"Welcome to the show that only aires once a month!"

Mary Flynn grew up in Cambridge, Maryland, a small town near Baltimore, Maryland. She is the third child of four to her parents that are two public servants, a mother in substance abuse counseling, a father in police work. She grew up in a middle class family that poured all its money into private education for Mary and her siblings. This left her family scrapping every paycheck.  She will never be able to pay back her parents for such a sacrifice that really helped her open her eyes to the harsh realities of the world.

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In her schoolings, she came to find that her school was really just a safe haven for the wealthy, the community that she could never belong to.  She also discovered that this school very much promoted the mindset that “What they do not know won’t hurt them” and “Boys will be boys.”

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The school had a very poor sex education program. The only “sex ed” that was offered was a one day workshop in the 5th grade, where boys and girls were separated, and shown a single picture of a penis and a vagina. They were told how children were made, and that girls would have bleeding “one a month.” This was the extent of the sex education. No programs in high schools, no anatomy class, nothing.  So, these children, growing up in an environment that believed that “what they did not know won’t hurt them” lead to unhealthy and toxic understandings of sexuality that was driven by pornography. Boys expected porn stars and girls would play the imitations. 

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Periods were neither seen nor heard. A stigma of fear and hiding was alive and well in these high school halls, and Mary, a growing thespian, could not stand for something so one sided, so catered to the comfort of the opposite sex.  

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Using the power of social media and the commonality of comedy, Mary decided to take to her phone, and start a talk show on her Snapchat called “Tampon Talk with Mary” where her first guests were clips of Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton. Mary thought to herself “Well if I just do this one snapchat story and no one thinks it’s funny, at least it will go away after 24 hours.”  It didn’t. Mary got 86 responses from her friends on the app, showing that there might be a way to open the conversation about Periods after all.

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She left for college soon after, where she actually used the show to make friends, inviting strangers from her university on her funny talk show to talk about “boners vs. bleed outs” or just embarrassing stories about the male and female anatomy. The community grew, and the platform expanded to reach audiences outside of Mary amazing friends and family. First it was Periscope, were Mary could make fun of internet perverts for fun, then it was Soundcloud where it lived with all the other failed rappers trying to get noticed, and now it’s on every streaming podcast app, a more permanent platform.

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The show still continues to grow, meeting more people, hearing more stories and attempting to remove such a terrible stigma so embedded in our culture.

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Thank you for your support of Mary’s dream of opening up this conversation for women everywhere. Stay you, and remember you got this.

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We will see you next time on Tampon Talk with Mary, and remember, keep on bleeding!