I grew up in a household where my two elder brothers would rub my tummy, carry me around and pamper me during the first two days of periods. It takes time for a young girl to get used to the idea that pain and discomfort accompanied with periods is here to stay.
May be that’s why I had decided that this whole Kiran Gandhi running London-Marathon-on-her-first-day-of-her-periods-without-wearing-a-tampon/pad wasn’t worth writing about. It was like ok she did it to feel liberated. raise awareness or whatever her reasons might have been. I personally might or might not agree with what she did. As a runner, I know I would chafe badly if I was dripping and running constantly for 5 hours in that state.
Then I read the satirical article “The actual winner has a message for the menstruating woman Kiran Gandhi”, by a humorist. The article comes across as deliberately cynical and I felt rightly so. Excerpt from the article
“Gandhi stained her pants in public. I ran 26.2 miles in 2 hours and 23 minutes. That’s faster than most people could go on a bike. I called People Magazine asking for a feature, I even catered to them saying I’d talk about my fitness routine. But they just said, “Are you the tampon girl?” and I said, “No I’m the winner.” But they had already hung up on me.”
That’s when it struck me, we have been giving too much importance to the act itself rather than the issue. By saying “it’s her choice”, most of us are using it as an opportunity to become “bigger” and prove it to the world that we are “feminist”. It’s a cool thing to say in today’s world, isn’t it?
To begin with, when the content went viral, we all started talking about whether what she did was “right” or “wrong” and found a ground to judge others basis whether they found it disgusting or not.
And then later when we read the satirical piece (without even realising it’s a satirical piece), we took the debate to a different direction.
Honestly speaking, do we really care about the real issue? Or are we just jumping to conclusions based on whatever “trend worthy” content is being thrown at us without even going deep in to the matter. Our not having an opinion (that too a quick-on-your-feet kinds) makes us seem like we are not in the know and then we move on to the next big story without even sparing the last one another thought.
Also, are we using “it’s my choice” as an excuse to not think and for sake of our convenience to end debates which can or should be otherwise objective?
3 Comments
“It is her choice” is a valid argument ( until and unless someone is breaking the law). Will i do it, does it offend me, should i discuss it, should i label it right or wrong— that is “my choice, my opinion.”
Good one! Especially the part that says we tend to react to trend worthy topics.. give our 2 cents and move on to the next topic! Seldom do opinions originate as the result of thought provoking exercise.. its like 100 people said bad and only 10 said good.. so I should go with ‘bad’. Move to the next topic.. I happened to read her self written post just a few minutes ago and I agree with the chaffing part. She chose to run coz she trained for it and so she did. That’s all there is to it. She prioritised what she felt and was true to her feelings rather than considering what the rest of the world had to say. I respect that. Earlier I thought it was unhygienic. . But in retrospect I think the images look unhygienic because of the ‘ bleeding stains’. Marathoners can hardly be expected to be hygienic while running for a simple reason that they are covered in sweat.. May be urine too.. This lady dripped blood too.. so I take my judgement back. What she did, she chose to do it for the betterment of her body and I am no one to judge that
Two things.
Firstly, in today’s age it is not uncommon to see people resorting to gimmicks to achieve their fifteen seconds of fame. So, when it comes to any such deed, especially a taboo/ controversial one, we need to gauge the intention of the doer. If we laud laud an Arunachalam Muruganantham for being the first man to wear a pad, we should not shy away from extolling a girl who ran a marathon without her tampon. Impractical, both of them, but passionate enough to brave jeers.
Next, all this Feminist hoo- haa is irritating. We want #HeForShe, what about #SheForHe or better still #SheForShe ?