SO IT’S OKAY TO TALK ABOUT PERIODS NOW? ABOUT BLOODY TIME
ABOUT BLOODY TIME From reusable menstrual cups to period-proof underwear, finally the products we use and attitudes towards periods are changing. About bloody time, says broadcaster and author Emma Barnett
Emma Barnett on smashing a stigma surrounding women’s bodies
imagine a street you walk down every single day. Then imagine following someone who was bleeding and leaving droplets of blood in their wake. This is how women used to menstruate. All over the shop. According to historian Greg Jenner, women would bleed into their clothes or simply free bleed on to the street. (Yes these women were the original free-bleeders, long before the London Marathon runner Kiran Gandhi took our breath away in 2015 by free-bleeding into her leggings.) The (male) invention of the (un)sexy Edwardian menstrual apron changed the game and thus very early-stage absorption technology was born.
I bring this piece of history up as perhaps it helps explain why men, in particular, and society as a whole, have been freaked out by periods. What bleeds for five days and doesn’t die… so the tired joke goes – but women living until exceptionally recently were expected to put up and shut up; smile beatifically and never mention the pain or carnage going on in their pants each month.
Weirdly, despite today’s Western women reaping the glorious benefits of Generation Overshare, periods have remained stubbornly taboo. Which is truly bizarre when you consider we all owe our existence, in large part, to a woman’s cycle.
But things, I hope, may at last be changing. Now, an entire Selfridges window has been given over to menstruation, in partnership with Thinx, the brand making period knickers that absorb blood without the need for a pad or tampon. I’ve no idea what the Edwardians would have made of such brazenness. They certainly wouldn’t be shopping in Selfridges. Nor would they be buying the book I’ve just penned on periods, having felt compelled to do so after I made UK broadcasting history.
In 2016, I unwittingly became the first person to announce they were menstruating on live TV news. I was suffering (as I always do) and decided that, while on a TV show I was co-hosting, to bring up the debate about menstrual leave. I felt I couldn’t
illustrate the story without being honest about my own severe pain – which I happened to be experiencing there and then. (Little did I know
I was about to be diagnosed a few weeks later with endometriosis, a debilitating condition I have had my whole life and never knew about). I wasn’t sure what the reaction would be. When American journalist Megyn Kelly gave Donald Trump a political grilling during a TV debate, he said it was because she ‘had blood coming out of her wherever’, intimating she was hormonal, emotional and irrational. Charming! (But in a form of poetic justice, she was duly promoted for her unflappable performance.)
After the show went out, I was overwhelmed by women coming up to me on the train and in the supermarket. Women, it transpired, were crying out to tell their stories, from the hilarious to the very sad. One told me how she had been forced to give up her job as she has fibroids and kept flooding. Another revealed how she’d created a crime scene in the office loo before a big meeting, thanks to a badly timed tampon insertion, but didn’t dare breathe a word to her colleagues.
Personally I count myself lucky that, from the time my first period arrived in a cold toilet cubicle in a Manchester House of Fraser, just shy of my 11th birthday, my mother instilled in me period pride – telling me I’d become a woman (or something along those lovely lines), and cheering me with a celebratory hot chocolate. But I still begged her not to tell my father when we arrived home. Somehow I instinctively knew to spare a man’s blushes about something that just seemed dirty in my pants. When she did tell him, he equally sweetly offered his congratulations, too. But I am so struck by how much I had felt the need to keep such a natural, coming-of-age moment from my dad.
Religion hasn’t helped either, where period shaming is often ritualised. Most of the world’s top faiths still propagate that a woman isn’t clean while menstruating and so advise couples to have monthly ‘separate time’. Temples the world over remain off limits to bleeding women. As recently as 2006, TV
‘MANY WOMEN STILL DON’T USE THE WORD’
bosses in Poland banned tampon adverts for the duration of a visit by Pope Benedict in order to not offend him.
At the start of this year, it was confirmed that it is not necessary for women on the contraceptive pill to take a break each month to bleed. It was widely reported that the fake bleed was only bloody invented to please the pope and help convince Catholic husbands their wives weren’t using contraception. It wasn’t required all along.
Even way back in the year 60AD, philosopher Pliny the Elder warned men not to make contact with menstrual blood for it could prove catastrophic. Fast forward to last year and Thinx launched a highly absorbent sex blanket for those unapologetically wanting action while menstruating. We’ve come a long way, baby.
Technology brands have also had to be kicked into touch, but change is also starting to happen there, too. Apple simply forgot about the menstrual cycle when launching its health tracking app in 2014 and swiftly had to correct itself. Equally, Fitbit was shamed last year for not having a menstrual tracker for a long time and when, eventually, it launched the functionality, was forced to change it after only allowing users to record a 10-day period – when some people bleed for longer.
Then there’s the fact that when poet Rupi Kaur posted a photo on Instagram of herself lying on a bed with a small period leak on her trousers and sheets, the social media platform removed the photo, only to later apologise and concede it had made a mistake. There was nothing inappropriate or shameful about such a natural photo. The real shock is how unseen periods have continued to be.
Gloria Steinem, in her glorious 1978 essay If Men Could Menstruate, noted that if that was the case, periods would become ‘enviable’ and ‘worthy’. Guys would brag about how much blood there was and how long it lasted. If you are laughing, it’s because you know it to be true.
Many women still don’t even use the word period, opting for weird euphemisms – never mind boasting about their bleed. (I collated more than 150 words from around the world for the book: my new millennial favourite? Riding the cotton unicorn).
Periods coming out of the shadows means elevating them so they finally become normal. Normal for women to talk about, moan about, laugh about and be taken seriously about; at home, at school, at work and, crucially, at the doctors. Women should no longer be seen as odd or dirty for something so natural and fundamental.
In the process of writing an entire book about periods, I discovered there was a shy hunger among women to open up, giving way to the most fascinating stories that haven’t been told but should be. Period.