Out for Blood

It’s time to lose the embarrassed, hush-hush tones – the topic of menstruation deserves to be addressed openly and without shame. Meet two individuals who are working to tackle the stigma surrounding periods by revolutionising the menstrual hygiene industry in their own unique ways.

- Renyi Lim

In Sweden, it ’s called lingonveckan (lingonberry week). In France, it’s wryly referred to as ‘Les Anglais ont debarqué’ (the English have landed). Once a month, South African women will exclaim, ‘Granny’s stuck in traffic,’ while a teenage girl from China might discover that her ‘Eldest Aunt’ has arrived for the first time.

If you’re one of two billion adolescent girls and women across the world who experience menstruation on a regular basis, chances are you’ll also have weathered – in one way or another – the stigma that accompanies it, whether it’s the horror of having a spare sanitary napkin pop out of your handbag and straight onto the floor of a crowded restaurant, or having to explain in varying degrees of euphemism to a romantically inclined partner that it’s ‘that time of the month’.

For those of us who are fortunate enough to have access to and to be able to afford menstrual hygiene products such as pads, tampons, and even menstrual cups, it’s easy to assume that the worst thing that can happen is an accidental leak, an awkward back-against-the-wall shuffle to the bathroom, and the ruining of a favourite dress.

In countries where menstruation is held as a completely taboo topic, in which airing your dirty laundry (somewhat literally) will attract frowns and criticism – quite often from other women – the stigma around menstruation impacts the lives of young women to a profoundly disturbing extent. It’s closer to home than you might think – during a survey of 90,000 women by menstrual cycle tracking app Clue, over 90 percent of respondents from Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia said they had missed school, work or an event because they were afraid of someone finding out that they were on their period.

CODE RED