ast week I did something a bit daft. I attended a cycle class at the gym on the first day of my period. Clearly I’m a giant masochist and I like to punish myself by bouncing up and down on my tender lady garden when it’s already having a pretty rough time of it. I’m ruthless like that. Anyway half way through a set of gruelling mountain climbs, I experienced one of those period cramps that feels like your uterus is being wrung out like a lumpy sponge, so I gently sat back and slowly pedalled until it passed. The instructor yelled at me to not give up and I shouted back that I wasn’t feeling well and he let it slide.
I was kind of annoyed at myself for not telling him the real reason why I flaked. If I had a sore shoulder I would have told him. Same goes if I’d given blood that day, was in remission for cancer, had a knee replacement or was recovering from the flu. It’s important to be specific when a health professional questions you at the gym but for some reason it seems inappropriate and crass to tell a room full of people that I’ve got my period and I’ve decided that it’s utter bullshit.
To be honest, I’m not that shy about period talk most of the time. I do it often here on the blog and if you’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting me in real life I can swing a conversation from current issues to crotch clams in like 2 seconds. Dead set, I have serious skills. I’m totally fine talking about periods in front of women I know (and tens of thousands of faceless Smaggle readers) but for some reason, I tend to omit any menstruation chatter around strangers because I fear it might make them uncomfortable.
That’s the actual reason why I don’t talk about it in front of strangers, men in particular. Because if they knew that I was slowly and painfully shedding the lining of my uterus to the point where I’m a sweaty, nauseous, pale-faced mess it would make them think I’m gross which is so fucking backward and ridiculous it makes me cranky. No one thinks asthma is gross. No one is whispering to their PE teacher that they can’t participate that day because they have a head cold. No one thinks it’s unsavoury for a woman to say she’s suffering from morning sickness or a man to say he’s broken his toe. No one says ‘Please! I’m eating!’ if a co-worker admits they have a headache at the lunch table. So why all this weird aversion and secrecy to something that’s totally normal and not at all shameful?
I’m not suggesting that we all go around shouting from the roof tops that we’re ‘with flow’ for no apparent reason but as teenagers, girls are taught to tightly guard their menstruation like it’s the secret combination to the family vault that’s full of heirloom emeralds and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. I spent a lot of time in high school trying to get a tampon out of my bag without anyone seeing it and even up until recently, I still held my tampon clutched in a tight fist on the way to a public toilet so no one would know I was menstruating. How bonkers is that?
It’s always such a weird hidden secret. For example I switched to using a menstrual cup about a year ago (you can read all about it here) and I need to boil it for 5 minutes every month after I’ve used it. When I first started using a cup, I’d wait until my partner was occupied before I snuck to the kitchen to ‘boil away my shame’ but he caught me one day and was like ‘What’s that?’. I told him it was my menstrual cup and I was disinfecting it. He didn’t say anything but I suspect his main emotion about the incident was disappointment that I wasn’t cooking him food. His ambivalence pleased me because if he had an issue with it, I’d have an issue with it. I think he also quite likes my vagina and doesn’t want to anger it. Good life choice.
It’s obviously important to be hygienic and respectful with any kind of menstruation paraphernalia – no one wants to see a bloody tampon – but I’m tired of saying I’m generically ‘unwell’ or hiding tampons and pads in custom-made modesty pouches in my handbag in case it falls open on the train and a child is traumatised by the sight of my disgraceful sanitary napkins. From now on if someone asks me what’s wrong they’re going to be given an honest answer and I’m not going to hide my sanitary products on the way to bathroom as if they’re bags of cocaine. Having my period is normal, not gross and it’s totally okay to talk about it because menstruation is not a dirty secret.
[divider type=”standard” width=”1/1″ el_position=”first last”]
What about you? Are you secret squirrel about your period? Or are you like whatevs?
[divider type=”standard” width=”1/1″ el_position=”first last”]
P.S If you want more awesome tips on how to rock at life sign up to the Smaggle newsletter or like Smags on Facebook. I don’t want to you getting all FOMO on me…