In 2022, Tampax went viral when trans-identified male Dylan Mulvaney flaunted the products in a video. A few years prior, period care brand Always had removed female symbols from its packaging following transgender activist pressure. And many feminine care companies have quietly adopted “people who menstruate” language. But one feminine hygiene company is loudly standing up for biological reality.
Macy Maxson is the founder of Garnuu, a period care company made for and by women. After she launched her company in 2022, she took a stand for truth by saying that only women can menstruate.
“We just felt like this was a piece of truth, a biological truth, and something that was God-ordained—man and woman,” Maxson told IW Features. “We had no choice.”
Maxson was ahead of the curve. A few months after Garnuu launched its tampon products, the Tampax-Mulvaney scandal broke. Transgender ideology was reaching a boiling point, and female-only products had been on the gender ideology bandwagon for years already. Maxson pointed to a 2020 social media post from Tampax promoting transgender ideology that suggested men could menstruate.
“It was so ridiculous,” she said.
“We said, ‘This is an innate part of what makes a woman a woman, and we’re going to stand up for truth,’” Maxson explained.
The backlash was swift, with some customers telling the company that their stance wasn’t “kind” and canceling their subscriptions, according to Maxson. She added that she even received online death threats for her views.
“I knew it was super risky because everything you learn in business school is [that] you can’t be political,” she said.
However, although the topic might be considered controversial, Maxson believes that biological reality isn’t political.
And as it turns out, standing up for the truth also brought many like-minded women to Garnuu. Sales went up, despite the backlash, and Garnuu expanded into menstrual pads and discs alongside their initial tampons and menstrual cup products as Maxson bootstrapped the funding herself to grow the company.
But Garnuu didn’t start with such a hot-button stance. Instead, it began with its name, derived from the Nepali phrase for “to rescue.”
Doing marketing for an anti–human trafficking nonprofit, Maxson learned about the cycle of abuse many women and girls suffer in Nepal.
“These girls were coming either out of trafficking or… the caste system,” Maxson said. “A lot of the families, they’re so poor that they would sell their children into sex trafficking so they could feed the rest of their family.”
Many girls are abused before they even have an understanding of their own reproductive system and are left in the dark to suffer through their trauma alone, according to Maxson.
Learning about the prevalence of this abuse supercharged Maxson to start a company that gives back to women. Today, a portion of Garnuu’s profits supports organizations across the globe doing period education, anti–sex trafficking work, and job training to help girls break the cycle of poverty—alongside providing much-needed menstrual products to these girls.
“We actually were just in Brazil,” said Maxson, adding that she will be traveling to Africa next month.
Another aspect of Garnuu’s mission is empowering women’s health by selling organic pads and tampons.
“The vagina is the most absorbent organ in the body,” Maxson said, explaining that many menstrual products contain plastic and heavy metals.
“I never sell tampons or products that I would not use myself,” she added.
As Garnuu works in other countries to change the narrative around periods and women’s health, Maxson said she also wants to change the way women in America view their periods.
“Most of the period brands… want to destigmatize periods by shoving it in your face,” she said. “And personally, I will never show an ad with actual blood on it.”
She added that periods are “just a part of normal life” and that she wants to make them “more of a fun experience for women.”
“Every woman has a different feeling about her period every month,” Maxson said. “Despite the different feelings that every woman has around that time of the month, I want to consistently bring joy and bring truth to women.”
