Monday, 25 February 2019

6 Ways Periods Have Been Used to Send a Social Message


Rupi Kaur, a Canadian artist and poet, decided to make the taboo surrounding menstruation the theme of her college photo project, so she snapped pics featuring herself lying on her side with period-stained pants, pressing a hot water bottle to her uterus, and her period blood on a white tile floor. The pic above, which she posted on Instagram, sparked a huge social media conversation—including an apology from Instagram, who at first removed the photo.
Kaur isn't the first one to use periods and their accouterments as a social message, and she probably won't be the last. Evidence:
Source: @cutequeer96/fotzenueberall Tumblr
Feminist Sanitary Pads
On March 8, a.k.a. International Women's Day, German teen Elonë Kastratia printed feminist messages—like, "Imagine if men were as disgusted with rape as they are with periods"—on sanitary napkins and posted them on traffic signs around her town. She also posted pics of her work on Tumblr and Instagram with the hashtag #feminism. Some people freaked out because...periods! But the response was overwhelmingly supportive.
A Tampon Chandelier
Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos gave the tampon industry a nice sales boost when she created A Noiva ("The Bride"), a 20-foot high chandelier made out of more than 25,000 tampons. Vasconcelos tried to include her artwork in her exhibit at the Palace of Versailles but it was banned for being a "sexual work." Reminder: Tampons = super sexy.
A Tampon-Purchasing Test
Kotex created a social experiment in which a gorgeous woman went up to random dudes and asked them to buy her tampons. Pretty much all of them morphed into freaked-out middle schoolers and ran away crying promptly shot her down.
A Menstrual Blood Exhibit
Chilean artist Carina Úbeda Chacana was labeled everything from “disgusting” to “unique” when she put five years of her own menstrual blood on display on rags hung around an art gallery. The artist said she wanted to create something personal (check) and said “it is simply a work of art, created by me.”
Period Canvases
Artist Lani Beloso's periods are painful and three times heavier than normal thanks to a condition called menorrhagia. Beloso created "The Period Piece," a project in which she created 13 canvases with her own menstrual blood to represent a year of periods.



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