“Amma, what are those napkins that you use?”
“Shh… Speak low, you shall know about it later. For now, it is none of your business.”
How many of us women out here have heard our mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts and uncles shut down a topic so trivial and essential to the human body?
I did not know what they were, I thought maybe it was just a grown-up thing, something young children could not question. You just understood that it was something that should not be spoken about in public, something that you could be judged for. A topic that was considered taboo in itself.
The first time I did notice blood in my underwear, I thought I was going to die from excessive blood loss. I questioned God and his existence until my mother handed me a pad and told me to stick it up against my vagina because this is surprisingly a once a month thing until I turn 50.
I was unprepared. We all were. The hormones raged and left us in a pool of raging emotions, each one changing every few seconds.
I had questions. But who to ask? This was taboo, wasn’t it?
But that wasn’t the end of it. The period taboo had several smaller yet significant taboos attached to it that choo-choo-ed their way around the same taboo track passed down from the past generations!
Don’t you dare try breaking them apart or waving a red flag…err I mean blue.
The human civilisation exists because we are a species capable of reproduction. We are considered the highest up the food chain. The supreme intelligent beings.
A taboo walks in and the brain is flushed down the gutter.
Those who believe in God, do believe that we are their creation. They made us complex machines. And chose to give women the ability to bear a child.
If you function on logic, this also means God designed the reproduction pathways and the menstruation cycle too. YET. Yet, a woman is stopped from being in God’s presence, stopped from entering places of worship, stopped from praying to a higher entity whose creation depends on her menstrual cycle.
For “those days” of the month, you are an outcast. You are filthy, dirty, impure. A different plate. A different bed. A different treatment.
Take that black plastic bag, stretch out the creases, nice and crisp. Oh yes. The same ones that hide her pads. Use that and strangle your outdated thought process.
It’s appalling how little men are aware of menstruation. Some do not even know it even exists! Coy mothers and sisters. Congratulations, you have successfully been able to alienate your sons, brothers and husbands from a natural bodily process. Kudos, you should be so proud.
Kick the taboos. Speak out for menstruation. Get educated. You would not exist without it.