CHENNAI: In the poem ‘Thuyimayin vayathu pathimoondru’ (13 is the age of purity), poet Leena Manimekalai describes her journey of menstruation. The poet writes, Udal endra manthiravathi, vetkayin kanithathai maatha attavanaikul kooti kalika thodangi pathimoondru varudangal aakirathu (It’s been thirteen years since my body, the magician, started adding and subtracting the calculations of desire every month). She reframes body as a magician and menstruation as a constructive component of womanhood.
It is this redefinition that inspired social worker Sabaritha Andhimandarai to view menstruation through a different lens. “The poem inspired me to shed the shame surrounding menstruation and use the blood that oppresses me as a tool that will inspire more people,” says Sabaritha. Thus birthed Menses with Men, a campaign that strives to remove the stigma associated with menstruation by creating awareness across social media and offline work. Sabaritha and Sruthi Anand, who have been involved with the campaign since its inception, talk to CE about their work.
Of resistance and rebellion
Their Instagram handle @menseswithmen, which started in 2022, sums up their activities. “The initial idea was to educate people more about periods, especially men. They might be feminists but won’t know the basics of menstruation, including how it happens, how it is different from person to person, the types of period products, or even things like how to stick a pad. There is a necessity to spread awareness to everyone regarding the intricacies,” shares Sabaritha.
With her friends’ help, Sabaritha ventured out to create artworks from the menstrual blood, painting her resistance to patriarchy. To start with, Sruthi and Sabaritha collected period blood and made paintings. Later, as they shared it with more artists and interested people, there came a bunch of innovations from all over the city. A butterfly flapping its wings, a person wearing an anklet kicking a football, flowers amid a bunch of leaves, the restless seashore, an eerie forest — through all these artworks, the team continues to experiment.
Storing the blood is the challenging part, comments Sabaritha. The team thus paints the same day the blood is collected. “Eight out of 10 people will ask why we are doing this. Usually, we get only one or two positive responses. Most people think that this blood shouldn’t be used for anything else. We are doing artwork on paper but won’t directly display it. For ensuring safety and hygiene, we wrap the original copies with plastic and also photograph the paintings,” shares Sruthi, adding that they sell the photographed copies.
In May 2022, the paintings were displayed at an exhibition conducted by Neelam at Koogai Library. Recently, with an art installation, menstrual art products like paintings and keychains, their work was showcased at Alt+Art Festival Bengaluru. “At Alt+Art, we collaborated with artist Krishna. We had a transparent chair with blood stain as an art installation. People could click photos sitting in that chair. Everybody who visited the festival told us that our work made them to think about the women and the menstruating people they knew,” says Sabaritha.
Since everyone has a different experience of dealing with periods, the team also came up with the idea of sharing people’s experiences of their first period. The podcast Menses With Men on Spotify collects narratives from menstruating people and intends to make the period campaign more accessible to everyone. Sabaritha says, “We collect people’s memories and our friend Gitanjali helps translate the voice notes to English to upload it to Spotify. This serves as an archive of menstruation stories...again an attempt to eliminate the taboo,” adding that people can send their personal experiences to the team through Instagram.
Creating conversations
Beyond the boxes of taboo, menstruation also has close relations with caste, demography, gender, hormone levels and so on. Sabaritha and her team ask everyone to look into these factors. “There are so many restrictions imposed upon menstruating people. In certain households, they aren’t allowed to do the basic things and are asked to stay away during pujas. When we researched more on what was happening in villages, and even in cities, we got a wider perspective.
How people with periods, especially those who don’t identify themselves as women are also something we looked into and understood through the campaign,” shares Sruthi. Sabaritha also mentions that there should be a spotlight on the financial side of menstruation. “How much we spend every year on sanitary napkins or other products and how the Government schemes are helping out people who cannot have access to good quality products must be looked into.”
The team hopes to create more artworks and are inviting collaborations from everyone. In a state which has schemes for providing free sanitary napkins, campaigns like these can impact the society and bring about a positive change. Even though the artwork can be triggering for a lot of people, Sabaritha and Sruthi affirm that it is an attempt simply to create conversations at home.
For buying their products like paintings and pendants, DM @vanaracrafts.