Unveiling and dismantling the taboos around menstruation through film

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.”