Knowledge is Power
Everyone remembers their first period.
Mine came the morning of an important cheerleading competition where I had to fly wearing a pad in my bloomers because I didn't have time to learn how to properly insert a tampon. I remember the spotter shouting encouraging words to me over the music and looking down just praying he couldn't see anything.
It's wild to think about how older generations like our parents were so secretive and shameful when it came to this topic. Since it's spooky season, I've been making my way through a few horror classics I'd not yet seen and recently watched 1976's Carrie for the first time.
The opening scene marks the arrival of her period and is hard to take seriously because a) Carrie is met by her peers laughing and flinging tampons at her and b) she literally thinks she's dying because her mom never had the period convo with her. Make it make sense.
Carrie's religious mother is the obvious villain here, but many of the world’s major religions claim periods to be dirty and approach the topic as taboo.
Vogue recently made note that until the 1970s you couldn’t advertise anything related to periods on television and in the years after that menstrual products were always presented with a blue liquid poured on maxi pads to show off their absorbency, but more to come on that next week...
Flash forward to today and we've come a long way.
There's Cher in 1995's Clueless using her period as an excuse for her tardiness (which, respect!), Kiran Gandhi, who ran the 2015 London Marathon free bleeding, which made people lose their minds, and then there's me, writing this little substack in hopes it helps just one person not yet diagnosed with our little under researched, invisible disease - endometriosis.
While there has been a ton of progress made since Carrie's first period, just this year Florida introduced legislation dubbed the “Don’t Say Period” bill that would limit discussion of menstruation in schools.
Enter Periodical. A new eye-opening documentary from XTR and MSNBC Films that examines science, politics, and mystery of the menstrual cycle (from first period to last), through the experiences of doctors, athletes, movie stars, journalists, activists, and everyday people.
Since it dropped at SXSW, Texas has taken down the Tampon Tax and the film currently holds a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Knowledge is power and hopefully this is the beginning of demystifying the stigma and having more conversations surrounding menstrual education in schools like Carrie's.
Periodical premieres in LA on October 14th.
