Every year, month after month, we women miss out on so many things because of periods. Plans get cancelled, the colour of our clothes change and we avoid doing so many things, that we otherwise wouldn’t have.
London-based drummer and former Harvard student Kiran Gandhi could easily have chosen the same route when she started menstruating a day before she was going to run the London marathon, but she decided to do otherwise.
After training for it for a year, she decided that her period was not a liability, but in fact an opportunity to help remove the taboo that menstruation has become. So she decided to pass the tampons and pads and bleed freely.
She wrote on her website, “I ran the whole marathon with my period blood running down my legs. I got my flow the night before and it was a total disaster but I didn’t want to clean it up. It would have been way too uncomfortable to worry about a tampon for 26.2 miles. I thought, if there’s one person society won’t fuck with, it’s a marathon runner.”
“If there’s one way to transcend oppression, it’s to run a marathon in whatever way you want. I ran with blood dripping down my legs for sisters who don’t have access to tampons and sisters who, despite cramping and pain, hide it away and pretend like it doesn’t exist. I ran to say, it does exist, and we overcome it every day,” she added.
Sharing the entire journey of the marathon on her website, she wrote, “The marathon was everything. I trained for a year and then it happened. And truly it was one of the most profound experiences of my life. I ran with two of the most important women in my life, and we didn’t leave each other’s side once, from start to finish. We crossed the finish line hand-in-hand. We raised $6,000 collectively for Breast Cancer Care. And we ran the whole way without stopping.”
All pictures via Kiran’s website: kirangandhi.com
What a strong and beautiful woman!
While women across the world have come forward to support her brave step, she has also received flak for her choice by some. We stand by this badass woman who shows how we should not take periods as an excuse to not do what we want.