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Astar: “All these ‘stain hacks you need to know’ TikToks are bullshit.” (Image: Tina Tiller)
Astar: “All these ‘stain hacks you need to know’ TikToks are bullshit.” (Image: Tina Tiller)

SocietyJuly 22, 2022

‘Scrub the bitch’: Astar from Good Morning has some tips for removing period stains

Astar: “All these ‘stain hacks you need to know’ TikToks are bullshit.” (Image: Tina Tiller)
Astar: “All these ‘stain hacks you need to know’ TikToks are bullshit.” (Image: Tina Tiller)

She knows more home hacks than all of TikTok combined, so how does Astar from Good Morning combat blood stains during that time of the month? 

All week we are examining our relationship with menstruation in Aotearoa. Read more Bleed Week content here. 

Astar can remember what it meant to be, quite literally, on the rag. “You wore this belt around your waist and it had a flap in the front and a flap in the back and you safety-pinned the rags into place. It was hideous,” she cackles down the phone. “Hid-e-ous. Think of a surfboard between your legs, love. A surfboard.”

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That wasn’t the only memorable thing about Astar’s period. “I had endometriosis so it was just a bloodbath – pain, flooding, sleeping on towels, having to get blood out your undies,” she lets out a guttural, primal scream that once again descends into cackles. “Oh, I had very, very bad blood. In fact, there are times when I used to think ‘how am I still alive?’” 

This backstory helps explain why, when I first emailed her asking if she wanted to talk about managing blood stains as a part of Bleed Week, she replied with the following almost-haiku:  

There’s another reason blood is “right up her alley”. Having graced our screens for nearly two decades as the domestic goddess and craft queen of New Zealand morning television, nobody knows old-school stain removal better than Astar. “When I was being raised there wasn’t the 100,000 things for stains there are today,” she explains. “And all these ‘stain hacks you need to know’ TikToks are bullshit and I just can’t be bothered with any of it.”

Her solution to removing blood stains is much more simple than a Vanish 17-in-one or any kind of convoluted lemon, salt, vinegar and baking soda concoction on TikTok. “The thing that I remember that has stuck with me for all these years was that we used to soak our stuff in cold water, use Sunlight soap, scrub the bitch and then boil the shit out of it.” 

Cotton? Soak it out. Wool? Soak and a gentle hand wash. Silk? “Oh, I have to pull the handbrake on silk because I don’t wear silk and I don’t own silk. It’s too delicate a fabric for a rough girl from Southland scraped off the streets like myself.” The key for blood on most fabrics, she reiterates, is getting cold water on the stain as soon as possible. 

I ask her what the best approach is if one has bled out into a couch or chair. “Cold water,” she snaps back. “Cold water and dab it out. Dab, dab, dab it out with cold water and keep lifting it until it comes out, don’t put heat near it and don’t put salt near it.” Salt hacks seem to make Astar particularly furious. “This has always perplexed me because salt is a setting agent. Oh no! No salt! No!” 

As for mattresses, a bit of forethought never goes astray. “Unfortunately a lot of it is just precaution,” says Astar. “You used to get these plastic things that went over the mattress when kids wet the bed? Well, I slept on one of those for just about all of my life because the blood would flood.” If you’ve bled onto your sheets, she recommends a deep soak in a bathtub or a boil in a large stovetop pan, such as one for “your jams, your pickles, your preserves”. 

To get your sheets extra white, Astar has a tip even more surprising than hiding your keys and wallet in a nappy on the beach. “My nan really loved a frost for getting things white. You get your whites, boil them and all the rest of it, but if you want to get them really, really white then you put them outside in a frost. God, the sheets went like boards but man were they white.”

An angel of home hacks

In a way, Astar’s old-school stain removal methods have come full circle. The other day she saw an ad for period underwear, one of the latest advancements in period technology. “To me, whoever invented those needs to get a gold star for excellence because that is less stress and less stuff for the earth.” Although the multi-layered space age undies are a far cry from her safety pins and rags, she was relieved to see her tried and true technique in action. 

“You get to the end of the advert and what is the girl doing? She’s running it under cold water and wringing it out!”

Keep going!
bleed beek beige and red background with a student stocking a bin of period products
Free period products are available in more than 2,000 schools around the country. (Image: Getty Images / Tina Tiller)

SocietyJuly 22, 2022

How is the free period products in schools programme going?

bleed beek beige and red background with a student stocking a bin of period products
Free period products are available in more than 2,000 schools around the country. (Image: Getty Images / Tina Tiller)

Schools are one of the first places to tackle period poverty. Shanti Mathias checks in with the Ministry of Education initiative launched a year ago to make period products available to New Zealand students.

All week we are examining our relationship with menstruation in Aotearoa. Read more Bleed Week content here.

In June 2021, period products became free for all New Zealand schools who opted in. The initiative was hailed as a world first, and covered by international outlets, including The New York Times, the Guardian and the BBC. In the year since the programme was implemented, more than 2000 state and state-integrated schools and kura have opted in to the initiative, which has distributed more than 600,000 packs of menstrual products to students around the country. 

Feedback to date has been overwhelmingly positive,” says Sean Teddy, leader of operations and integration at the Ministry of Education. He says principals have reported that the programme is “having a positive effect on removing barriers to attendance, engagement, and destigmatising menstruation”.

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For Robyn Fausett of Nest Consulting, seeing the period products roll out into schools has been gratifying. Nest Consulting is one of Aotearoa’s largest providers of sexuality and health education in schools, and was involved in petitioning the government to make period products free in 2020, along with other companies and non-profits who work to decrease period poverty. Nest was also involved in evaluating a trial of the programme that was run in 15 Waikato schools later that same year. 

“We asked students what they wanted, how it was working – we wanted to get a feel for the education available to students on the mechanics of a period, let alone the complex feelings around periods,” Fausett says. 

After that initial trial period, how does she think the period products programme is going? “The uptake of the programme has been really good,” she says, though there are always improvements to be made. “Teachers are really busy, and this is a new programme, so there needs to be more guidance on how to manage distribution and advertising – do students know their schools have this?”

Tampons, a panty liner and a sanitary napkin from different manufacturers are on one table.
Students across the country want choice in their period products. Photo: Annette Riedl/picture alliance via Getty Images)

JJ, a year nine student in Christchurch, didn’t know about the free period product programme until I asked about it. “I usually go into the gender-neutral bathrooms but there are none in there,” they say. “It’s a real hassle if you get your period and you don’t have any products – they should be provided.” Like most menstruating students, JJ keeps products in their bag, just in case, and knows they could ask a friend or the school nurse for products if required. They think the free period products programme is a good idea but say that it needs to be better advertised in schools.

“I think the initiative will be hugely successful,” says Fausett. “It just needs some bedding in – and Covid hasn’t helped.”

Getting the logistics of period product distribution right is important for breaking down taboos around menstruation, says Danika Revell of The Period Place, who was also involved in campaigning for the policy. “I want to see everyone afforded the dignity of choosing which period products they want,” she says. While distribution may vary, many high schools now have a dispenser placed in bathrooms, so students can access products without having to ask. 

Teddy says the dispensers are going to become more widespread; the priority is responding to what students want. “Students are getting involved in decision-making and delivery of the initiative, including organising information sessions for students, managing distribution and replenishing product in dispenser units,” he says. 

Providing menstrual products can help normalise periods, Revell says, and not just in schools either. “It’s a body function and [period products] should be in every toilet outside the home. You don’t throw a roll of toilet paper in your bag when you go out, you expect it to be there.”

pads and tampons in a box on the table
At workplace Pacific Media Network, period products are readily available in the bathrooms. (Photo: Lusia Petelo)

Fausett agrees. At the same time, however, she acknowledges that periods are still a personal thing, and students have a right to privacy when accessing products. “You want to destigmatise it and make it really visible but at the same time you don’t want students to feel uncomfortable either, to have the privacy they deserve.” 

In the future, both Revell and Fausett would like to see more reusable period products, such as period-proof undies and menstrual cups, offered to schools. To do so would require being thoughtful about all aspects of a curriculum and the complex cultural norms around periods. Fausett offers swimming as an example. Uniform-mandated swimwear mean that menstruating students who don’t want to use internal products may be left out of classes. Making period-proof swimwear available would help with this. 

These products are much more expensive, but they save money over time. Revell says that to assume school students aren’t interested in reusable products is dismissive, and reusable period products can decrease period poverty in the long term. 

After all, programmes to tackle period poverty in schools are only the start. “There are about 350,000 students with periods in schools,” Revell says. “But there’s 1.5 million [New Zealanders] who menstruate.” It’s great to provide period products in school, but equity advocates can’t lose sight of the bigger picture – the next step is making free products available everywhere, for everyone. “That feeling of being caught out when the blood plops into your underwear is universal,” she says. “If a kid is experiencing period poverty, then we know that others in their whānau and community will be as well.”

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