is in 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 legumes 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 ones that don't contain arsenic and lead. We'll get into it. We'll get into it. Then you're doing it just 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 to 50, 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 price. 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. Lead 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. 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 if they're, 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. Lissa's eyes just glazed over and she looked into the distance. Like she was terrified. It was terrified. I just can't imagine that. Can you imagine the mosquitoes having a failed day? Stop. But another thing that I was reading about, because this was, this is a really big topic. And this, you know, 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. Oh, yeah, 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. There's, it just, 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 disk 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. Yep. There's just a huge lack there. So just having a period is incredibly difficult. And it's an expense you don't have, you don't have a choice. Right. And forget about the emotional things going on. Like 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? Right. It's a lot. The average price of a home in the US is what? $75,000? Exactly. $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, our 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. Yep. Or even if you do try to negotiate, they don't always take you seriously. In my experience with buying many, many cars, but 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 and thinking I need to burn everything. But her 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, okay. 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. Yeah, 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. Yeah. 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. Look at my shirt. I'm 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 roosted on the side like a top or it's just roosted. Or it's just branded. Yeah, as maternity or it's slightly bigger in size. So then she talks about the pink tax. There's any time I go to Victoria's Secret. I get just hit with a ton of tax. No, just kidding me, Anna. 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. Things like razors for women. Yes. Really, there's no difference between men and women's razors, but they're pink. That's what they cost more. And actually, so I looked it up on Amazon to find examples of it. And Gillette has- I was going to say that. Yeah. They're all 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 regular set of pens. Yep. So a study in- it was conducted by the state of California in 1994, so it's a long time ago. It wasn't that long ago. Long ago? And shut up! With dinosaurs roamed so long ago, they have to dust off the pages. So they estimated that the pink tax costs women an extra $1350 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 dry. Brianna ran into the forest. She's never seen a cat. She had her period. 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. I can 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. Booty products. And I think this one's huge. So she says that there's a study done by the online retailer Skinstore, 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 make-up anyway, bleh bleh bleh bleh bleh. 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, "Ah, 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 of this episode. Maybe I'm on my period. Do you know? I don't know. I do. 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... Whatever. His eyes may wander and it will be your fault. That costs...I'm looking at a $30 lip mask right next to me, and yeah, it does cost money. You're talking about even for the simplest self-care routine, 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. Yeah. And then a 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. Just like, you don't need to spend that, you don't need to do 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, like that still costs a lot. Men, do you know that a bottle of foundation that lasts you what? If you're lucky two months, very lucky, from the drugstore can cost $12, $13, $15. And that's just one thing. And that's the potentially the cheapest end of things. And you start to go into the cheapest end. And again, you're starting to look at really toxic scary ingredients. Yeah. But you tell me more about toxic scary ingredients. Ladies and gentlemen, I have 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. 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 cortex 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. I'll tell you a lot. Well, and that's a scary thing is this is just a regular thing that 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 it was still falling out. 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. Oh, look at us transitioning into topics, so women spend significantly more on health care in their lifetimes because we care well, not necessarily 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 30, a little over $3400 on healthcare costs per year. So that's doctors visits, medications, surgeries, anything, 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 that 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? Where 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 or 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 not fair. Well she said that in the United States, and this article came out in 2022, and I'm not sure where she like 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, 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, 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 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 in. 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. And they kept giving these guys all these feminine products. So they gave them a tampon and a 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, no, 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 to you 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, you know, there's 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 I'm gonna sell them on the black market. She's just so absurd. But it's tough on women. Do you remember when they sent a woman to space? Yes. There's a comedian that made a song about it, but she was on her period. So they're sending her with tampons and they sent her a hundred tampons for one like period. Will that be enough? They didn't know and these are scientists, these are smart people in theory. Will that be enough? How many do you go through popping them in and out like tic-tac? Just every 10 minutes like that. Every 10 minutes I have a timer on my phone. It says time to change it. All right. 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? Ooh, what's the silliest thing you've seen branded specifically towards women? I would love to know that. Pranded. 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. Mm-hmm. Join. You're welcome. We celebrated with Cosmos. We did. It was a great thing. It was a great thing. I did throw up. But I think it was not the Cosmos. All right. We love you guys. Goodbye. I'm sorry. Bye. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]