Last month at the 91st Academy Awards, the film, “Period. End of Sentence,” won for best short subject documentary.
Directed by Rayka Zehtabchi, it focuses on “the rural village of Hapur, outside of Delhi, India, (where) women hope to make feminine hygiene supplies easily available and end the stigma surrounding menstruation, which often results in girls having to drop out of school,” the Oscar’s website notes.
After the award was announced, Zehtabchi and producer Melissa Berton took the stage with other members of the crew.
“I can’t believe a film about menstruation just won an Oscar,” Zehtabchi said.
And truthfully, I couldn’t either, which caught me off guard.
Olivia Heersink | Argonaut
It’s not that I personally, find the topic of periods difficult — quite the opposite actually. Menstruation has often been treated as a taboo subject, with both men and women being taught that it’s inappropriate or gross to discuss despite being a natural part of life.
While stigma surrounding periods exists in the United States, it’s even more prevalent across the pond, especially in more religious nations such as India, which is shown in Zehtabchi’s film.
Today reports, “Many women in India use old cloths for sanitary protection, often reusing them. And an estimated 88 percent of women in India sometimes resort to using ashes, newspapers, dried leaves and husk sand to aid absorption, according to a 2015 study on menstruation myths.”
These women are forced to resort to these options — most unsanitary and potentially dangerous — because their culture perpetuates the belief that females are “impure when they are menstruating — (preventing) them from going to school, praying in public places or other parts of daily life.”
“I studied until I reached middle school, but when I started having periods, it became really challenging,” said a young woman featured in the Oscar-winning documentary. “When I got my period, it was very tough for me to change clothes. I had to go somewhere far off.”
Again, people in these countries clearly are affected much more by the stigma around periods than us. But how can we expect to help women in countries such as India if our own nation isn’t comfortable having these conversations?
“A period should end a sentence — not a girl’s education,” Berton said during their acceptance speech Feb. 24.
And I couldn’t agree more. So, let’s start talking about them — all of us.
Documentaries such as Zehtabchi’s are a step in the right direction, but again, these conversations need to be had by more than just the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
No woman should have to feel shame in regard to something she has absolutely no control over, and everyone needs to realize that.
These changes don’t occur overnight. They start small, but they also need to occur while people are young in order to foster an entirely new culture of belief.
Don’t just teach young girls about periods, isolating them from their male peers. Talk to boys, as well.
If we are able to do that, then we can begin to affect changes across the globe in places such as India, or else we are just hypocrites and ignoring the plights of women everywhere.
Periods won’t go away, so why not normalize them — finally.
Olivia Heersink can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @heersinkolivia