Is it very difficult for us to imaging a situation where young girls are sitting under beautiful, ceremonial umbrellas where their families would pay homage to them and give them gifts when they begin menstruating?
For me, it is really very difficult to even imagine this situation because I belong from a community where a large majority of people (including women) consider their bodies impure during the time of menstruation. They are prohibited from going into temples, mosques, and gurudwaras and they are not supposed to touch any holy book. They cannot touch utensils or even pickles. After all these difficulties and discrimination; women always try to pretend it never happened.
What is perfectly normal becomes a big deal and women quietly acquire low self-esteem for what is natural. Pretending in never happened, doesn't make it go away.
Yurok, a native tribe from the northwest coast of the United States had a group of aristocratic women who saw their periods as a time for purifying themselves. As many women living in close proximity do, this group had their periods at the same time each month. They were on a shared menstrual cycle and did a series of rituals during the cycle that they said was a period of their most heightened spiritual experience.
Among the Ulithi women of the South Pacific, she says, breastfeeding women join menstruating women in huts, along with their children. "It's kind of a party atmosphere." The huts can be a torturous experience for women in some places, but "there are many other variations on the theme," she says.
In some parts of Ghana, West Africa, young girls sit under beautiful, ceremonial umbrellas when they begin menstruating. Girls are celebrated like a queen.
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