Hush little period
hush hush hush
A few days ago, during yoga, a client explained why she couldn’t do something but wouldn’t mention periods. When she did, she whispered and I could just not understand initially. This kind of shockingly reminded me of growing up with hushed periods. In a house full of women, talking about periods was still not completely okay. We would lie when we visit someone’s place during prayers or pretend to pray. Not fasting in Ramadhan was a completely hidden thing. Quite often, even while not fasting, we would go almost all day without food and water because of no opportunities to be alone around food. There were code words for everything. The code word for pads was ‘white biscuit.’ I don’t even think it was something we were hiding from my dad, it was just something to be hidden.
As I grew, I realized how problematic it was. Just talking normally about it removed the shame that we were instilled with. I know a lot of people now are embracing it and speaking about it quite normally, yet a lot still aren’t.
The reason why I am writing this is that a few years ago, I attended an event loosely based on women that was hosted, run and attended by young adults. From all the conversations we had, everything was agreed upon quite unanimously except periods. A heated argument brought about interesting conversations and justifications on why it should not be talked about openly. What we don’t realize is that hushing it down means attaching shame to a very normal bodily function. They debated why we don’t openly talk about pee and poop and thus shouldn’t talk about this too. This is the young generation talking about periods with much more understanding than we have ever had.
Every woman has had a period start unknowingly and has their clothes stained at some point in their life. If that happens in public, in school, around any men, there’s so much effort to hide it that little girls feel extremely embarrassed to even go to school! So many men know nothing about periods, and thus have the least empathy about it towards their partners, sisters, and mothers, as they grow up. They know nothing of the bodily changes, the pain, the mood changes, and the abnormalities. Because of the shame, everything is hushed. Women thus learn to endure the pain in silence and think of abnormal pain and bleeding as a norm.
The thing is, you will tell me you talk about it okay at home, why does it have to be so openly discussed? Because, you may with awareness, privilege and education have overcome the shame and stigma for periods, but many still don’t. The stigma is so high, that young girls don’t go to school because of that. They don’t have access to pads and the use of un-hygienic or random things as pads is so common. Research says that endometriosis takes around 8 years to get diagnosed and this is in the west. Who knows if anyone gets diagnosed around here? People endure. They endure long, painful periods of shame and stigma.
When anything is hushed due to shame, it is not okay to be hushed anymore.