While using social media I came across a picture that made me write this piece. The picture depicted a girl hiding her face, ashamed of bleeding in the open, and people making fun of her and talking bad about her. The girl asked “Is it my fault that I bleed?” or “Is it that sinful to be a girl?”. This really moved me. Periods are something every girl goes through in life. It is a natural process.
Let’s First Understand What Periods Are
Let’s first understand what it is. In simple words, periods are waste blood in our body which is released through the vagina in females. It marks the onset of puberty and becomes an indicator of normal body functioning. Every month an egg(from an ovary) in the female is released and a lining is created in the uterus. If the egg fertilizes then the lining is used. If that doesn’t happen, that bloodline breaks and comes out in form of waste blood out of the body.
After understanding its meaning, it is quite clear that it’s a body process that girls don’t need to be guilty of. But still, our society’s mentality makes it difficult for women and girls to feel normal about it. And that’s why girls do not talk about this openly. They use words like ‘monthly’, ‘bloody Mary’, ‘blood bank’, ‘periods’, etc as if it is a codeword of some secret. Girls and women go through body pain when down with periods. They have cramps, stomach pain, body ache, headache, etc. Despite all the pain and bearings, they do all the work.
During menstruation, girls(including me) come across various myths. These include not going for worship to religious places, avoiding going to certain kinds of places, not eating medicine to lessen pain, not indulging in any kind of physical activity & exertion, and avoid eating certain foods. When the logic and reason behind them are questioned, elders brush it away saying they are old-age ways and one should follow them. When scientific methods were used to elaborate on them, some of them were found to be illogical and foolish. If we talk about how we maintain menstrual hygiene, 75% of us will say we use pads, menstrual cups, tampons, etc.
Poor Menstrual Hygiene Can Increase Risk Of Infection
But the ground reality is different. Due to poverty, shyness, conservative thinking, or various other reasons, less than 20% of women and girls use pads in India. They used cloth and sometimes plastic (or even nothing) to maintain hygiene. This can increase the chance of various diseases such as fungal or bacterial infections, cervical cancer, HIV, etc.
Taking the way forward, I would just like to say is a basic requirement is to change our mindset. We should start talking about periods openly and treat them as a normal bodily process. We should stop stigmatizing it and allow girls to talk openly. This will help them to feel okay and maintain their mental health.
Secondly, it is important to use technology and creative minds to make pads affordable and accessible to all. Also, we can up with another alternative, pads, and cups. Lastly, it is really important we create awareness about periods. In this direction, an effort by Akshay Kumar in his film “Padman” is laudable. It has made a positive impact. All this will only be possible if we as a society join hands and pledge to safeguard the dignity of women and girls and provide an environment where they can talk about menstruation freely and normally.