“Viewpoints” is a place on Chapelboro where local people are encouraged to share their unique perspectives on issues affecting our community. If you’d like to contribute a column on an issue you’re concerned about, interesting happenings around town, reflections on local life — or anything else — send a submission to viewpoints@wchl.com.

 

Period Poverty Awareness

 

A perspective from Scarlet Levy

 

Our community is filled with people who are AFAB (assigned female at birth), like myself. This group of people includes women/girls, trans men/trans boys, and nonbinary, genderfluid, and non-gender conforming individuals. We are a very wide spectrum of people, however, we are all tied together and connected in one way: we all have, had, or will have periods. With these periods or a lack of periods, comes extremely bad stigma and stereotypes surrounding our bodies, our abilities, and even our femininity, and most of the time come from people who can not even relate to what we have to go through. Furthermore, adolescents in schools are not always supported, and many people are unable to afford feminine products. We, as a people, need to support them by raising awareness about the taboo around menstruation, and by working towards a future where period products are cheap and accessible to everyone.

The article ‘Addressing Taboo Topics: Period Poverty in North Carolina’, states: “In the U.S., 24.6 million people with periods can’t afford period products.” Women, and people with periods, are struggling to buy feminine products because of period poverty. The authorities, mainly men, are taxing these products as luxury products when in reality, they are just necessities for people who menstruate.  Now, I know that toilet paper, toothbrushes, soap, and other hygiene products aren’t free and/or all that cheap, why should feminine products be? Well, think about this: Individuals all over the world are bleeding for about a week or two each month. According to ‘Yahoo News’, this means that they spend about $200-$300 on period products per year. In the US, a person who works for a minimum wage makes about $15,000 per year, and that means they spend about 2% of their income on feminine hygiene products alone. We need to work to lower the price of period products.

This is not the only issue that people with periods face. My school has many students who struggle with unfairness, and when they ask to go to the restroom, they are told they need to wait until the first fifteen minutes of class are over before they can do so, or they should have gone earlier when they needed to change a pad or tampon. After this, if the student asks a second time, that is if they are not already feeling too embarrassed and ashamed to ask again, the teacher may say yes, but most likely not before they make a big thing about it and act annoyed. Also, the public school bathrooms in the CHCCS district are not well accommodated for adolescents. The pad machines in the girl’s bathrooms are never full, and this means that if a girl gets her period unexpectedly, she will have to walk all the way to a teacher or to student services to get it. Similarly, think about the trans boys. If they are on their periods, where are they going to put their used pads? There should be better/more accessible resources for adolescents at school, and kids need more support at school from teachers and people of authority.

In conclusion, we, as a society, need to eradicate the stigmas surrounding menstruation, as well as advocate for the individuals who are struggling to get the proper products and support regarding those mentioned periods. The only way we can do this is to build up a strong community to help make our schools and our society more accommodating for people who menstruate and to spread awareness of the fact that your period is not something to be embarrassed or ashamed about, but something to embrace. If we do not make these changes quickly and steadily, blood will rain.

Scarlet Levy 

Mcdougle Middle School

7th Grade

Age 13  


“Viewpoints” on Chapelboro is a recurring series of community-submitted opinion columns. All thoughts, ideas, opinions and expressions in this series are those of the author, and do not reflect the work or reporting of 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com.