Design students from Goldsmiths University have made an art project showing what tampons would look like if they were actually luxury items.
Magdalene Welch, an 18-year-old student working on the project, wrote on Facebook: “If tampons are considered a luxury then why not wear them that way?”
She and six other first year students put together the pictures.
The photos include two of the students wearing a tampon, one as an earring and one as a headdress.
The art project came after a petition to remove tampon tax amassed more than 300,000 signatures.
Tampons are subject to VAT by the EU, as they are classified as luxury, non-essential items.
One of the women working on the project, Penny Chen
Melina Hadjiargyrou told HuffPost UK: “As a group we had read an article about the pink tax and the expense of women’s products in comparison to men’s. It inspired us to communicate this concept through photography.
“The photographs draw their inspiration from our findings, and from Renaissance paintings. They seek to show tampons as a ‘luxury product’,” the 21-year-old student said.
Students Elba Cerezo, Claudia Del Olmo Russo, Gracelyn Ormasa and Dorota Bojanowska also worked on the project.
Melina Hadjiargyrou
The students came up with the concept, sourced the costumes and edited the photographs in around five hours as part of their undergraduate design degree at the London University.
Yesterday it emerged David Cameron had secured a deal in Brussels with EU leaders to finally scrap the tampon tax.