7 iconic pop culture moments depicting menstruation that are big uterus energy

If you’re a menstruator in India, you’ve probably been training to quarantine for this pandemic since you hit puberty. Three days a month, year after year. 

Anyone who has managed to end these practices within their households will tell you that phasing them out has been a journey rather than a single breakthrough moment. 

While the menstruators of any family consistently call out the sexist and unfounded nature of menstrual taboos, the representation of menstruation in cinema and popular culture as well as the swift mainstreaming of this subject has played an equally pivotal role. 

Representation doesn’t have to be quite as menacing as 400 menstrual cups descending upon you from the heavens above (not that that exhibit by Lyla Freechild wasn’t absolutely iconic), but it can look both like a single line in a film or the entire plot of it; a single meme and a whole comic. 

All of them perform equally important functions in the larger effort to get the world to be chummy with our chums.

So, from the sneaky to the leaky, here’s a collection of some of the most memorable and well done period representations on the Indian internet.

Rupi Kaur’s art experiment on Instagram 

The imagery in Indian-Canadian writer Rupi Kaur’s 2015 post was about as subtle as a Bollywood film trying to tell its audience who the villain is by making her character not want kids. 

In an otherwise pale white setting, your gaze is automatically drawn to that rebellious little red stain on her sweatpants, at first making you uncomfortable. But as she lies there perfectly comfortable and secure and unfazed, you realise your discomfort is your shame, not hers. 

She ultimately won a long delete-and-re-upload match against Instagram, which pretty much summed up the ride she took herself and her audience on. Something that seems vulgar and makes you flinch is just the response you are programmed to have by society – but it’s something you can overcome when you confront it. 

Depictions as stark and deliberate as this are important to galvanise the audiences and counter the shame and secrecy attached to menstruation. 

Culture Machine announcing period leave 

In 2017, Mumbai-based media company Culture Machine announced a “First Day of Period” leave policy for the menstruators in the organisation. But it hardly remained an “internal matter” despite it being the good Indian way - as opposed to Rupi Kaur’s intentionally evocative post.

They had likely set out to lead by example, but this move became a talking point on the internet immediately, and drummed up both support and debate. However, despite the polarising effect it had initially, it impelled people to shift their lens and start demanding that the system redesign itself to accommodate the needs of the menstruators within its workforce, rather than expecting menstruators to compromise on the most basic needs to appear capable. 

It specifically emboldened menstruators to demand more from the corporate sector which, as you know, has historically been at the forefront of the struggle for social justice. 

Kiran Gandhi’s bloody victory 

Indian-American musician Kiran Gandhi sunny-deoled her way into marathon and feminist history when she got her period the morning of the 26-mile London marathon that she had been training for for nearly a year. Horror stories about chafing were reason enough for her to decide to not use a pad or tampon. 

As you follow her glorious carefree run on the track, you are transported to a utopian parallel universe where your decision to just go with the flow can simply be determined by comfort and not conditioning. If the image of Kiran holding up a medal with that bloodied survivor crotch smiling into the cameras, revelling in both her athletic and feminist win is not big uterus energy, I don’t know what is.

The RIO ad campaign 

You might be deluded if you believe that all the vagina-themed exhibits, rap songs, films and bloodied bottoms have now prepared audiences to see blood that looks like blood without squirming. The way RIO’s ad campaign was received by audiences was a rude reminder of how little the needle has moved. 

The company’s ads featured a balloon dripping with blood as opposed to the morbid chemical-blue liquid usually used in its place. The Advertising Standards Council of India, the governing body for ads in India, initially ordered it to be taken down after receiving several complaints. People had qualms with the scientific way of showing blood on the grounds of every laughably unscientific period notion you’ve ever heard – that it’s dirty, offensive, impure and too intimate and shameful an occurrence to be discussed or depicted publicly etc. 

While something as basic as periods being treated this way was disappointing – it was decided that the revolution will once again be televised. The ad was ultimately restored with minor edits with most of the red retained.

The “period emoji”

The red drop emoji positioned as the ‘period emoji’ dropped on Android and iOS in 2019, and is also noteworthy - once you manage to look past how full of sh*t it is that we’ve had the poop emoji for almost a decade now. 

Anyhow, Plan International UK and NHS Blood and Transplant wrote to Unicode Consortium, the body that manages emojis worldwide, to include an emoji denoting periods. 

Interestingly, the first choice they had submitted - based on popular vote - was an emoji depicting period underpants. But the second choice - the more ‘subtle’ red drop - came to ultimately be adopted, indicative of the internalised disgust that still exists surrounding more obvious period imagery. 

So, while it might seem like just a drop in the ocean, the subtext of this new fixture on texting apps is clear. On your period? Tell a friend!

Aranya Johar slamming double standards around menstruation 

Slam poetry was having a moment five years ago when some of the first few slam poems went viral and amid these was Aranya Johar’s ode to being an Indian woman. 

She didn’t waste a breath - both literally and figuratively - and opened with a reference to menstruation in ‘A Brown Girl’s Guide to Gender’ which remains one of the most viral and memorable performances in this budding new art form. 

She went on to make a dedicated poem on menstruation as part of a P&G campaign in collaboration with WASH Foundation which was also widely viewed. 

Slam is increasingly being used to drive awareness about scores of fourth wave feminist issues and has been gaining resonance especially among social media users.

Honorary mentions: memes 

While the above images will forever be iconic and empowering, what will perhaps take us all the way are the continuous mentions of menstruation on meme pages and web content in general – not as thought provoking art or plot devices, but as passing references.

Right from pages like @menstrupedia on IG that only post about menstruation to the thousands of other meme, comic and doodle pages – specifically those run by menstruators – that post the stray asanskaari meme every so often. 

If the six instances of representation listed above were designed to make you uncomfortable and embrace menstruation in all its gory glory, the latter are meant to do the opposite and make you comfortable with menstruation, normalise it and reference it without making a thing out of it, which, to be honest, is all this radical movement ultimately seeks to achieve. 

Binjal Shah is a political consultant and journalist. This article was produced under the Project Baala Fellowship, where she is currently a Marketing Fellow. Project Baala is a Delhi-based impact-oriented menstrual health solutions provider working with marginalised communities in India to help them manage their periods better while also providing them livelihood opportunities.