Opinion: Let's be honest about periods – we owe it to our daughters

Turning Red by Disney is a welcome glimpse at reality. Photo / Disney+

OPINION:

Disney and Pixar's new film, Turning Red, tackles periods in a refreshingly honest way – a fact of life we shouldn't brush under the carpet.

We have only a few rules in our house, which probably explains why we are in a state of constant, cluttered chaos: we don't hide tampons up our sleeves; we don't snigger when someone talks about mooncups; and finally, we don't ignore the reality of living by a menstrual cycle. And by 'we', I mean 'I', given that I live with my husband and eight-year-old daughter.

It's because of her that I insist on being so open about periods: I do not want her to have the experience I did, when, aged 12, I woke up one morning thinking I was dying (when my mother told me I had 'the curse', and that it would happen from now on until I was an old lady, I can't say I was any more comforted). Almost 30 years later, I – like so many other women – still deal with the strange internalised shame that comes from that hush-hush approach to a very normal process that affects half the population. Is it any wonder so many women experience confidence issues when we are taught from the get-go to be embarrassed by our bodies?

This is why I was thrilled to sit down with my daughter and watch Turning Red, the new Pixar movie that came out earlier this month. Like all the best children's films, it is ostensibly about a girl who turns into a giant red panda every time she gets over-emotional, but is really about something else entirely: namely, the awful hormonal experience that is being a 13-year-old girl. When Meilin first transforms into the panda, she locks herself in the bathroom to hide from her parents. Her mother, believing she must have got her period, drums on the door, brandishing a box of sanitary towels.

My eight-year-old thought this bit was especially hysterical. But mostly she just thought it was a fun movie about a girl who magically turns into a big, cute, cuddly panda. That she sees periods as just a part of life, and nothing to get worked up about is a good thing: and yet, inevitably, the mention of PERIODS has caused uproar in some quarters. A New York pastor with a sizeable following online declared the film "demonic" and commented that "just on the basis of the content being about menstruation and this coming of age, it's not appropriate for children" Never mind that girls as young as eight can get periods; parents have taken to Twitter in their masses to voice their concern about the "inappropriateness" of the puberty storyline. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie review website, scores of users criticised it as "crude" and "totally unrelatable to the general population". I think, by "general population", they meant "men".

Well, as part of the non-general population of biological women, I welcome Turning Red. As a child and teen, there was absolutely nothing on television about this most natural of processes… a natural process that is essentially responsible for every one of us being here, male or female. If anything, it is incredible that it has taken until the year 2022 for a Disney movie to be made about the most relatable of young, female experiences. If men got periods, you can bet your bottom dollar that they would have made a movie about it in the 1930s. Then again, if men got periods, there would be a weekly magazine show on our screens, in the style of Top Gear, where the likes of Jeremy Clarkson discussed the latest in menstruation technology. As it is, here we are in the 21st century, and we've only just invented period pants.

Periods will happen to 50 per cent of the population. One hundred per cent of people who get periods will be children when they first get them. It's scandalous that we don't prepare girls (and boys) for the changes that are part and parcel of life – and that, furthermore, we dismiss them outright. Emotional girls are told that they are 'just being hormonal'. But hormones are the most powerful chemicals known to humankind; I'm not sure why we are expected to shrug off the ones that affect women.

Turning Red is a must-watch for anyone with young children. And if you don't like the subject of periods in your house, then you can go and watch one of the millions and millions of other kids' movies that don't mention them. Happy watching!

Turning Red is available to stream on Disney+.