Trending:

Women are live tweeting their periods to normalise talking about them

Rosie Conroy
  • We earn a commission for products purchased through some links in this article.

    • With roughly half of the world’s population having to deal with them, it’s a wonder we don’t talk about them more often. Yep, we mean periods.

    With them regularly labelled as being ‘gross’ or ‘disgusting’, women all over Twitter have decided that it’s time for a change. And they’re taking the first steps towards normalising conversations about periods by using the hashtag #TweetYourPeriod.

    All over social media people are live tweeting their time of the month to break down the stigma surrounding menstruation. There was a similar campaign last year that used the hashtag #LiveTweetYourPeriod, which also took off.

    The latest frenzy of tweets have been propelled by filmmaker and writer Risa Pappas who shared all the details of her ‘time of the month’ for all to read. In a blog post she wrote, ‘It has always bothered me that the period is so taboo when it’s not a proclivity, a defect, a perversion or even a problem.

    More: Weirdest ever period products

    ‘It’s a normal, biological process. I’;d like to live in the kind of world where we can speak openly and frankly about our periods, not be shamed for having them.’

    Risa kickstarted the hashtag with a tweet that aimed to ‘demystify’ what having a period is really like. She wrote, ‘the red times have given way to the brown times. No new blood, just old blood that hasn’t spilled yet. Human body is wild.#tweetyourperiod.’

    Later that afternoon she also wrote, ‘Does anyone else run to the bathroom bent in half in the morning, trying not to upend their hourglass? About to.#tweetyourperiod.’

    Others responded in droves with some women writing funny statuses about the emotional aspect of having your periods while others wrote in graphic detail about what they were experiencing.

    https://twitter.com/kayotik22/status/738380301496418304[/twitter]User Sara Irene on Twitter responded to Risa’s tweets with her own, saying: My friend just called me crying about the movie ‘Cloudy with a chance of meatballs because Steve ate the gummy bears….#Tweetyourperiod.'[twitter]https://twitter.com/thejessicadrake/status/738519590418796544

    What do you think of the stigma surrounding periods? Let us know in the comments below