Bloody brilliant.
“When I’m on my period, all I want to do is curl up in my onesie, put on soppy movies and eat my weight in chocolate. Most days I rarely want to talk to anyone, let only talk about the very thing that’s causing my unpredictable moods and bleeding vagina.”
It’s this stigma and attitude that continues to make something as natural as a period remain a taboo – and why the #LiveTweetYourPeriod movement is a bloody great idea.
RELATED: This is how much your period will cost you in your lifetime
The hashtag encourages women to share and talk about their period in the open, from hilarious memes to the uncomfortable realities of that time of the month.
It’s been around since April, but has recently picked up steam again thanks to an article by Jenna Wortham in the New York Times.
“On the surface, this seems like little more than communal commiseration, but to me, it felt like something bigger: a micro-protest against a modern paradox,” she wrote. (Post continues after gallery.)
“Social media is saturated with images of hypersexualised women, but these are rarely considered as scandalous as content that dares to reveal how a woman’s body actually functions.”
Wortham makes a valid argument. Put up highly sexualised pictures of women and no-one will bat an eyelid, but dare to post a picture that even eludes to tampons, pads or the realities of menstruation and people get easily offended.
RELATED: We’ve just busted one of the biggest period myths of all-time. Period
Case in point: remember Rupi Kaur’s now well known Instagram picture of a fully clothes woman with what looked like a blood stain on her paints? It was flagged objectionable and deleted by Instagram twice – yet Kaur was not surprised.
In her repost, she captioned the image, “Their patriarchy is leaking.”
And while live tweeting your period may seem trivial or pointless, it’s already making a difference to some users, particularly by those are used to feeling ashamed or even guilty for something they don’t really have any control over.
As you may have guessed, I am one of those women. I wouldn’t call myself a prude, but I go red at even the thought of talking about my period and start blushing like a 13 year-old girl, particularly with men.
It’s a feeling of shame, that it’s an almost “dirty” topic that’s not appropriate to discuss in public. The idea of putting it out there publicly in a tweet makes me even more nervous.
RELATED: How much blood do you really lose during a period?
But then I see tweets like this.
And this.
And I think how accurate, funny and powerful they are at bringing women together and normalising the whole thing. How I can’t expect other people’s perception to change unless my own does too?
RELATED: Do I need to take the sugar pills on my Pill packet?
So I’m joining in and think you should too.
And you can even do it with one hand holding a water bottle on your stomach cramps. Win.
If you want to know how much blood you lose on your period – which you do – watch this video too.
Do you think it’s a good idea? What would you say for #LiveTweetYourPeriod?