I am going to write about the topic that I couldn’t quite understand at the beginning and now is really getting on my nerves.
Why is our society so weird when it comes to menstruation?
Why do we feel ashamed and try to avoid eye contact when buying tampons like we’ve been doing something illegal? (not ALL of us, but the majority)
How many times I heard about boys refusing to buy tampons for their girlfriends because of feeling too ashamed? Sorry, but too ashamed of WHAT? Of the fact that people might see you and think “oh how lovely, this guy really cares about his girlfriend”? Never happened to me, tho, ‘cause I’d never allow someone to treat me that way, but I hear those stories all of the time and what is worse - girls are fine with that, it makes logic to them that something that’s been happening ever since the woman exist (or at least, since uterus does), something completely natural and normal should be seen as embarrassing and dirty. They whisper about it, hiding pads when going to bathroom while praying no one notices anything and one of the cliché scene in teen movies is that “ultimate shocking and embarrassing” moment when spilling the box of tampons in the hall. Here we come to the media role. If you give it some thought, you may realise that even through media, the menstruation is usually represented as something to be ashamed of, as weakness, problem, something dirty, gross and dangerous. People accept without thinking what has been served to them and the whole period stigma stays solid, permitting the society to have “the proof” of women being weaker and less- in any other way.
We have to stop this shit right away.
Girls, talk about your periods, don’t surround them with silence and make it feel as it is something wrong and embarrassing. It is just blood, for god’s sake. Periods always happened and will always happen. Every month. So you better make peace with that and stop treating it as a fucking terrorist act.
Lots of love, Maja