On February 24, 2019, Period. End of Sentence, won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject at the 91st Academy Awards. Iranian-American director Rayka Zehtabhi and Oakwood School teacher Melissa Berton, the visionaries behind this documentary, graciously accepted the award and delivered an insightful speech to the audience. Overwhelmed with emotion during the speech, Zehtabhi stated “I’m not crying because I’m on my period or anything. I can’t believe a film about menstruation just won an Oscar!”
Zehtabhi’s surprised reaction to the Oscar recognition her menstruation film received only affirmed the pressing need to foster dialogue and dismantle the deeply rooted stigma associated with menstruation.
Period. End of Sentence embarked on a journey to address this need by showcasing the menstruation-related experiences of women in the rural Kathikhera village of Hapur, located 60 kilometers outside of India’s national capital Delhi.
Although the Kathikhera village women knew that sanitary pads existed from watching television and seeing them in local stores, cultural and socioeconomic barriers prevented them from ever purchasing the pads. Instead, for many generations, women of the Kathikhera village utilized any discarded rags, cloths, ashes, leaves, and newspapers they could find to absorb the blood from menstruation. The unhygienic and dangerous nature of these items caused the Kathikhera village women to experience severe health problems.
In addition, the constant presence of men and their prying judgmental gaze resulting from their misinformed notions about menstruation constituting a “disease which mostly affects women” only exacerbated the difficulties these women faced. Specifically, it adversely impacted the ability of Kathikhera village women to periodically change the items used to absorb menstruation blood and ultimately barred most of them from completing their education.
For example, the producers interviewed a young girl who described how menstruating forced her to drop out once she reached middle school. She highlighted the challenges she faced in finding nearby private places to change her clothes and stated that the “looks and comments surrounding men ushered at her made her feel ashamed.” This harsh reality only emphasizes the importance of Berton’s closing remarks in her Oscars acceptance speech, which called for action and declared that, “a period should end a sentence, not a girl’s education.”
The extreme discomfort and painful shame these women endured in dealing with menstruation persisted even throughout other scenes of the film. For example, the film opened with a scene of two pre-teenage girls “melting into giggles of embarrassment from having to discuss their period.” In a subsequent scene, a teacher asked a 15-year-old female student to tell the class about menstruation. The female student “stood up completely petrified, remained in stone cold silence for roughly three minutes, and looked like she was about to faint.” Even older women of Kathikhera village echoed similar sentiments when interviewed about menstruation. Elderly women expressed strong resentment towards having to remain in seclusion when on their period and deemed their period “dirty blood and a mysterious illness.”
After witnessing the plight of the Kathikhera village women, The Pad Project, a non-profit organization started by the producers of this film, collaborated with Action India, a grassroots feminist organization, to raise money and provide the village with a low-cost sanitary pad making machine.
What proves to be most astonishing about this pad making machine is the fact that a man pioneered its invention, despite the prevalence of a radical male dominance culture in India. Arunachalam Muruganantham spent nine years of his life inventing this low-cost sanitary pad making machine based on a desire “to create a good sanitary napkin for his wife” and a shocking realization that “a lack of proper sanitary napkins restricted a woman’s mobility, stifled her confidence, and negatively affected her health.”
Muruganantham played an integral role in the Period. End of Sentence narrative by personally going to the Kathikhera village to install the machine and teach the women how to operate it. Initially, the machine instilled both fear and eagerness in the Kathikhera village women and puzzled the Kathikhera village men who thought it served as a “diaper making machine.”
However, as Poorna Jagannathan, an Indian-American producer involved in the film aptly noted, “a simple product can give birth to a revolution.” Installation of pad generating machines ultimately transformed the Kathikhera village women who experienced “crippling shame at their own menstrual cycles” into empowered women who worked and earned money for the very first time in a thriving microeconomy. Within six months, the Kathikhera village women manufactured, marketed, and sold over 18,000 pads under the brand name “Fly.” The women specifically chose the brand name “Fly” to encourage other women to “rise and soar” above the perils of the patriarchy and break the cultural taboos surrounding menstruation.
In addition, installing the sanitary pad generating machines disrupted the traditional public-private divide in the Kathikhera village by granting its women economic independence and purpose beyond domesticity and marriage. For example, Sneha, one of pivotal sanitary pad makers in the film’s narrative and an aspiring police officer, discussed how she planned to use the money she earned from sanitary pad sales to escape marriage and fund her training for joining the Delhi Police. Beaming with positivity and optimism, Sneha articulated her hope of selling “Fly” sanitary pads nationwide and making it easier for women in rural villages to access sanitary pads.
Moreover, giving these women the opportunity to sell sanitary pads facilitated more candid and open conversations about women’s menstrual needs. It served as a concrete first step in dismantling menstruation taboos by providing a forum where it became socially acceptable to discuss it with their female friends and relatives, people who ultimately became their biggest customers.
However, as Suman, one of the sanitary pad makers in the film, aptly acknowledges that “when there’s patriarchy things take time.” Destroying the stigma around menstruation completely requires examining it through an intersectional perspective that accounts for racial and cultural nuances and inspires men to be proactive like Muruganantham and knowledgeable about menstruation being a “natural phenomena” rather than a “disease.”
4 comments:
Anika, thank you for writing about this film! I haven't had the opportunity to watch it but was watching the Oscars when it won so I was able to see the acceptance speech. I agree with the Director of the film - I can't believe that a film about menstruation won an Oscar! As you discussed, and as you see just in the trailer of the film (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-25/film-about-menstruation-won-oscar-period-end-of-sentence/10846738) talking about menstruation is just something that isn't done, whether it's in a rural town in India or in the United States.
I was also happy to see in your description of the film that the producers focused on a sustainable solution to the lack of access to pads and knowledge about menstruation. Often the films and projects that get highlighted in the media are western organizations that bring in resources to developing nations and act as saviors, providing them with crates of pads and then leaving just as quickly as they came. The fact that this film's producers seem to have created a sustainable way to address the inequalities, at least in this small town, is amazing and I am so glad that they were recognized with the Oscar win.
Anika, I really enjoyed reading your breakdown of Period. End of Sentence. While it is disheartening to read about how women are marginalized and shamed for a natural part of female life, it was encouraging to then see the progress being made in the Kathikhera village.
I was initially surprised that the inventor of the pad making machine was a man, but upon further introspection I realized that it almost had to be a man given the gender dynamics and strength of the patriarchy in the Hapur area. This invention and its implications for the women in the Kathikhera village had a profound impact on me. The idea that not only can the women be liberated from the toxic notion that periods are abnormal and dirty, but they are also liberated through the money they can make through the distribution of Fly products is wonderful, especially given it is a product made by Indian women for Indian women (eliminating any “white savior” elements).
Period. End of Sentence. Winning an Oscar makes me hopeful that more light will be shed on the ways periods are used to ostracize women, and, more importantly to me, how this problem can be addressed in a positive, uplifting way.
Anika,
Thank you for writing about this important issue and film. When I was in college I took part in a program that sent participants abroad to work on sustainable development projects. When we got back to the States after our summers abroad, we had a sort of fair where we shared our projects with each other. I was surprised at how most of the projects from India centered around periods and pads. The program was very intentional about emphasizing a project that the community wanted and needed, so that ended up introducing me to how periods are viewed in India. I think it is really great that the women in the Kathikhera village feel so empowered by their pad-making business, and hope that it inspires women in other villages to take on similar projects.
I also think this film is important in terms of normalizing conversations about periods in the United States as well. As much as we want to act like we're so much better because we have multiple brands of pads and tampons, Americans, particularly men are still really weird about periods. Sorry to bring in the Bachelor again, but just recently Colton made comments about periods that show how little he understands this very normal biological phenomenon: https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/colton-underwood-compares-periods-to-s-t-in-your-pants/. Period. End of Sentence.'s Oscar win makes me hopeful that these types of comments happen less and less, both in and outside of the United States.
Thank you for writing such a powerful post about a topic that is infrequently discussed because of the stigma attached to it. The stigma around periods is another way the patriarchy asserts its dominance over the female experience. Because periods are not talked about, availability and access of feminine hygiene products in public and private spheres has been sparse. Almost every woman who has had their period can attest to that one time where their period may have shown up out of nowhere and didn't have sanitary products, so they were left making a makeshift pad out of toilet paper (or was that just me?). It is an uncomfortable and sometimes crippling experience to have access to sanitary products for an hour or two, let alone the entire menstruation cycle. This experience has been magnified for low-income women, homeless women, and women in prisons.
Access to sanitary products should be a human right - it should not be based on wealth or happenstance.
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