I’m on my period today. It’s day four so I’m barely bleeding, but I’m still wearing a sanitary pad. On day two – usually my heaviest bleeding day – I had to use four sanitary pads. When I went to the gym I also used a tampon as I was worried about leaking in my gym shorts. Still, I’ve only had to take one codeine tablet this month, plus a handful of paracetamol and …
Wait. I’m not supposed to be saying this out loud. I’m meant to excrete the lining of my womb discreetly, fragrantly and silently. I’m certainly not supposed to use the word “bleed” or “blood”. According to most advertising, I am meant to excrete a thin blue liquid, and to keep it to myself. One way or another, periods take up women’s attention for up to 10 days a month, whether it’s bleeding or mood changes. Yet nearly all advertising for sanitary products encourages us to hide this chunk of our lives – three thousand days for most women – by preventing leaks that might embarrass us and everyone else; by ensuring we don’t, God forbid, smell of menstrual blood; by putting menstruation behind locked doors and safely enclosed in euphemism.
In fact, there are no rules governing the use of blood in sanitary pad advertising, only that sanitary products should not be advertised too close to children’s programming, or cause general offence. That bizarre blue liquid is self-policing by advertisers who daren’t risk offending the public. Maybe they are right to be timid. I recently had my bag searched by airport security at Heathrow, and watched with astonishment as the young woman took my packet of Always and carefully hid it under books. I asked her why and she looked surprised. “Most women ask me to,” she said.
No wonder the British tennis player Heather Watson ruffled matters when she referred to being off her game because of “girl things”. She had felt dizzy and nauseous, she said, and really a bit crap. This is how millions of women feel every month, whether it’s the hormonal upheaval (there’s a footbridge near me which I daren’t take one day a month in case my hormones shove me off it), the sledgehammer pain in your back and belly, the bloating, or the vanished energy.
I cheered upon seeing female athletes talk periods in response to Watson, including Annabel Croft, Paula Radcliffe, and athlete Jessica Judd, who told the BBC that doctors trialled a drug on her because she had her period, and it didn’t work. I cheered louder to read that the GB hockey squad email their coach with their period dates, and that their training is adjusted accordingly (lighter weights for certain days). I winced in sympathy at female tennis players who have their periods during Wimbledon, when they must wear white and are allowed one toilet break per set. That’s awful. But when it comes to the cost of menstrual taboo, there is far worse.
I travelled across India in 2012 with a sanitation carnival. It included games to promote good hygiene and toilet use, but also a colourful tent called the MHM Lab. MHM is Menstrual Hygiene Management, an offputtingly official name, but the tent was not offputting. Every day, even on religious holidays, there were long queues of women and girls who came not for the free sanitary napkins on offer, but simply to ask questions and talk about periods. In a survey carried out by the UN’s sanitation agency WSSCC, almost a third of women and girls had known nothing about periods, and over 70% thought menstrual blood was dirty.
It was clear from their stories that it was usually women themselves hiding menstruation behind silence and shame. They knew nothing because their mothers, grandmothers and sisters had told them nothing. Some girls started their periods and thought they were dying of cancer. Many were convinced that they could curdle milk or ruin pickles. In Iran over 40% of girls surveyed by Unicef thought menstruation was a disease. This unmentionability can have other serious consequences: if girls can’t afford sanitary napkins or cloths, they use straw, or sand, or newspaper, often resulting in infections. (Only 12% of Indian women use sanitary pads.)
And worse, the absence of toilets in schools (common, when 2.5 billion people still have no toilet) can be a factor in girls dropping permanently out of education. Worse still: in Nepal I visited girls who are confined to live in animal sheds when they have their period, and treated as untouchables. I asked a menstrual hygiene specialist at WSSCC whether she could think of a country, rich or poor, that didn’t have any menstrual taboo or stigma. “No.” Menstrual taboo goes far beyond a tennis court.
There is good news. Menstrual hygiene is more on the agenda of NGOs and governments. There is now a Menstrual Hygiene Day. Great initiatives to provide low-cost sanitary protection, whether pads or moon cups, are multiplying. Even advertisers – such as HelloFlo in the US – are becoming more daring.
How daft, though, to think that talking about periods requires courage. I do it all the time (too much, my friends think), because I’m proud of my body, both when it runs marathons, and when it bleeds. My period may hurt, but not as much as not talking about menstruation does. Period talk: it’s time it was a team sport.