I am on my Period.
I still get shivers when I say it aloud.
We were at the famous “Comedy Cellar”, a comedy club in New York City, known for always having a good lineup of comedians and surprise appearances. That night, we were lucky to experience some of those surprises. But what stayed with me the most wasn’t the lineup; it was something totally different. Most comedians were male, of course, and their jokes about body parts, sex, etc., were getting plenty of laughs, just as they have for years. Then, the MC called the next act: Amy.
When a female comedian goes on stage, I feel exposed. Their efforts in delivering jokes about body parts or sex are usually awkward, aside from Ali Wong and Pamela Adlon, whom I admire. To me, most other female comedians get nervous, their voices shake, and they lose the audience before even telling the joke. Like so many other industries, it still seems like a very male-dominated industry, it’s considered “cool” when a man tells a joke about sex, but when a woman does, they label the act as “dirty”.
Amy was doing a decent job till she hit the most excruciatingly relatable comic situations I’ve ever experienced. The audience, including myself, felt it. She was so damn right on telling the joke and capturing the feeling. But…
The lady comedian was talking about taking the tampon out of the vagina on the 4th or 5th day of your period, emphasizing how torturing it is. The audience, especially the guys, were making faces, and us women were sitting there in a state of “what the actual fuck?”
I found myself thinking… why have I never talked about this with my girlfriends?
My partner looked at me and said, “You go through this every month, and you don’t tell me?”
I thought I go through a lot of female stuff that I don’t tell you about.
And then I realized, why don’t I?
Why don’t I talk about this painful, horrible situation with anyone, even my girlfriends? If I did, maybe just sharing it would make it more bearable.
This natural monthly event we go through still carries so much shame and embarrassment. I love seeing that the new generation is more vocal about it. But for most of us, there is still shame. Lots of it.
Although the new generation is more vocal about the “flow coming to town,” the world is still moving painfully slow toward making this natural feminine event feel normal. Wimbledon: the most prestigious tennis tournament changed their strict all-white dress code only 2 years ago in 2023 to ease the anxiety, the female players faced all these years. The new rule allows them to wear “solid, mid/dark-coloured undershorts, provided they are no longer than their shorts or skirts”.
This happened 2 years ago.
TWO.
In 2023.
Maybe if we, women, start telling our period stories, the shame around it will fade, or at least become less intense?
I can draft a book about my embarrassing moments during this LOVELY monthly event. Let me share one of them here.
And for those alpha males listening or reading this, please don’t stop. It’s more funny than disgusting.
Several years ago, I was working at one of the most beautiful, chic offices in the city. The boss was known for being super clean and attentive to details, and most of his employees were terrified of him.
During one of my heaviest flows, on a Tuesday afternoon, we were gathered around a gorgeous $50,000 dining table with white dining chairs for our internal office meeting.
When the meeting ended, I stood up and, in that instant, I felt the deepest sense of shame I’d ever experienced. There it was: a blood stain on the pristine white chair. At that exact moment, someone announced that the boss himself was on his way to meet with us and would be there in about seven minutes.
I looked at one of my colleagues who always knew what to do in critical situations. She just looked at me without a word, then lifted the big, heavy chair up like a weightlifting champion and took it straight to the bathroom and started cleaning it. I just don’t know how I left the room, avoiding eye contact with any of my male colleagues. Somehow, the chair got magically cleaned, and my colleague brought it back just as the boss entered the room.
The stories can go on and on, whether we normalize them, tell them as jokes in our gatherings, or keep them locked away in shame as we remain unseen.
This monthly natural habitat has been with us ladies since forever.
The shame started even before getting it. We wonder, “When will it come? Is it early? Is it late? Why did everyone else get it, and I still haven’t yet?”
I got my period later than everyone I knew. When I was almost 15, and by that time all my friends had gotten it, most of them bragged about it. I don’t know what there is to brag about, though: the painful cramps, the mixed fucked up hormones, or the constant fear of leaving a stain on a couch?
But they did brag about it. After all, they’ve become women. There were moments when I didn’t envy them at all. For instance, I remember one of my classmates came to the school bus one morning, and the right side of her face was all red. I fearfully asked her: “What happened?” She said, with pride, “I got my period this morning, so my mom slapped me hard. She said I will be a prettier woman after that slap.”
Ancient myth.
And then I got mine. I got it on the last day of summer before going to high school, and I was so happy. It was:
Before I was introduced to the 3rd-world-country-made pads,
Before having iron deficiency in my body,
Before suffering from the horrible cramps and meeting my new best friend: the hot water bottle. Which is still my best friend.
The other feelings of shame we carry come from men, of course, most of them don’t want to hear the word “period”. When they hear it, the second they hear the word, their face changes like someone just told them their crisp white shirt might get stained. They cringe and they look away with disgust, awkwardness, and discomfort. This kind of behaviour intensifies our shame, but even then, we can laugh at that shame.
Guys, I will rephrase it: some guys have been using this “flaw” of ours, as they call it, when they can’t win an argument. Or if something is bugging them and they are not brave enough to confront us, they will demean us by making assumptions like:
“Are you on your period?” (even when we’re not).
We have all heard this phrase one too many times from guys when we disapprove or disagree with them, or when we use a more assertive tone.
They say that only to bring shame to the conversation when they feel like they lost the battle. They choose to humiliate us.
The next time a guy asks me this dismissive question out of disgrace, I plan on saying, I actually am. What’s your excuse to be nasty?
Sometimes they mask it as concern:
“Are you ok? Is there anything else bugging you?”
We are too polite, sophisticated, and non-confrontational. So, we keep quiet – as they like it. We let them demean us, we feel the shame, and so the cycle continues.
Men do not understand it, they never did, and they never can.
When the hormone mixes shift during our period, our testosterone increases, and our filter thins out. It’s not that we’re harsher — we’re just less willing to fake a smile while swallowing our real thoughts to spare someone’s ego.
But if being on our period makes us bolder in standing up to bullies, then maybe we should be “on our period” all the time.
Period is a unique phenomenon us women experience. Let us embrace it. All of it. The cleansing of our blood, the hormonal imbalance which makes us a bit more direct than usual, the pain that keeps us on the edge, that reminds us life is not always laughter and sunshine. Sometimes it is a little sad and gloomy but can still be beautiful.
And don’t forget
#loveistheanswer
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