Feeling the Shame of your Period?

February 13, 2020 | st-blog-admin

Social and cultural norms have created some pretty strange, outlandish even, trends. And there is a myriad of cultural perceptions all over the world when it comes to women’s periods. Some cultural beliefs regarding periods are not just bizarre, they can also bar women from education, jobs, and overall equality – no, we are not joking. 

Here are some norms that really take the cake when it comes to the bizarre quotient! 

• If you are riding the crimson tide, stay away from the ocean because the sharks can sniff period blood – you don’t want your bottom to be on their dinner table now, do you? 
• For aeons now, we’ve heard people harping on about how period blood is ‘unclean’. This obviously led to the ‘don’t enter the kitchen or your uncleanliness with waft through the air and spoil the food’ myth. 
• When you are on your periods, you can’t shower because you will become infertile – wait, what?
• A menstruating woman will tick off every Indian goddess because she’s unclean – so please lock her up in a room, and keep her isolated from the other members of the family.
• Menstruating women must not be allowed to cook because the hormones can cause an ‘imbalance in taste’ – and therefore food cannot possibly be cooked properly
• From Bali to India, if there’s one myth that has thrived through times, it’s the one that bars women from entering temples. 
• Since this ‘uncleanliness’ can be debilitating yet so powerful, no menstruating woman can touch a man – otherwise, all hell will break loose. No, you cannot even talk. 

The bottom line is that taboos are not just weird, but they can hold back women in many ways. Although they have stemmed from concerns about hygiene, today, they have grown into strong restrictions that need to be constantly fought. And where have these taboos taken us today? All around the world, one in three girls faces scanty sanitation, and the others face social and cultural stigma during their periods – to the extent where they are intercepted and not allowed to go to school, crippling any kind of hygiene-related education that they MIGHT get. We say ‘might’ because that’s how much importance we have grown to give hygiene and health. A report by Dasra suggests that almost 23 million girls drop out of school annually due to lack of proper menstrual hygiene management facilities.  

If we stop thinking that periods are gross, shameful, and dirty, then perhaps it wouldn’t be the humanitarian crisis that it has become today. But the truth is, we have a long history of embarrassment and apparent shame to overcome. It’s so ingrained in our behaviour that being put on blast for having our period doesn’t help.

We shouldn’t have to feel like we need to whisper about needing a sanitary napkin or hide a napkin inside a black polythene cover. Periods aren’t anything strange or peculiar, and neither is talking about them. That’s why we have to talk about it. Period.