When people think BMT, they might think Brooklyn Manhattan Transit, or Subway’s bestselling ‘Bigger, Meatier, Tastier’ sandwich. At Support the Girls, it stands for our menu too: Bras, Maxipads, and Tampons. We don’t have much else on our menu.
When you put out a request to collect bras and menstrual products for homeless women, you never know what to expect sometimes. Unsurprisingly, we’ve seen every kind of bra under the sun from the glitzy shimmery Las Vegas show girl types to bras from nuns in convents, more plain and simple. Each one helps in its own unique ways.
When people think of donations, it’s easy to conjure up images of food drives, toy drives in December, or winter jackets for people in need. These are great causes, but they’re not our cause. Sometimes, people are donating or mailing random items. While we certainly support giving appropriate items to other respective charities that can request those things, I Support the Girls is most successful with the donations of BMT. Nevertheless, we have some different items that get tossed in and some have made us chuckle…and that’s no April Fool’s Joke.
In a blast from the menstrual past, we’ve seen received tampons and maxipads dating back to the 1970s and 80s, remarkably sealed in their original boxes. Again, while most of our donations are homeruns, able to be donated immediately to those in need, we have a few curveballs.
In addition to the half a million menstrual products and hundred thousand bras, we’ve gotten a few items that weren’t meant to be on our sandwich. So, allowing for a few laughs, here’s some of the off-the-menu submissions we have received:
- An individual applesauce cup
- One avocado
- 17 new bustiers
- Condoms
- Ovulation predictor kits
- Pregnancy test kits
- A Harlequin romance novel with some of the pages ripped out
- One book on twins
- One book on sex
- Bags and bags of broken costume jewelry
- An open box of teabags
- One open plastic Saran Wrap
- Plastic bags of expired chocolate
- Soap made by nuns
- Expired and opened prenatal vitamins
- A beach ball
- Four busted watches
- Two bottles of beer
We like to laugh at I Support the Girls, and a beach ball and beer make for a good summer day at the beach. But we also need to devote our energies to our main mission of human rights, health, dignity, and menstrual equity. Because asking for undergarments is a little bit unusual, as is feminine hygiene products, perhaps people feel emboldened to throw in more unique items. However, please donate or throw away items to where they belong. Then, we can get back to dishing up what’s on our menu at Support the Girls: BMTs for women across the world in need. And that’s no joke. Happy April Fool’s Day.
