By Laura Bramall
Being a woman is really really painful. I’m sure being a man is painful too, but nothing like as bad. I’m not just talking about period pain, although that must be the most overlooked, disregarded pain in UK society. But more than that. In the words of the far over-quoted Phoebe Waller-Bridge, ‘women are born with pain in them; period pain, sore boobs, childbirth, menopause…’. Still this list doesn’t touch on the side effects of any of those ailments: constant tiredness, anaemia, back pain, increased chance of UTIs. If you’re not in pain as a woman, it’s just around the corner, but if you’re not in pain as a man you do your best not to injure itself. The pain is painful; it makes us cry, throw up, and pass out but even further to that, it costs.
Pain as a constant in the lives of women is almost unrecognised, except by those who seek profit out of it; and it’s very profitable. Fighting my way through the Boots queue, almost all women, this realisation happened upon me. To get upstairs in the Cornmarket Street shop you walk past toothcare, then skin care, haircare, and makeup. Go upstairs and you’re hit by crowds of women in the baby section, then painkillers, UTIs and vitamin or iron supplements. Men need this stuff too, but nothing like as much. I can remember the exact layout of Boots right now, sitting in my college library, because I’ve been there so often. When I went last week it was the fourth time since I’ve been back at Oxford for only 6 weeks. My poor debit card is taking the brunt, but quite how big this brunt is I hadn’t realised.
My main cost is, as one would expect, sanitary items and painkillers. At £7.99* for a 48 pack of Boots Ibuprofen and between £1.60 to £6.00 for paracetamol from Amazon, I’m already losing at least £8 every month (yes, I need a lot of painkillers), just because of the pain. After I’ve staggered from college into town clutching my belly, I invariably remember that I’ve run out of iron tablets.
Anaemia: the unspoken condition that affects 30.2% of non-pregnant women compared to just 12.7% of men**. It’s not especially serious in its most common form, but it does have a whole host of painful (and expensive) side effects. I have to buy iron tablets (£4.00 – £15.00), and with iron deficiency comes headaches, hair loss, mouth ulcers and masses of lost productivity through tiredness. Treatment for ulcers costs around £5.00 a tiny tube of Bongela/Iglu/Boots own brand, all of which numb the pain for about 10 minutes without helping any actual healing. The Boots cooling headache patches sell at £2.99 for just 4 pads, and I dread to think what hair loss treatment costs.
Not all of a woman’s pain is due to her losing blood, however, as women are disproportionately affected by both autoimmune conditions and chronic pain.*** Again, these are painful but also expensive, with Voltarol back and muscle pain relief gel costing £13.49 for 100g, and a Boots DIP UTI test costing £10.00. UTIs are really really common, and £10 is just the cost of the test.
A woman doesn’t need to add all of this up or even look at their receipts to know that just keeping one’s pain bearable is expensive. There are lots of costs that I haven’t considered here, such as makeup, haircare and sanitary products, but pain prevention is key to being productive and leading a happy life. Perhaps men are aware of this, but I expect they aren’t. At least in the UK we have the opportunity for pain relief, even if it’s expensive. Maybe I should stop whining and appreciate the convenience of a Boots just down the road that many don’t have.
*All prices are UK prices, taken from the Boots or Amazon website
**According to the World Health Organisation website: https://www.who.int/vmnis/anaemia/prevalence/summary/anaemia_data_status_t2/en/
***According to the IASP Pain Research Forum https://relief.news/why-do-women-experience-chronic-pain-more-often-than-men/