Parineeti Chopra responds to a male reporter who claims to know nothing about periods (menstrual cycle). [X]
I started my period when I was 10 years old. But we didn’t tell my grandma for three years because she subscribed to the “old traditions”, where a woman on her period could not enter the house, not even to bathe. Where she had to sit outside in front of the house (where the whole village could be witness to her shame and isolation) for the entire duration.
My friend started her period unexpectedly while we were at our local temple (in America) for dance class. Asking around if any of the parents had pads (all of them apologized and acted like adults about it), I thought surely the front office has a first aid kit. Don’t they have pads? When we asked, not only did they not have any, when one of the women gave one from her purse, the head secretary told us “There are men who need to use the first-aid kit, ya? So we don’t keep period things there.” Not even ibuprofen (which has so many more uses than period pain).
There are girls in India and Nepal (and other places, but I just read an in-depth piece about the situations in Nepal) who have to go to the “period hut” when their period comes and not leave until its over. They can’t wash and dry their cloth pads in the daylight, so they do it at night when the pads won’t dry properly before their next use, making them vulnerable to infection.
It is incredibly important, especially in India, to break the taboo surrounding periods. Break the secrecy around an event that happens to almost every woman, every month for literally half of her lifetime. Break the hiding, break the cover-up, break the SHAME.
Just break EVERYTHING. So little girls can go to school every day of every month without feeling ashamed. So women can work every day of every month to provide for their families without being glared at. So single fathers can confidently take care of their daughters’ health. So that women can talk about how terrible their period is or isn’t and give each other advice on how to deal with it without looking around to make sure men aren’t listening.
So that Whisper doesn’t have to be called Whisper, it can be called SHOUT. It can be called PROUD. So that we don’t NEED to fucking WHISPER about our bodies and our health.My cousins in Pakistan are 24 and 27 year old men and have no idea what a period is. I was so shocked but their mother forbid me to tell and explain to them what a period is. Amazing.
I had no idea that this was even a problem anywhere. How awful.
Oh, it’s a problem. One of the older sisters of a Pakistani friend I had was never even told about periods and thought she was dying the first time she had one.