Читать книгу Period. - Emma Barnett - Страница 19

‘What if I forget to flush the toilet and there’s a tampon in there? And not like a cute, oh, it’s a tampon, it’s the last day. I’m talking like a crime scene tampon. Like Red Wedding, Game of Thrones, like a Quentin Tarantino Django, like, a real motherfucker of a tampon.’

Amy Schumer, Trainwreck

It’s time to focus on the group of people who are nearly as good as the men at period shaming.

Women.

It definitely isn’t our fault the way society is set up to be only horrified or titillated by women’s bodies. Nor is it our fault that we are the ones tasked with physically producing the next generation (the very reason for periods in the first place) – a role which tests our bodies and minds in all sorts of unacknowledged and undervalued ways.

But when you live and breathe in the bubble which normalises such attitudes, you internalise them and make them your own. Which means women end up feeling ashamed of a perfectly natural bodily process, often ignoring their bodies’ cries for help and, in turn, shaming other women too.

Remember the confession booth we built for my radio show? I’ll never forget the softly spoken woman in her twenties who poured this truth into my ear: