Didn’t most of us get petrified when we first encountered our period – from being taught how to sit and how to behave now that we are ‘women’, what to wear, how to hide the stain with chalk, we know it all. Even as we progress as a society, it is very unfortunate to see people treating and commenting on periods with an undertone of misogyny.
A young woman, while walking back home after a long, tiring day had to fight men ogling at her and women giving her a side eye, just for staining her pants with menstrual blood.
Makes us wonder how, for some people, to accept a perfectly normal phenomenon brings so much discomfort. How long before we stop coding it with words like ‘I am down’ or ‘that time of the month’, how long before we normalise menstruation?
Here’s Anushka Dasgupta narrating her incident:
“I came home today at four minutes past nine after a long walk, a metro journey and a 10 minute bus ride.
There’s nothing unusual about my evening except for the fact that multiple women walked up to me on my way home and asked me to pull my tee shirt down, most men ogled, all the kids I met didn’t notice/care. I came to know why I was the centre of attention for the better of my journey when a woman (well meaning, I’m sure) offered me a sanitary napkin. I had stained my pants.
So here I was, well past eight, standing alone at Esplanade with a massive red stain across my butt and a rather artistic red dot under the zipper of my pants.
This post is for all the women who offered to help me hide my womanhood, I AM NOT ASHAMED. I bleed every 28-35 days, it is painful at times, I get moody at times, but I walk into the kitchen and get myself some chocolate biscuits and I’m good to go for the next eight hours come hell or high water because I AM NOT ASHAMED.
This post is for all the men who ogled at me today, I AM NOT ASHAMED. Check out the big red blotch on my pants all you want, check out my butt, check out the way I move, come touch me if you dare, and I will show you that I AM NOT ASHAMED. I will take out a sanitary napkin and show you how it works while you can teach me how to pee in public (because clearly you’re not ashamed, and neither am I).
To all the children who didn’t give a damn, DO NOT BE ASHAMED. There will be many bloodstains on pants, on skirts, on bedsheets, on cushion covers, on chairs, on tables, against the wall, and on the battlefield where YOU fight the stigma by NOT BEING ASHAMED. Do not whisper when you utter the word “PERIODS”, do not subtly offer a woman a sanitary napkin, or a fresh change of clothes. ASK her if she needs one, TELL her she has stained her clothes, DO NOT HELP HER HIDE IT.
I AM NOT ASHAMED.
I AM NOT ON MY *period*.
I AM ON MY PERIOD.”
