With all the talk about birth control coverage lately, Jezebel thought it would be wise to break down the annual cost of owning a vagina. Hint: it ain't cheap, literally or figuratively.
According to their calculations, it costs about $2,663 a year to maintain your vagina. That is, if you're on birth control and don't have insurance to cover it. Which, if legislators have anything to say about it, might totally happen.
If you don't have insurance, a pack of pills runs about $130, which adds up to about $1500 a year. And even if you do have insurance, you always pay usually around $10 a month in co-pay fees. (Not to be outdone, I usually let boyfriends pay for dinner at least once a month to make up for it.) Jezebel breaks it down:
"Because they are taken daily like vitamins and not simply whenever a woman has sex like Viagra, a woman goes through a pill pack every 28 days. So this is actually what Sandra Fluke meant when she testified that it would set back law students $3000 over the course of law school if insurance didn't help defray the cost of birth control."
Also expensive without health insurance? Your annual exam. Even at Planned Parenthood, it'll run you $175. If you go elsewhere without insurance, you can expect to pay over $500. And then there's that other annoying vaginal maintenance cost: tampons. Those average about $7 a pack, and Jezebel conservatively estimates we use about nine boxes a year. Not to mention another $7 a bottle for that Midol crap.
"About 70 percent of American women use tampons. And on average, a woman will, in her lifetime, use more than 11,000 tampons or pads. That's a lot of disposable cotton. And it's a necessity. Could you imagine if we just free-flowed? The entire world would look like a murder scene."
And if you don't happen to be bleeding, or paying for yeast infection or UTI remedies, and are actually in the mood to have sex? Chances are, that will cost you too.
"Recent studies indicate that most women, aged 18 – 39, engage in pubic hair removal — whether partial or total — through various methods (waxing, shaving, laser removal). A 2009 survey released by the American Laser Centers claimed that the average woman shaves 12 times a month, spending about $15.95. Women who are committed to waxing do so every 6 weeks."
And last but not least, we ladies even have to buy more toilet paper. (By the way, did anyone else freak out when they found out guys don't wipe after peeing?)
"Because women use toilet paper every time they go to the bathroom—for urination and defecation—they use at least twice the amount of toilet paper than men, if not significantly more. So if one man uses an average of one roll of toilet paper per year, it can be safely assumed that a woman would go through at least two rolls per week."
That's about $150 bucks a year you spend simply wiping your nether regions. Let's hope Jezebel doesn't calculate what we spend on our hair, makeup and clothes next, because this is pretty depressing. Then again, I guess we should have known vaginas are expensive. Good equipment never comes cheap. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be insured.
