Ladies, how many times have you asked your friend to check if you’ve stained your pants while menstruating? How many times have you avoided wearing white or any light coloured dresses with the fear of getting stained? How many times have you carried sanitary napkins and tampons tightly wrapped in black polythene or newspaper, like they are radioactive devices? Most likely, all the time.
Even though the advertisements on menstruation try to tell us that a woman is a free bird and can take on the world during periods and even ride horses for that matter, it continues to remain a taboo. We are still shy to openly buy sanitary napkins and tampons. We still manage to get extremely embarrassed when your period blood leaks through your clothes or when you’ve stained your pants. This Yoga instructor recently posted a video on Instagram where she is seen performing yoga while menstruating. How do we know that? Well, Stephanie Gongora is wearing white pants while performing a Yoga asana and you can clearly see that she has stained her pants.
Before you cringe, try to open your mind to the fact she is doing nothing but trying to normalise the fear surrounding period blood and stains in the most unique manner.
Photo: Steph Gongora | Instagram
She captioned it saying, “I am a woman, therefore, I bleed. It’s messy, it’s painful, it’s terrible, & it’s beautiful.
And yet, you wouldn’t know. Because I hide it. I bury things at the bottom of the trash. I breathe, ragged and awkward through the cramps, all the while holding onto this tigtight-lipped painted on smile. Tampons? What are those. We don’t say those words out loud. Hide them. In the back pocket of your purse, in the corner of the bathroom drawer, at the very bottom of your shopping cart (please let me get a female cashier).”
“START talking about it. Educate your daughters. Make them understand that it can be both an inconvenience and a gift, but NEVER something to be ashamed about. Educate your sons so they don’t recoil from the word tampon. So when a girl bleeds through her khaki shorts in third period (pun intended), they don’t perpetuate the cycle of shame and intolerance,” she wrote.