Period Shaming – Is This Why Feminism Heats Up?

PERIODS! When I hear this word, my heart and head have completely conflicting opinions. My heart says that I connect to it so much being a woman’s soul. A heart which knows that this indeed is the closest aspect of a woman’s heart – even more than the vagina. It is a life giving process, a process that defines womanhood and is as natural as breathing. Despite all this, period shaming happens in all parts of the nation.

On my other hand, the head says that I am not supposed to talk about it publicly, I need a space in my own house to talk about it  so that the males don’t get to know about it. I have to think quite a few before standing at a shop and asking for a sanitary napkin. And…I ask to both my heart and head, can’t these thoughts link up and be on the same track?

BITTER TRUTH : WE GIVE RISE TO IT!

Periods is a natural phenomena in a woman’s body. She bleeds every month, bearing so much pain and still is considered a dirt, something which is not natural, an occurrence you are supposed to be ashamed of. And you ask me the reason? It is US. Yes, US. We have made this issue so big that a little girl feels right from the very beginning of her puberty days, the days she experiences periods for the first time, feels that she is doing a crime. She needs to hide her feelings otherwise she will be considered a waste in her house, taking a 5 day break from everything clinging to the side of the house for those days. We have made a havoc in her life where she is considered an impurity if she pays a visit as a religious place. We don’t let her enter the kitchen,consider her pure only once she has hair washed her after 3 days.

ALERT !! WE ARE KILLING OUR WOMEN MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY

The effects of shaming periods are devastating. Girls go into mental depression because they think that they are insulted, are considered an impurity, something if comes close can affect badly. Every year, cases are reported and maximum no. Of girls suicide because they are period shamed badly, be it their schools, college or office. Reportedly, few girls in a girls hostel were period shamed in the hostel premises when they were asked to show whether they are bleeding or not just to differentiate from the group of girls and make them feel that they are dirty and that there is something wrong with them. Girls are asked to sit in a different room, not touch pickles as it would kill the purity of it, asked not to enter the kitchen. If in the 21st century, we are doing this, I am afraid we have way to go..

Periods are nothing to be ashamed of. We can’t witness this beautiful world if the woman does not take the generation ahead and period is the ladder to it. Let’s come together, raise our voice and give wings to the budding root and let our woman bloom into a flower. Stop period shaming. We can do it together.