My country is afraid when I bleed. Afraid that my blood is a weakness. A liability. A sin. You say I am unclean. Dirty. Disgusting. You do not give me the tools to keep myself healthy when I bleed. You do not provide me the recognition I deserve for bleeding each month. For being courageous enough to embrace the beauty of my menstruation. You do not give my community of strong, powerful menstruators credit for pushing forward. Past the misogyny. Past sexism. Past the bias that prevents us from getting the care we need. I stand here, demanding the equity that we, as menstruators, deserve.
I was entering sixth grade when I first got my period. I had already been through sex education classes where I had been taught how to place a pad on my underwear. Pull off plastic here. Insert sticky side here. Attach wings here. Simple enough, I thought. Later, my mom taught me how to insert a tampon. Again, remove plastic. Insert. Remove the plastic applicator. Done. I did not know the price that I would have to pay for simply having my period. The National Organization of Women writes that “the average woman spends $20 dollars on feminine hygiene products per menstrual cycle.” At that time, I was blissfully unaware of the injustice surrounding menstruation. So, when I got my first period, I was so excited. Initially, I viewed my period as a tremendous gift. I was a woman! I got to embrace my femininity. I felt so special.
I vividly remember telling my best friends at the time that I had gotten my period. They looked at me as if I was insane. Crazy to be excited about the worst time of the month. The time when the moon screws us menstruators over with pain and agony. Not a time to be jubilant. They believed that a period was like a rain cloud that followed a woman around for a couple of days each month. A shadow that shed darkness on the light of womanhood.
I was discouraged. In my mind, my period showed that I was growing into the woman I had always dreamed of becoming. I had taken one more step in my journey to womanhood, which wasn’t something to be condemned or feared. I wished that my friends would be just as excited as I was. That they would celebrate this important time in my life.
Part of this excitement came from my understanding of menstruation. When I was little, my parents and I discussed periods and what it would be like when I finally began to menstruate. I read books on development: what my body would begin to look like and how I would change as I got older. I vividly remember scouring the pages of American Girl’s The Care and Keeping of You: The Body Book For Girls in order to understand the changes that I was experiencing. Why my breasts were growing larger. Why my hips were becoming more curved. Why I was experiencing growing pains. Why I would one day sit on the toilet and notice splotches of red on my toilet paper. This education and growth allowed me to face my period with courage. With an understanding of what was occurring in my body. A lack of education creates fear. Fear means that we no longer embrace the steps of our lifecycle. Periods become taboo. Labeled under names like “Aunt Flo” and “Shark Week.” Though these names are comical, they disguise the fear and shame that circulate around periods.
This is why Florida’s 2023 bill that limits menstrual education is so detrimental. Periods are not something to be ashamed of. However, when we no longer talk about normal things that happen to a tremendous percentage of the population, then these topics become veiled by secrecy and humiliation. Periods become something dirty about all menstruators. Something that limits us. We are placed into a box of what we can and cannot do simply because we shed our uterine lining each month. The same uterine lining that allows us to become pregnant. That allows us to carry a fetus to term and that empowers us to embrace our bodies through the pain of menstruation. Young girls and other menstruators must learn about their periods. They must be allowed to speak about the things happening to them so that they are not afraid of the unknown.
As a young girl, I used to be so afraid to stuff my pads and tampons into my pocket and ask the teacher if I could go to the bathroom. I was paranoid about bleeding through my shorts. In the bathroom, I worried that someone would hear me removing the plastic wrap from my pad or tampon. I would be found out. This fear was not innate. It was learned. Not necessarily directly, but the lack of speech about my period showed me that it was not something to be talked about. It was a part of myself that should be hidden. This was in stark contrast to the excitement that I had felt when I first discovered that I was bleeding. In just a few short months, my entire understanding of menstruation had changed, becoming something that needed to be hidden. Placed in a dark corner of my life, like Pandora’s Box, only to be opened once a month when my period began, and closed tightly a week and a half later.
Well, now I am tired of hiding. I am a menstruator. I am proud. Not dirty or unclean. Not a symbol of feminine weakness. My fellow menstruators and I are brave. We are courageous. We deserve to talk about our menstrual experiences and to share our stories with our children and our community. These are powerful coming-of-age stories that speak to the endurance of a people. So, amidst bills that say we should limit our speech and make ourselves smaller, amidst legislation that states that our blood discloses our delicateness, our fragility, I say: my period is my superpower. I will never stop talking about what is happening to my body. The cycle of life that I have the pleasure of taking part in. Menstruation is nothing to be ashamed of.
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