Ms. Kaur-ageous!
Rupi Kaur’s menstruation themed picture has been featured as the cover story of “Newsweek” in their April 29TH issue under the title “The Fight to End Period Shaming is Going Mainstream”.
Rupi kaur is a writer and an artist based in Toronto, Canada. As part of a visual rhetoric course at the University of Waterloo, Rupi Kaur has been working on a photo series with her sister Prabh about menstruation. In order to prove a point, Rupi a year back uploaded her image to Instagram which showed her curled up in bed, menstruating with period blood leaking through her gray sweatpants and a stain on the bed. Through this powerful picture, she wanted to tell all the women out there that it’s a common process and that women should not feel ashamed of it.
Unfortunately, Instagram removed her photo twice for violating the site’s “community guidelines”. This action by Instagram provoked a furious Miss Kaur to pen down her thoughts framed in stern words to the site, mocking them for this cowardly act.
After receiving such an intense letter, backed by so many followers and fans, Instagram was not only forced to restore her photos, but even apologized to her personally for the “error” committed by one of the Instagram team members.
Stating a very valid point, Miss Kaur asks, “They allow porn on Instagram, but not periods?”
It speaks volume about the society and the culture in which we are raised, which instill a fear in our minds if exposed to images of a leaking woman or period blood making people uncomfortable.
“I bleed each month to help make humankind a possibility. my womb is home to the divine. a source of life for our species. whether i choose to create or not. but very few times it is seen that way. in older civilizations this blood was considered holy. in some it still is. but a majority of people. societies. and communities shun this natural process. some are more comfortable with the pornification of women. the sexualization of women. the violence and degradation of women than this. they cannot be bothered to express their disgust about all that. but will be angered and bothered by this. we menstruate and they see it as dirty. attention seeking. sick. a burden. as if this process is less natural than breathing. as if it is not a bridge between this universe and the last. as if this process is not love. labour. life. selfless and strikingly beautiful.”, says Ms. Kaur
In addition to Rupi Kaur’s cover story in “Newsweek”, her book ‘Milk and Honey’ has last week found a place in the Canada’s fiction bestseller list compiled by “The Globe and Mail”.
Read Newsweek’s cover story on menstruation stigma here
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