PERIODS! What’s the Big Deal?

• Frankie Picasso reflects on her personal experiences with menstruation, from the initial confusion and embarrassment to the eventual routine acceptance of periods.
• People use various euphemisms to refer to menstruation, avoiding using the actual term.
• Girls in remote areas of Asia and Africa face severe challenges, including isolation, inadequate menstrual hygiene, and period poverty.
• There is a need for global efforts to support menstrual health and end period poverty, ensuring every girl can manage her period with dignity and ease.

Two events in a young girl’s life are looked forward to with great anticipation and angst. They are significant milestones that signal our approaching womanhood and tend to go hand in hand. Can you guess what they are? 

 If you answered, “Your first bra and your first period,” then you would be correct. 

If I knew then what I know now, I wonder if I would have wished for them as hard as I did. I mean, do you know any woman over thirty who at the end of a long day wishes she could keep her bra on longer or that her period would never end? I don’t think so. 

Periods. In several parts of the world, they are a BIG deal. I never thought too much about mine once they became a regular event. Sure, they were a nuisance, they came monthly, and sometimes they were painful, but they were just a fact of life. After the first few, I just got used to them.   

The first time I got my period, my mother came to me with a belt and a gigantic pad—the whole contraption looked downright medieval. It probably took me twenty minutes to figure it out and put it on correctly.  It was hilarious and embarrassing, but I felt like I was now a part of the ‘sacred club’ of women.  I now knew ‘the secret’. That ‘thing’ our gym teacher tried to teach us about finally happened. “What if the bleeding doesn’t stop and I die?” I’m sure I was not the first or last girl to think that. 

At the time, I couldn’t help but wonder if I looked different. Did everyone know I was on it? Groan.  

When I look back today at the ‘hardware” we wore, it was pretty bulky and not that discreet (I bet there’s a museum dedicated to ‘period’ wear—or there should be one) but it did the trick. Over time, personal hygiene products became slimmer, more compact, and user-friendly. No more worrying if I leaked out. The only way someone would know I had my period was if I told them. 

We had a lot of nicknames for menstruating. Menses was not one of them. No one used the actual word. We would say I have my period, my friend, my monthly, it’s shark week, Aunt Flo is visiting, and red wedding, to name a few. I wonder what other names there are out there. 

 I was fortunate in that my period was pretty regular. It came about every 28 days and lasted 3-5 days. Sometimes, the first day of cramping was painful but often after that, like all the girls I knew, we just went about our lives. We went to school, played sports, went to work, and did everything we normally did when we didn’t have our monthly visitor. ‘Monthly’ being the operative word here, because sometimes our ‘friend’ didn’t show up on time. When that happened, we got scared, wondered how we would tell our parents, and prayed hard for it to come. We wished and prayed to God to please, PUHLEEZE let it come. We worried and fretted and finally, if we were lucky, we were rewarded with a sight that spelled relief to many young women— and men. All was right and ‘red’ in our world again. Phew! 

 It’s been a long time since I’ve had a period, almost 17 years. Menopause is another ‘great’ event in a woman’s life we get to look forward to, but I won’t go into it now. 

I remember my sisters and I talking openly about periods and sex in front of our father and brothers. My father usually ignored the banter but never shut down the conversation. I was fortunate that I grew up in a family where we could talk about anything and everything. I realize that this isn’t the case for thousands of girls. In many parts of the world, Menstruation is considered ‘topic non grata’, and experiencing it is even worse. 

The Sad Reality of Menstruation Around the World

There are places in Asia—remote areas in India and Nepal—where girls are secluded and sent to stay in period shacks (or worse), while they are menstruating. They are considered ‘unclean’ and are not allowed to touch anything or anyone. They are only ‘allowed’ boiled rice for food, which is dropped down to them like animals at feeding time. They are treated worse than animals because they are isolated and relegated to this treatment every month for the rest of their lives until they stop bleeding.  

The myths and taboos regarding women and menstruation go as far as the belief that if a woman who is bleeding eats butter or drinks Buffalo milk, the animal will sicken and die. The same goes for if she touches a man. However, this doesn’t stop some men from raping young, helpless girls who are abandoned and banished from their families during this time. In some places, a menstruating woman is forbidden from praying or entering a church or synagogue, since they are considered cursed and unclean.  

Period Poverty

On average, girls miss about 25% of their school year in many African countries because they don’t have sanitary products during this time. There are no private or sanitary places to keep clean, so they stay home. Most public washrooms don’t have a proper disposal bin for soiled period products. Women are forced to keep a dirty pad wrapped up in their purses until they can find garbage to dispose of it.  

The cost of a pad is so ‘dear’ that girls are known to engage in transactional sex for pads and the older men use this knowledge to coerce young girls into having sexual intercourse. 

Girls living in remote villages are known to use grass or cow dung in place of a pad. Why must these women suffer?  

 This is called Period Poverty, and it affects millions of girls worldwide. Period poverty is the lack of access to sanitary products, toilets, clean water for washing up, education around feminine hygiene, water for hand washing, and proper bins for waste disposal of tampons or pads.  

In honor of World Menstrual Day on May 24th, my friends from Africa and Asia and I would like to bring the topic of Periods out of the dark ages and into the open where girls and boys can get their questions answered, openly and honestly. They will learn what is happening with their bodies and remove the stigma that comes with this naturally occurring monthly event.  Periods do not make women unclean, rather they prepare the uterus for the important job of motherhood. 

Periods can often cause embarrassment but it’s better to laugh than cry so let’s share a few stories and lighten the subject.  

“I got my periods during my first year in high school. My mother had never talked to me about menstruation since there are things that the old-generation African parents never talk about openly to their kids—sex and menstruation. On this Saturday morning, we had assembled at the school parade for morning briefs before we headed to the playground. We had inter-dormitory and interclass sports. I was among those chosen to represent my dormitory. I suddenly felt wet, It had not clicked in my mind that it could be my period.  As the assembly was ongoing, I felt more of this. When we finally dispersed from the assembly I went to the latrine, and oh God! I was menstruating. I cried because I was scared. I was a 14-year-old who had been raised in the village, with zero exposure.  I had never been taught how to place a pad on my undergarment. In primary school menstruation was a topic but our science teacher did not go into depth. So here I was with no idea of how to navigate it. I ran to the dormitory and told my school mother, an older student who assists new students. She laughed and asked me to shower after which she tried explaining how to place a pad on my undergarment. She talked to me and assured me that she would help in case I had a problem. I withdrew from taking part in sports since I was afraid my pad would fall off while running or worse, blood would spill. I was gloomy the whole day. Sometimes, my pad would overflow and stain my skirt. Albeit red, the stain still didn’t look good on it and some students would laugh at me. I got used to this until I could do it on my own. On visiting day, I told my mom and she only said, “Now you are an adult and you need to be careful not to get pregnant before you complete school’’. We never talked about it again.  

A lot of non-governmental organizations have taken up girls’ issues seriously in my local area. Girls have been enrolled in different programs where they are taught about Sexual reproductive health and given free sanitary towels since a majority of them come from humble backgrounds.” ~ Anonymous

“I am amazed how much you girls go through and still be so nonchalant”: Male Ally Understands Menstruation 

 “I experienced something that warmed my heart and opened my eyes to the power of honest conversation. It was a cozy evening at a local cafe and a bunch of us—guys and girls—were just shooting the breeze. The flow of our discussion took us from one subject to another until we reached the topic of health and wellness. And as typical as it can get, someone brought up periods— usually a cue for conversations to wade into awkward waters, right? 

At first, I was surprised, but then I realized this was actually pretty cool. So, I shared some of my experiences, and the other guys at the table started chiming in too, asking questions and sharing stories. Before we knew it, we were knee-deep in this amazing conversation about something that affects half the population but rarely gets talked about openly. It was refreshing to see my male friends take an interest in the topic with curiosity and empathy rather than resorting to awkwardness or jokes. 

 From that night on, our conversations got more inclusive, and that awkward stigma around periods disappeared. It was like we had unlocked this secret superpower of understanding and acceptance. So here’s to normalizing conversations about periods and smashing through barriers that make us feel like we can’t discuss it openly. Let’s keep the curiosity alive and create a world where everyone feels comfortable sharing their experiences.” ~ Vaishali, India

“My menstrual period started at the age of fourteen when I was in my rural day school in senior two. It was a smooth experience at the time because I lived with my mother and sisters, and they supported me. However, when I went to boarding school for my senior five and six, I had a different experience. There were eight children: seven girls and one boy. Out of the seven girls, five were experiencing menstrual periods. My mother always sent me to boarding school with one packet of pads and one bar of washing soap because it was a requirement. She had taught me how to make my own pads from pieces of cloth and how to keep them clean. 

Everything went well in the first month as I used pads. However, in the subsequent months, I had to use pieces of cloth. This became a problem when I didn’t have soap. I had to wash them and they wouldn’t get clean without soap. I used to wait for everyone to finish bathing or washing, and move around to collect the pieces they left. God was on my side as I used to get big moderate pieces. I would wash clothes for friends to take advantage of their soap to wash my own. The rags didn’t contain blood like pads so blood would seep through them and the school uniform. I often had a mark of blood on my skirt no matter how hard I tried to sit strategically on the bench. Only a small portion of my bums would sit on the bench. While in class, I sat directly on my backbone to ensure the pad and my panties wouldn’t touch the bench. If I sat normally, the “pad” and the skirt would touch the bench and my skirt would get grossly soiled. Because of this sitting posture, I had blood running along my thighs and I would spread it around my thighs by rubbing them together to prevent it from reaching my lower limbs. The circulating air would dry this blood on my thighs and I would live on as if nothing was wrong. I had a heavy flow so I would go to the dormitory at break and lunchtime to clean up and change. I did this for five days every month for two years. I would have stayed back in the dormitory, but this would attract a punishment. 

I still had hardships at the University but at least I was free to stay home whenever I didn’t have enough sanitary pads. 

Most African mothers share beds with their children. Some of them don’t even know their HIV status and are not hygienic during menstruation. Children here often have injuries from self-scratching and playing materials. Considering that the virus can be transmitted when a mother’s infected blood gets into the disintegrated skin of a child, I am worried about the likelihood of HIV transmission to the children in this manner.” ~ Agnes, Uganda

“When I was around ten or eleven years old, one of my friends told me about her older sister’s friend, who, at about fourteen, hadn’t gotten her period like her peers and was upset, fearing she could never have children. I felt for her, briefly, and immediately moved on with my carefree life. However, when I reached fourteen and still hadn’t gotten my period, worry crept in. My cousin, who had started at nine, said I was a late bloomer. My mother said it was concerning and we would need to see a doctor about it soon. “She grew up with five sisters, of course, she knows what’s normal and what’s not,” I thought. Thankfully, a few days before my fifteenth birthday, my “red flower” arrived—thank goodness! I wasn’t doomed to be childless. As I have grown older, I now know that I was not late at all. I got my period at my own perfectly normal time and, frankly, it is not all that. In hindsight, if I had known it would come with painful cramps and be a nuisance for 3 to 5 days every month, I would have been happy to hold it off for a few more years. For nearly two years, I felt abnormal. Sadly, many young girls around the world endure worse myths. It’s our responsibility to educate and support them, making their experiences as comfortable as possible.” ~ Marion, Kenya

“For me, periods weren’t the ominous event  I thought they would be. My aunt, who is a doctor, told me about it at a young age. Later that day, I asked my mom about it, and she explained everything elaborately. It felt natural, so fortunately during my summer vacations when I got my first period, I wasn’t surprised or scared. Although my periods wouldn’t hurt, it was still bothersome to put on pads for 4-5 days every month, but unlike my friends who dreaded it, that wasn’t the case with me. 

However, this luck was short-lived. With the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic, I felt what it was like to be a woman. I say this because I never realized the impact of change a woman must go through. I was a sportsperson and used to dance actively. The pandemic completely shut everyone off. This inactivity led to intense hormonal changes, which almost led me to go to the doctor. My periods stopped coming for 2-3 months, and when they finally resumed, I experienced pain I never thought my body was capable of handling. I am still not used to the pain.  

But every month I also feel proud of myself for experiencing womanhood in this way and still work actively on those days. I am also grateful to my family and friends who also understand the rainbow of moods I throw at them during this time, which I am aware is a rare thing to ask for. But above all, I now realize that wanting to rest and not worry about others is perfectly okay. I hope someday, women do not have to justify their behavior on the basis of ‘whether they are on their periods or not’ and feel completely free to relax if they want to.” ~ Bhavika, India

These stories show the universal yet diverse experiences of menstruation, emphasizing the importance of open dialogue and education to dismantle the stigma surrounding periods. There is a need for greater awareness and support for menstrual health initiatives to end period shame and poverty. By fostering a more informed and empathetic society, the goal is to ensure that all girls can manage their periods with dignity and without shame.