Periods. Why are they so hard to talk about?
Uterus. Yuck. What a disgusting word. Vagina: ugh, even worse. Menstruation sounds like a disease. Menarche, endometrium: what do these terms even mean? “The visitor," "Aunt Flo," "shark week” and the famous phrase, “time of the month.” Euphemisms are everywhere.
Whatever it takes to bring periods out of the realm of secret and hidden is fine with me. However, it would be more convenient if we were capable of talking more clearly and scientifically about our bodies. What’s damaging the lives of millions of schoolgirls and women is not daft and coy terms for periods, but being unable to talk about them at all, or being so ashamed that they have to dry their sanitary cloths under the beds or in the damp -- getting urinary infections or worse.
UNESCO estimates that one in 10 African girls, for example, miss at least one day of school a month, leading to a higher drop-out rate. A survey in India found that nearly 25 percent of girls drop out of school permanently when they reach puberty, because they have no toilet at school.
As long as we can talk about periods openly, and stop all the disease and degradation that comes from women’s bodily functions being thought of as polluting or dangerous, you can call them what you like. Shaming menstruation is a sign of patriarchy, and it is up to us, the millennial generation, to stop the senseless shaming, which "bleeds" through all genders.
All of this period talk brings me to the image I chose for this article. When artist Rupi Kaur shared a photo on Instagram that portrayed a girl bleeding in bed, her photo was initially removed on March 25, which led to her writing even more powerful posts about the incident on Facebook and her Tumblr (which were shared over 11,000 times).
“Their patriarchy is leaking. Their misogyny is leaking. We will not be censored,” she wrote.
Instagram has since reinstated both of the photos, apologizing to Kaur in an email where they explained that the images were “accidentally removed” by a member of the Instagram team. The fact that these images were ever flagged by users in the first place, however, speaks to a deep-seated cultural "fear" of women’s bodies.
It speaks volumes that, in a world where we are consistently exposed to images that are actually explicitly sexual, violent and gory, the sight of period blood makes people uncomfortable.
We watch news reports about war, and “Law & Order: SVU” marathons without batting an eye, but we can't handle a menstrual product advertisement that uses the color red to signify period blood.
Major tech companies do not even have the character to include apps that benefit women, such as the instance in which Apple’s Health app came out in September and the company came under fire for omitting a woman’s menstrual cycle from the many body-related things a user can track.
This is all quite frustrating. Knowledge is power. I am sure that no female wants girls and women to feel ashamed of the things that our bodies do that feel messy. I really believe we can all be part of the change of changing this stigma, and getting rid of it for good.
I would also like to take this moment to thank my father for not conforming to general reactions and behaviors that society perpetuates to this day. I will forever be thankful and grateful for his gleeful and enthusiastic response when I told him that I had gotten my period. It was a bonding moment that I will never forget and will cherish forever.
And I am also glad that he does not bat an eye whenever I ask him to buy pads or tampons for me. I hope future men in my life will do the same. And to you, the reader, I hope you have been fortunate enough as well to have a been greatly impacted by a male figure in your life. I hope you also raise your son this way.
