Play

On your period? You better not go to school or any public place. Don’t enter temples. Don’t walk into the kitchen. Don't even touch the pickle. There are so many rules for menstruating women in India, because we treat something that is natural as if it were dirty and wrong. Try purchasing sanitary pads from the chemist: You will get the pads in black plastic bags, something which always needs to be hidden and not to be seen by others.

And sometimes it gets worse. In November 2014, more than 40 women were stripped searched by two female supervisors in a company in Kerala. The reason of mass frisking was to identify that one woman who left a used sanitary napkin in the bathroom. Prompted by this and other incidents, people are starting to speak up about the issue. From the ‘SanitaryPad Message’ campaign by the students of Delhi University and Jamia Millia Islamia or ‘Red Alert: You’ve Got a Napkin’ campaign by the activists of Kerala against the mass frisking.

And it's even making its way into advertising. Whisper's "Touch the Pickle" campaign has won a Cannes Lion award this year in the gender-equality category. The ad shows women being discouraged from pursuing normal daily activities while on their period, including something as simple as touching the jar of pickle found in the kitchens of most Indian homes, because the pickle will supposedly rot. Made by the Mumbai office of BBDO India, the film encourages women to defy tradition and taboos by touching the pickle jar.