There are approximately 3.8 billion women in the world, and there’s a good chance most of us are either currently on their period or about to be. So, why does menstruation still feel so taboo?
Sadly, ‘that time of the month’ is a topic of discussion often reserved exclusively for our closest friends and family – as are the struggles associated with menstruating.
The stigma surrounding periods is a tale as old as time. According to The Taboo of Menstruation, written by Janie Hampton, The Book of Leviticus, dating back to 538-332 BCE, states that menstruating women are “unclean” and so is anything they touch, including their husbands. Until 1916, Roman Catholic women were forbidden to receive holy communion while menstruating. In Nepal, menstruating Hindu women were sent to secluded mud huts until the practice was banned in 2005. In Japan, Shinto women are barred from temples and prohibited from climbing sacred mountains while they are on their period.
It seems as though these old fashioned and negative attitudes towards our ‘monthly visitor’ have transcended time and are still felt in some degree today – whether it’s a banned Instagram photo of period blood, or the replacement of blood with blue fluid in sanitary product advertisements.
In a piece for The Guardian, Karen Pickering wrote “there is genuine disgust, shame and stigma attached to menstruation and menopause, where women and girls feel shamed for first having their periods at all, and then a different kind of stigma when menstruation ends.”
In surveying nearly 3500 women and girls, Pickering found that school and work were a “scary and sometimes traumatic place to be menstruating” and that we’ve been programmed to hide our periods or “suffer social or professional consequences.”
Which brings us to the question: how can we stop menstruation, and the negative rhetoric surrounding it, from holding us back? One step in the right direction is the vast array of period products available for women these days.
Depending on your needs, you can now make Aunt Flo’s visit that much more bearable with everything from reusable menstrual cups, to washable sanitary pads and menstrual discs. Or my personal favourite – period panties.
Aussie brand Modibodi is making big waves with its range of period underwear. They offer sustainable solutions to all of life’s leaks, whether it be periods and discharge, light bladder leakage, perspiration or pong.
Modibodi even offer the Red range for young people experiencing their period for the first time. The brand’s empowering message is all about functional undies that assist with less messy periods so you can go out there and simply live your life.
It’s 2019, which means it’s about time we stop letting period shame rule our lives and start making part of a more open and honest conversation.