The anxiety
creeps up your spine when you realize you have to change your tampon. Carefully
you fumble a new one out of the inner pocket of your bag into your clenched
fist. You hope your conversation partner will notice none of this. You scoot
from behind the tables and walk through the café to the public bathroom. The
family at the next table stares at you. Do they see through your white knuckles
and notice the hidden shape? Or is there blood on your skirt…
The first
time you see blood in your underwear, you think you’re dying. Then you remember
your friends sharing the blossoming of their adulthood, so you search all the cabinets
in the bathroom, until you find a pad.
You start a
learning curve over the next few periods and figure out, when and how much you
bleed, how many days your cycle is. How many small diapers and internal sponges
you need to have to cover this and when to change them. This period is filled
with uncomfortable bathroom visits, in which you find your underwear to be the
set of a slasher movie. Changing the pad is not going to clean your underwear.
Throughout
your awkward teenage years, your period becomes regular, the changing of pads
and products goes flawlessly and you become accustomed to the monthly routine.
You joke about it with friends and discuss the pill to control your flow and
pain-level with your doctor.
And then it
happens again. The blood has spilled and you feel like that awkward teenager
again, doing a handstand in the hallway, the skirt fell down and your friends
stared with a mixture of disgust and pity at your crotch. “Maybe you shouldn’t
do handstands today...” one of them whispered. I got the hint. The rest of the
day I shuffled through the hallway, my thighs pressed together.
In an
alternative scenario, your first period will transform you. It will be seen as
a sign of ripeness. As if you are a low-hanging peach, of sexual and mental
maturity. Making you suddenly desirable, yet paradoxically repulsive. Your
maturity comes paired with impurity and shame. Your child-like innocence is now
seen as alluring. Your movements get a promiscuous connotation as you are now a
seductress. Your blood is the scarlet letter embroidered on your cloak.
You may be
excluded from religious rituals, the preparation of food or family life
altogether, until your flow has passed.
Your period
may have cultural side-effects such as a predetermined central role in the
household and childcare and additional layers of clothing. It can cause the determination
of your formal education and the beginning of a family. Your period may be the
end of your childhood and the forceful jumpstart of womanhood.
*****
In a
perfect world, a period is normalized and celebrated. It signals that you are
going to be an adult, which will give you so many choices. It is exciting,
choosing who you want to be. Girls get educated about their biology and learn
how to use different hygiene products. Boys also get taught about female
biology. They go to the supermarket to get the right tampons and some chocolate
for their first girlfriend, who has confided that she had an accident or an
emotional day. Pads and tampons are as cheap and widely available as toilet
paper. In every bathroom is a little box with free tampons and pads in case you
forgot yours. The pill and more ecofriendly hygiene products are covered by
health-insurance.
When you have cramps so bad that you cannot move, you
shamelessly call in sick. Because it is not an excuse.
This is a
perfect world. To make that the world our grandchildren live in, we have to
start working towards it now. We have to start breaking the taboo now. Period.
Rupi Kaur
writes:
Apparently
it is ungraceful of me
To mention
my period in public
Because the
actual biology
Of my body
is too real
It is okay
to sell what’s
Between a
woman’s legs
More than
it is okay to
Mention its
inner workings
The
recreational use of
This body
is seen as
Beautiful
while
Its nature
is seen as ugly
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