Menstruation for Dummies (read: Boys)

 

I feel a sharp pain shooting through my lower abdomen, and I want to murder a certain fellow passenger in the bus, and I also want to devour a mountain of spicy, cardiac arrest-level greasy noodles from the canteen as soon as I get to work. While the rest of the points may sound like PMS symptoms, I really do have a valid reason for killing that co-passenger. Why would someone want to sit right next to me when there are ten other vacant ‘ladies’ seats’ in the bus?

My uterus is all set to shed its lining and do its monthly job; I can feel it in my gut (literally).

Unlike what these advertisers make everyone believe, no girl wants to be dressed in white from head to toe and perform completely unnecessary high jumps while she is bleeding. That, and, we don’t really bleed blue. Although we love saying that while we’re cheering for our cricket team, cricket and periods are totally unrelated concepts – one is all about hitting the target while the other is an outcome of having missed one.

So, what are periods really?

Females are blessed with this divine ability to conceive, carry, and deliver (smelly yet cute-looking) babies. It’s not easy and is definitely not just a 9-month long process. This typically 32-35 year-long process begins with menarche i.e. the onset of menstruation and ends at menopause – the end of a woman’s reproductive journey. Every month, our body sheds a lining of the uterus (womb). This ‘menstrual blood’ which primarily consists of blood and tissues from the uterine lining is flushed out of the body via the cervix and finally through the vagina. 

Menarche, menstruation and menopause – it can’t simply be a coincidence that all painful experiences in a woman’s life begin with ‘men’, can it?

I fail to understand why didn’t God want us to have a happy period? After what feels like carrying a waterfall in our pants for 4-5 days, an intra-abdominal football match is the last thing a woman wants to feel. While these period cramps are a normal thing for most of us, there’s a condition known as ‘dysmenorrhea’ which is a medical term for extremely painful periods.

Have you ever watched a Bollywood heroine throw her umbrella away and encourage the hero to follow her in the rain more often than the hero doing the same? That’s because all girls are accustomed to being comfortable and at ease with being drenched since the age of 14 (or 13, or 12, or sometimes even 9).

Coming back to the title of this post, let me clarify why do boys need to be spoken about menstruation – it’s because someone told them that this is a “woman’s problem”. How can a phenomenon that forms a crucial aspect of turning a man into a father be called a problem? And that too, a “woman’s problem” alone? A lot has been said and done to eradicate misconceptions about menstruation through ad campaigns and movies, but that’s not enough.

“Allowing” women to “touch the pickle” is not enough; granting paid leaves for women on the first day of their period is not enough; posing with a pad for a promotional challenge is not enough. All this is good, but it’s not even close to meeting the basic requirement i.e. normalization of periods.

Women asking for pads in hushed tones is not normal, so is the shopkeeper’s attempt to avoid embarrassment by wrapping a pack of sanitary napkins in layers of newspapers and finally, a black polythene. The shame attached to this topic is not normal and this very abnormality, I believe, is what stops women from enjoying this wonderful process that nature has honoured us with.

Women bear all the discomfort, all the pain and even bear your child when the time comes. The least boys can do is treat menstruation as a very normal biological occurring – nothing less; nothing more. Talk about it, understand when a girl around you says “It’s “that time of the month”, let’s just chill at home today” and for God’s sake, DO NOT, I repeat, do not blame her irritation on her PMS on days when she’s not on her period! 

The colour was, is, and will always be red.; it’s time we stop fooling ourselves with that blue. Also, PMS is not a state of mind. We truly are capable of feeling murderous, cranky and hungry at the same time; blame it on the hormones!