Being taught to hide having a period as well as possible is wrong.
When I got my period for the first time, my mother told me nothing and it was my sister who handed me pads without explanation and told me to tell no-one. Like, how was I supposed to hide having a period when I was changing clothes in front of other 20+ girls in the locker room before and after P.E. two days a week? Riddle me that.
Treating periods as something disgusting is stupid and makes young girls feel hyper aware of their normal period smell, making them feel like they are never clean enough.
Treating periods as something to not talk about with your male friends and partners only makes it worse. The stress of bleeding through your clothes at night because your period surpised you and waking up in a pool of blood on your partner's bed only exists because men are ignorant and society refuses to teach them how to fucking deal with something we uterus-bearing people have to deal with for decades of our lives.
Treating periods as something to be ashamed of is anxiety-inducing. Always being afraid to bleed through your clothes when you're in public even though you took all the necessary precautions is terrifying because we are conditioned to keep it a secret in order to protect the sensitive world from our red shameful sin. The act of buying pads and tampons and other intimate products is only nerve-racking because we are taught that those items are to be kept away from view in order not to disturb other people.
Why are you disturbed by pads and not disturbed by diapers? They are basically the same thing but smaller. Is it because babies' bodily functions are cute and women's aren't? Is it because our vaginas are supposed to smell of fruits and roses and be pretty pink or some crazy shit? Is it because you think that vaginas are something that you can only think about for pleasure? Is it because you only see women as sex opportunities and not as humans who pee, poop, and expell blood and uterine lining out of their vaginas every 28 days? Is it because you think women aren't supposed to be gross?
Don't even get me started on luxury taxes or other idiotic things attached to period products that exist in some countries. As if we can not have ours periods! As if we can wake up and decide I'm not going to bleed today because I don't want to! As if having a period is a luxury and not an inconvenience! Wouldn't that be a dream?
Periods, man! They piss me off, but how people see them angers me even more!
kianamaiart
gummygunk
areudirty
theartofmadeline
turnnoffyourmind
