Beiruting News

Who needs a gun when you're armed with tampons?

At least that was the sentiment of two New York high school girls who decided to replace the guns in an old school shooter game with tampons, according to Time.

Andrea Gonzales, 16, and Sophie Houser, 17, called their game Tampon Run, in which a runner throws tampons at oncoming enemies. After they graduated from the Girls Who Code program, which teaches girls how to code in order to close the gender gap in tech, they found it weird that violence and guns are so prevalent in our culture, but talking about periods is a bit cliché.

Andrea and Sophie both felt like they couldn't be open about talking about menstruation in public, feeling like guys shut down when they did or made a big deal out of it if they spotted an unwrapped, unused tampon. So, they decided to do something about it.

"I had been pretty vocal about wanting to make a video game and maybe something with a feminist twist to it because I thought the hyper-sexualization of women in video games was a very addressable issue," Andrea said. "So I kind of pitched that idea to my class to get people to come and join the group, and Sophie joined. And then we were brainstorming because we also wanted to incorporate a social justice message into the game. And Sophie joked that we should throw tampons at people, and then we realized that was something we could actually do."

After launching the game, the girls said they've gotten emails from people all over the world - men and women. "It's so wonderful that we're reaching so many people, and making people think about [menstruation] and discuss it," Sophie said. "It's what we wanted to do with the game."

To play Tampon Run, click here.