#MenstruationMedia: The depiction of periods in film and television

This year on Menstrual Hygiene Day, Aurat Raaj organized a workshop featuring speakers from diverse backgrounds, dissecting various topics about menstruation. 

During this, our team presented a list of films where menstruation was depicted, analyzing the accuracy and sensitivity of each depiction. From being associated with horror to being poorly used as a comedic tool, periods in media have sometimes further contributed to the stigma that already exists around this taboo topic. 

However, the media holds great power to break the stigma around periods. This is why the depiction of menstruation in the media is so pivotal.

The Bad, and The Monstrous, and sometimes, the Good 

During our presentation, we acknowledged how it is unsurprising that the media industries have been unfair to the topic of menstruation. This is due to the long-standing stigma and archaic, preconceived notions that are attached to periods and menstruating individuals. 

The industry goes to a negative extreme when it ridicules and antagonizes people who are on their period. 

One such example that we discussed is the depiction of menstruation in Modern Family, where the women in the household have synced up and are now experiencing PMS in the most unrealistic, caricaturistic way. As they throw tantrums, the men and boys in the house are inconvenienced. A Huffington Post article describes the girls to be “Monsterating”. 

We discussed how a depiction of periods like this not only creates misconceptions among individuals, but these misconceptions can easily translate into microaggressions such as offensive jokes against menstruating individuals. 

Besides Modern Family, we discussed the depiction of periods in the Netflix original, The Queen's Gambit. In this depiction, the protagonist, Beth, gets her period almost right after she has her first crush, which is indicative of how the first period was possibly just a trope to signal how Beth is growing up. This trope is not uncommon and is sometimes rendered a lazy storytelling tool by critics. 

However, we acknowledge that the show somewhat plays a part in normalizing menstruation.

Speaking of normalizing menstruation, we watched a short film called Third Period during our session. We loved this film! It normalized periods and taught a vital lesson about male allyship without making a big deal out of either.

A film from our part of the world that talks about male allyship is PadMan. We were impressed by the trailer since it was the first piece of media to even mention period poverty. 

However, we realized that PadMan panders to hero-worshipping the man who seeks to end period poverty. If it were a woman doing so instead, would she be similarly lauded for her superheroic social service?

Looking Ahead

Despite that, we were upset that PadMan was banned in Pakistan. There is still a long way to go for the Pakistani media industry to normalize periods, let alone create whole works of fiction dedicated to talking about periods.