People Everywhere Post “Tampon Selfies” to End Taboo on Periods

Image via Twitter

Americans love to talk—about almost everything, all the time. But while people are more than happy to dish about sex and violence, or bang out book-length Amazon reviews of the latest hot dog toaster, there’s one subject that’s banned from nearly every dinner party conversation: menstruation. That’s why a group of people, organized under the hashtag #JustaTampon, started taking selfies of themselves with tampons—then sharing them with the world.

Plan UK and V. Point, who organized the project, hope to harness the energy from their Twitter campaign and use it to fund some of their other social justice missions. Text TAMPON to 7007 and you can donate £3 ($4.64 US dollars) to Plan UK. Money raised from the campaign will then go to fund women’s health work in the developing world. A single donation, Plan UK explained, can fund sanitary napkins for a girl in Uganda for a year. They added, “Donations will help tackle discrimination faced by girls globally, not just around menstrual hygiene but other issues they face including child marriage and female genital mutilation.” The mission behind the campaign is clear: periods aren’t gross, and neither are women’s bodies. It’s not okay to hide anxiety behind an “Ewww.”

#JustaTampon might be one of today’s trending topics, but Plan UK’s plan is just the beginning of a very long, and sometimes uncomfortable, conversation. Only when brave young revolutionaries tear down entrenched tampon privilege, and post menstrual pad selfies, will empires fall, and freedom ring throughout broken lands.