When I first heard the story of Labia Glue, I sincerely thought that I was reading an Onion article or some other form of satirical writing that was just a joke started by some trolls on Reddit. However, after researching more, I have found out that using Labia Glue for periods is a real thing that was developed by someone who pursued higher education and I thought it was a good idea. Let me just repeat myself— A person, an intelligent person, came up with this idea; actually carried on with it and debuted it to the world. Personally, I think that this is one of the worst ideas that someone could’ve thought of.

This feminine lip-stick was designed to solve basically every woman’s problem by literally gluing their labia lips shut, so none of that “icky, abhorrent, and gross stuff” comes out. Basically, the idea is that since the labia lips are glued shut, all of the blood will just pool up inside of you. Then when you have to pee, the urine will unstick the glue and all of the fluids will come out at once. Can we just talk about how bad of an idea this is?

First off, the idea that women can just control their periods is quite absurd. The uterus is a smooth muscle which further means that it is an involuntary muscle. Therefore, just as people can’t control whether or not their organs work, they also can't control how their uteruses work either. If I, and other people who menstruate, could just control our periods, a good chunk of my problems would probably be solved and I could go along my merry way. There is this blatant ignorance, especially among men, that think that some of us just have the ability to “hold it in” or whatever, as if it’s as simple as holding in your pee. The reality is that you can't, and the idea that people are just weak for not being able to "hold it in" is extremely ignorant and naive.

Secondly, let’s talk about how the glue is actually going to work with fluids since the only way to unstick your labia lips is through a fluid. I hope this “doctor” realizes that the menstruation fluid that this glue is meant to keep in is also a fluid, just like urine. So I guess the question that stands is the following: If the glue deactivates with the use of urine, wouldn’t it deactivate with the use of the blood too since that is also another form of liquid that would dissolve the glue? Would keeping all of that menstruation fluid inside be a contributing factor to Toxic Shock Syndrome, which can happen if you keep a tampon in for too long of a time?

According to Dan Dopps, (and I use quotations because I seriously doubt that the university he attended to receive his "doctorate" is an actual educational institution) the Mensez glue was invented because women are apparently so focused and distracted by their period 25% of the time, meaning we are “far less productive than they could be." This is so inherently problematic because (let’s be honest) people have been dealing with periods since the dawn of time— we’ve taken care of families, went to work, constructed companies, became doctors, dealt with annoying clients/customers, competed in sports and contributed to society like functional human beings. We do all these things just like men do. It truly baffles me as to how somebody without a uterus or any personal experience of menstruation thinks that woman need this product (as if we haven’t been finding our own ways to deal with this.) The only advice that I have to give to Dopps would be this: don’t quit your day job.