Did you know that today, May 28, is World Menstrual Hygiene Day?
that’s right, yuk it up.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t – despite being well into the 21st century, humanity as a whole still has a real issue with the menstrual cycle thing.
Taboos around menstruation affect millions of people worldwide, causing girls to fall behind at school, face social ostracisation, and get sick from using stuff that really shouldn’t be used to make sanitary products.
But a non-profit organisation called Plan International is launching a very 2k17 campaign to tackle this issue: they’re agitating to get a period emoji added to keyboards around the world.
our suggestion doesn’t translate real well to a cute cartoon symbol unfortch
They’re asking people to vote on their favourite emoji – you can pick from a range of cute li’l blood droplets, or go the full uterus or bloodied pad route – so they can present the winning design to the Unicode Consortium in California (they’re the folks in charge of standardising text, including emojis, across digital platforms).
Plan International Australia Deputy CEO Susanne Legena told us:
“Every month, hundreds of millions of women and girls around the world menstruate. The average woman menstruates for 3000 days during her lifetime. It’s a normal biological process, but there is still this strange belief, even here in Australia, that menstruation is secret women’s business. We suffer our periods in silence and hide our tampons and pads away as if they were contraband.“Even though at least 800 million women and girls between the ages of 15 and 49 are menstruating right now, there isn’t a single emoji to represent periods. Isn’t it ridiculous that there’s a long nose goblin emoji and a floppy disc emoji, but no period emoji? We want people to change that by voting for their favourite period emoji design, which we will then present to the Unicode Consortium in California.”
In Australia, we’ve got awesome campaigns like Share The Dignity that aim to support homeless women and women in situations of domestic violence by providing free sanitary items. Plan International is doing much the same thing overseas, educating and supporting women and girls so they’re not held back just because of a couple tablespoons of blood.
The whole thing is super cool and the emojis are all adorable. There’s certainly worse ways to draw attention to the fact that about half the world bleeds on the reg, and that it ain’t – or really shouldn’t be – anywhere near a big deal.
usually, anyway.
Source: Plan International.
Image: Supplied.
