Periods make a debut on the red carpet.
You know we ❤️ to talk about periods! Well they’re making headlines right now and we don’t need another reason to keep talking about them.. 🗣️🗣️🗣️
Periods. We talked about the taboo here and then a three-part plastic-free periods feature here. And we want to keep the conversation going because although great strides are being made there is still a long way to go to tackle period poverty and the stigma surrounding menstruation.
But we’re certainly not the only ones talking about it right now.
Period. End of Sentence. a 20 minute short film that was released earlier this year on Netflix received the Oscar for Best Short Documentary. 🎥
The film explores the stigma in India and the Pad Project looking at providing clean and affordable menstrual products while simultaneously empowering the women who work for the enterprise. The film’s slogan is ‘a period should end a sentence, not a girl’s education’ in reaction to a 2015 report finding that “23% of girls drop out of school when they reach puberty in India.”
Director, Rayka Zehtabchi’s hilarious acceptance speech is worth a view:
"I can’t believe a film about menstruation just won an Oscar!”
“The film is the result of a collaboration between a group of California students and their teacher, an Indian production house and a global network of activists.” Reports TIME magazine.
The documentary which was released on Netflix last month is a heart-warming and inspiring watch as women and girls talk about their hopes and dreams, while they establish their menstrual pad production line. We follow Sneha, Rekha and others in India’s Hapur district; “The thing is with patriarchy, it takes time to talk about something related to women. It’s even taking time amongst us women, but we’ll get there.”
So grab your girls and tune in.
And now there’s an emoji for that too.
There’s been more great period news recently too: the #PeriodEmoji is coming soon! Plan UK has been campaigning Unicode Consortium (where official emoji decisions are made!) for a period emoji since 2017. They carried out a survey of UK teenagers and found “48% of girls in the UK aged between 14 and 21 are embarrassed by their periods,” with emojis fast becoming the go-to language of young people and no dedicated emoji for this natural process affecting half the populations, they sought to remedy this. After a few modifications a red droplet of blood has been accepted and is due out this month.
We are thrilled to announce that we are actually getting a #PeriodEmoji!
— PlanInternational UK (@PlanUK) 6 February 2019
It is through your support that we can now celebrate that the @unicode have announced that we will get our first ever #PeriodEmoji in March 2019 🎊
Find out more here ▶https://t.co/dKd4WwEShX pic.twitter.com/CdyG5fapAx