Talks By The Firelight 2.6: Renaissance Period
Aditi Gupta is a social entrepreneur and the co-founder of Menstrupedia, a friendly guide to periods that aims to shatter the myths surrounding menstruation. While studying at the National Institute of Design as a Ford Foundation research scholar, she has researched extensively to understand the lack of menstrual awareness in India and its impact on a girl’s life. She is an International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) alumni. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNBC and BBC.
With a team of dynamic and passionate people with complementary skills, Menstrupedia aims at delivering informative and entertaining content through different media. Join us as we learn more about her incredible journey.
Q. What was your first experience with periods?
Before I got my period for the first time I knew I was going to get it because I met with a severe accident and I had to be hospitalized and an operation had to be performed. So, I was fitted with a catheter and while fitting it my urethra must have been hurt as there was a little bleeding from my urethra and my mother thought that I had got my period. It wasn’t so but she told me that one day you’re going to see blood in your underwear and be prepared for it but she did not tell me anything about what periods were.
A few months after my operation I got my period. I still remember the day my lower abdomen was hurting. My mother made me bathe with two and a half mug of water. This was a tradition we followed at home and this tradition symbolized that the flow would last only for two and a half days. It was not so, I used to bleed heavily just like my mother.
I would say my first experience was quite unpleasant mostly because I was handed over a list of dos’ and don’ts mostly of don’ts and then being told that I cannot tell this to anybody like my father or brother and I grew up in a very educated family. My parents would go the extra mile to make everything convenient for us, especially for me, sometimes beyond their capabilities but when it came to periods everything was very hushed. It was happening everywhere but nobody would talk about it, so this entire day I was just sitting holding my stomach with my mother trying to comfort me with all her love and warmth.
Q. What were some of the myths about periods that you found the most absurd?
I grew up in a semi-urban area and I would say that there were a lot of myths, menstruating woman being impure being the most common one. It was like some kind of unwritten rule, nobody knew why periods happen, what happens during periods but somehow everybody would know that you shouldn’t talk about it, you shouldn’t go to the temple and things like that. The myth or the misconception that boggles my mind are the ones that I found during my research in the cities.
This was shared with me by a 9th standard girl from an international school, the school is quite forward and even the students come from a very forward society, but this girl told me that if she swam during her period she would get pregnant and you have to understand that only a certain class of people have access to swimming in a city like Ahmedabad, so it seemed quite absurd to me but then again, another 9th standard girl from a semi-urban city in Gujarat told me that they were told if the boys were to know that they were on their period they would be raped and these misconceptions were absolutely absurd. Most of my research took place in Ahmedabad where I would talk to all these forward educated families and the girls were made to sleep on a mat when they were on their period.
Q. Who is your specific target audience?
So, our specific target audiences are girls of age 9 and above, we wanted to invest in girls in their formative years because girls are very curious at that age. It is easier and impactful to raise the girls right than change the mind-set of everyone who is already following all the myths and by this, we want to raise a generation of girls and a generation of mothers who won’t raise their daughters with menstrual misconceptions. When they read the Menstrupedia comic or if they are aware of menstruation at the right age, with all the scientific aspects of it, they will not pass the misconceptions and myths to their daughters and that is when this vicious cycle of menstrual unawareness and misconceptions will be broken.
Q. Like girls, boys also undergo changes in their emotions and body during puberty. But society tends to avoid/ignore those changes. What do you feel about that? Do we need more awareness there as well?
There is so much work that has to be done not only to educate girls about menstruation but also boys about puberty. Right now, we are also making a book on boys’ puberty because we need to raise our boys right because what we actually do as a society is that we teach girls to be shameful about their body and we tell our boys to ignore everything, ignore their feelings, ignore their emotions and ignore what other genders feel like. We are making a book on boys’ puberty and then we’ll make a comic book on pregnancy and parenting because there is a lot of misinformation that spreads.
I would say I’m not surprised by the outcome, it’s just, yes, when the business experts come to know about our product, they used to question us on who will buy a book on menstruation. That idea of theirs has completely changed now as we sell a lot of comic books and thousands and thousands of schools are using our books as a part of their curriculum. So, this is just the beginning and there is so much more that needs to be done.
Q. What were the setbacks you faced while making Menstrupedia?
I think one of the setbacks, as we were starting Menstrupedia, was the lack of funding but we were quickly able to overcome it. Whenever we would pitch this idea to a bunch of investors, they would always question us on who would buy a book on menstruation. On the other hand, people were just loving the idea and everyone who would come across our website would share it with two more people or to their family, with their sisters or mother or friends. The crowd was helping us so we turned to them and decided to give crowdfunding a shot.
We wanted to raise 4 Lakhs to make this book and after that, we needed more funding for sustenance and development of more products. I think every single time the love Menstrupedia has received from its users has surpassed our expectations. I believe it’s mostly because of our communication strategy was such that we wanted to project the subject in a positive light, we wanted to change the narrative around menstruation which was all about projecting it in a negative light and I would proudly say that we have been successfully able to do that because of the love and acceptance.
We are very careful when it comes to talking about menstruation because we have made this book culturally sensitive, we don’t want the parents or the teachers to feel threatened by it or to raise any objection on any of the visuals. We ensure that we’re putting across the message and teaching the girls all the essential information and knowledge that they need to know to make themselves educated on their bodies and themselves.
This interview was taken in collaboration with Vedanjali Polaki, Antony Terence and Abhishek Ramachandran.
