Sreeja Naskar

My Period: Too Vulgar for TV

How can something as natural as menstruation still be considered controversial, shameful, or inappropriate to speak about in public? It’s honestly baffling — maddening even — that in 2025, we still have influential people voicing opinions and expressing discomfort at the public advertisement of sanitary napkins or bras that drag this conversation back into the cave. It becomes public permission to shame menstruating bodies again. When one says she can’t imagine asking her son or father to buy sanitary napkins, what she’s really saying is: a woman’s body is still a secret. A thing to be whispered about. A discomfort to be hidden — even in her own home.

And it’s sad. Because it doesn’t have to be this way. Many say they’re “not modern enough” — but being progressive has nothing to do with being “modern.” Some of the world’s most forward-thinking minds lived in centuries past. The same scientists whose discoveries we benefit from every day weren’t “modern” in the Instagram sense, but their ideas were light years ahead of their time. And that’s the point — progress isn’t about how many gadgets you use, or what clothes you wear. It’s about whether your mind dares to unlearn, ask and shift perspective. And these influential people, despite being part of the cultural elite, couldn’t make that leap.

“I feel ashamed seeing sanitary napkin ads on TV.” Okay. But why? Because here’s the thing: there’s nothing offensive about biology. It’s not pornographic. It’s not obscene. It’s blood. Health. Literally the reason we even exist. Period. You want to worship the concept of motherhood, how can something as natural as menstruation still be considered controversial, shameful, or inappropriate to speak about in public? It’s honestly baffling — maddening even — that in 2025, we still have influential people voicing opinions and expressing discomfort at the public advertisement of sanitary napkins or bras that drag this conversation back into the cave. It becomes public permission to shame menstruating bodies again. When one says she can’t imagine asking her son or father to buy sanitary napkins, what she’s really saying is: a woman’s body is still a secret. A thing to be whispered about. A discomfort to be hidden — even in her own home.

“Why show red to depict periods in ads? Is that necessary?” We show ketchup as red. We show bruises as red. We show lipstick as red. Why the hell not period blood? If we’re old enough to bleed, the world is old enough to see it. So yes, it’s more than necessary. It’s honest and overdue. Because for decades, we’ve had blue liquid poured onto pads in ads — as if our bodies are fountains of aquarium water, not blood. That blue isn’t modesty. It’s society saying: “We’ll tolerate your biology, as long as you don’t make us see it.” But that’s not progress. That’s a pretty lie sold in soft pastels. And it’s that lie that has kept generations of girls stuffing tissues into their underwear, wrapping pads in layers of newspaper like contraband, and bleeding through their uniforms in class because they’re too scared to ask for help. You think red is shocking? Try being thirteen, in pain, ashamed and completely alone in your own body. That’s the shock no one talks about.

And honestly — if you’re okay watching ads for adult diapers, constipation relief, cologne ads where men basically inhale women, and even fairness creams (which are arguably more damaging), but you flinch and spiral at a red spot on a pad ad? Then your problem isn’t with “modesty” but with women’s bodily autonomy.

Also, can we stop pretending that modesty is distributed equally? Let’s take an example: men urinating in public. That is literally illegal, unsanitary, and yet normalized. No one flinches when they see a grown man peeing on the side of the road. There’s no national moral panic about decency there. No celebrity giving interviews on how “ashamed” they feel when that happens in front of their family. So the question isn’t really about shame, is it? It’s about who we allow to be shameful. A man relieving himself in full view of traffic? Just part of the landscape. A girl needing a pad? Too vulgar for TV.

“I could never ask my son or father to buy pads.” That’s sad, honestly. Because love in a family means care without shame. If a father can buy his daughter antibiotics, if a son can go to the pharmacy for cough syrup, why can’t he get pads? The only reason we feel uncomfortable is because we’ve been taught to.

And the thing is, this shame is engineered. People are not born ashamed of their bodies. Shame is taught. It’s handed down, served with lunch and prayers and school dress codes and temple rules and all the silences in between. And these influential people have clearly inherited and now passed along that shame again. When one says she can’t imagine discussing periods with the men in her house, it shows how successfully shame has done its job. And that’s the saddest part — not that she believes it, but that she believes it’s right.

And when people say “some things are private,” sure. Your body is personal. But when silence is used as a muzzle and privacy as a weapon to prevent awareness, that’s manipulation. We don’t get to call something private if we’re also making it taboo. They’re not the same. You want to talk privacy? Fine. But do it across the board. Stop parading erectile dysfunction pills on primetime TV if you can’t handle a whisper of a pad. Stop showing diaper ads for babies peeing if a pad ad is “too much.” You can’t pick and choose when the human body is acceptable.

And here’s the real thing: no one should feel embarrassed by a sanitary pad ad. If you feel something when you see it — that’s not about the product. That’s about you. That’s about what you were taught to believe, what society told you to be ashamed of. And you can unlearn that. We all can. Because there are girls right now who are growing up, bleeding for the first time, confused and scared and made to feel dirty — and they deserve better than inherited discomfort.

Because if we’re going to build a world where women are safe, seen and strong — it starts with letting them be honest. With their bodies. With their pain. With their truth. And that truth will never be blue. It will always, unapologetically, be red.