Tampons, maxi-pads and menstruation. By just saying that, I probably lost more than half of you.
The stigma and the universal disgust with anything related to periods is pervasive in our culture. For proof, just look at any tampon advertisement. It’s almost always implied that unless you buy these super anti-gravity, anti-leak perfumed wads of cotton, you should probably hide under a rock until your period is over.
This attitude toward menstruation is exactly what teenage women Andrea Gonzales and Sophie Hauser were trying to combat when they created the video game “Tampon Run.”
Gonzales, 16, and Hauser, 17, met at a Girls Who Code program this summer and for their final project, they came up with “Tampon Run.” Forgoing guns and graphic violence, “Tampon Run” uses tampons as the main weapon and element of the gameplay.
After a summer full of the misogyny-fueled #GamerGate, “Tampon Run” is a warm invitation to get women, specifically young women, to join the gaming world. More importantly, the game’s intention to get rid of the negative perception of periods makes it a feminist’s dream.
These negative perceptions about a woman’s natural bodily function might not stop with “Tampon Run,” but this is a great way to start a dialogue about why we’re so terrified about this monthly visitor.
In some cultures, women are forced to lie in huts and be separated from the non-bleeding population for the duration of their period. In modern Western culture, both men and women complain about “how women get” when they’re menstruating. In many cultures, sex during menstruation is seemingly forbidden or off limits.
What’s totally bizarre about these universal fears of menstruating women is how illogical they are.
As previously mentioned, menstruation is a natural bodily function. Periods mean that women are ready and available to bear children, which brings me to my second point.
In a majority of cultures and scientific theories, men are attracted to the women that will bear them a multitude of healthy children. In order to have these children, women must regularly menstruate to make way for a man’s sperm to reach her ovaries.
So why are we so grossed out by periods? Shouldn’t men be more attracted to women? Our bodies are practically shouting, “Hey! I’m ready for procreation! Take me now!”
In addition, period blood isn’t even as gross as one might think. With a quick Google search, one can see that there aren’t any nasty toxins in the blood, and it’s no more dangerous than blood coming from someone’s nose.
What a lot of this boils down to is making women feel like prisoners in their already oppressed bodies. It gives the patriarchal society a right to declare women unfit for every activity, from intercourse to sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office. Any time a woman is even slightly close to becoming president, we break out those old jokes about how her PMS will make her declare war once a month.
And you’re likely to see “feminine product” brands also capitalizing on this stigma. Commercials for tampons and maxi-pads brag about how, if you use their product, no one will ever guess that you’re on your period.
There are also scenes with girls riding horses and playing soccer, but I’m not sure what that’s supposed to imply.
All of this shows why “Tampon Run” was such a necessary innovation. Two young women realized they shouldn’t be ashamed of something as natural as feces or burps, which are perfectly fine topics to discuss if you’re male.
One of the game’s creators told TIME, “It seemed so silly to us that we have all these video games where you can shoot people and kill people … but none of us can talk about something so normal like menstruation.”
The game normalizes something so important to menstruating women — tampons. Although using it as a weapon might seem against the creators’ intentions, many people can barely get themselves to utter the word.
Needless to say, we need to end this stigma. Period.
SidneyRose Reynen is a 19-year-old film and media arts and art history sophomore from New Orleans, Louisiana. You can reach her on Twitter @SidneyRose_TDR.