I'm XX years old and I have never worn a tampon in my life. I hate the idea of tampons. I just have no interest in shoving something and walking around all day with it in there. I'm not saying it's unsanitary, I'm not saying I might not find it uncomfortable, they're just not for me is all.
I have always gone swimming with my period with "nothing in there," usually just wearing a dark bathing suit. The worst that's ever happened is a very small, not very noticeable trail once or twice when my flow was heavy, and that was when I was sitting around in the pool in one place for a long time. It was only recently that I heard that anyone ever wore a tampon into a pool, and honestly I thought it was a little odd (wouldn't the tampon absorb the chlorinated water up inside you? Who would want that? And apparently it does happen, albeit not nearly as much as one would expect.)
Okay, just for venting purposes, I am calling bullshit on this whole "unsanitary" crap. Think about being in a pool. A pool is full of people, many of them with cuts and abrasions (ever see a band-aid in a public pool? I'm thinking you probably have.) Nobody freaks out and says "you can't go in the pool if you have any kind of cut! It's unsanitary!" do they? Then why the heck would anyone freak out over a little period blood? It might be unsanitary in a unchlorinated pool, if you had AIDS, and there were other people in the pool with open wounds. But in a chlorinated pool? nothing lives through that.
I'm so sick of people's juvenile attitudes about menses. "Eeeewww! Periods! Groooossss!" Come on, people. Grow up. Vaginas are the one of the most sanitary parts of your body, weirdly enough--it's true that the blood on pads (not the stuff inside you) tends to collect e. coli from your derrière, but that's hardly a concern while swimming. Jeez.
