In Which I Debunk the Vodka-Soaked Tampon Myth

I read about this over at Radley Balko‘s this morning and this afternoon, Rachel sent me a link to this over-dramatic bit of reporting–about kids who supposedly insert vodka-soaked tampons in their vaginas or rectums for, um, I don’t know. Some reason. I rummaged around under my bathroom sink and came up with two slightly different types of tampons–a regular old Tampax Super and a Tampax Pearl, also Super. These are high absorbancy and feature the two most common types of tampon applicators, cardboard and plastic.

Here they are with the cheap whiskey I used instead of our good vodka.

And here they are out of their packaging but in their applicators.

The trick to putting anything in your vagina or rectum when you are not aroused is that it must be small enough to slide in and stiff enough to get past any resistance, so the first part of my experiment assumes that kids would be using the applicators. So into the whiskey the tampons go, applicators and all.

And we encounter the first problem. The alcohol in the whiskey causes the glue in the cardboard to give way. So, that’s not going inside anyone that way. This happened after the tampon was in the whiskey for just a couple of minutes. I feel certain that, if I’d left it in there for a while, the cardboard applicator would have come apart completely. Tampon users, if you’ve had the unfortunate experience of dropping one of these bad boys in the toilet when trying to insert it, I don’t have to tell you, the cardboard applicator became useless when wet. It was all bendy and would not eject the tampon. I had to pull it out of the applicator with my hand.

And here it is, looking sad and the end is already looking not insertion friendly. I put it on a dark background so that you could get a good look at how the top end is already unfolding.

So, maybe better luck with the plastic applicator? Actually, no. The wet tampon swelled up and kind of sagged inside the applicator and so when I pushed the bottom part, rather than completely ejecting, it just sat there, only half out of the top part, unable to get past the prongs. I had to yank on this to get it out of the applicator as well.

Here it is, looking very sad. The end is rounder, but it was starting to unfurl, the longer it sat there and it also bent when it met any resistance.

I put them both back in the whiskey to simulate what would happen if you used an applicator-less tampon or removed either of these from their applicator before soaking them in spirits.

They did absorb quite a bit of whiskey. However they also did what tampons do when wet–got soggy and limp.

For even more proof those aren’t going in any orifice in a fun way, I took a picture of the ends of the tampons.

Yep, simply not likely to happen. But, in the interest of science, I then ran one of the tampons against the mucous membrane on the inside of my mouth. It was both very cold and burned, which, I imagine, would be a most unpleasant feeling as whoever was aiding you in the administration of vodka-soaked tampons shoved the limp, soggy, shape-changing, burning, and yet very cold thing inside you, or attempted to. I’m honestly not sure the incredibly cold feeling might not cause some uncontrollable clenching which would then make the insertion or removal of the tampon something of a nightmare.

If that’s your thing, great. More power to you. But the idea that kids are, in great number, just popping vodka-soaked tampons up inside themselves and going off to party with none the wiser that they’d been imbibing? Not happening. That’s just not how tampons work.