This is why menstruation should be taken out of the corner of shame

I am a late bloomer. In everything. I got breasts late, started kissing late (yes, that ‘one very terrible thing’ – as my Christian grandfather called it – I only did when I was in my twenties) and my first menstruation also took a long, long time to arrive.

I was particularly looking forward to it. It seemed like fun. Exchanging cozy sanitary pads in those cute wrappers with friends and always having an excuse to skip that boring gym class and run into the city for a bit. “You seem like a medical miracle,” even my gym teacher said to my friend M. “As often as you are on your period, three times a month. Wow.”

My other friend J had already experienced ‘it’ in elementary school. She had no idea what it was and she couldn't ask her mother because she had passed away a year earlier. During her first period, she just muddled through a bit, but when she found blood in her underwear a month later, she went to her father. The poor man had all sorts of sanitary pads at home for a year. Ready for the big day, but he also hadn't thought she would be dealing with this so early.

Your menstruation. Not something we always look forward to with cheers, but definitely something that binds us women. And the best excuse to eat chocolate, to hysterically clean your house, and to snap at your loved ones without consequences. I remember that time I had just started as editor-in-chief of Marie Claire. I had lost three kilos in a month and was thrown into a volcano of busyness. In week 3, I had to (or had to, had to) go to Milan Fashion Week. Sounds fun, it is, but I boarded the plane while on the phone and was overwhelmed with stress. I also got terrible stomach pain, which I really couldn't handle. Once in the restrooms at Linate airport, I saw the reason. Out of pure panic, I had gotten my period. Or had I forgotten that it was ‘my turn’. Of course, I had nothing with me. I always trip over tampons and sanitary pads, except when I need them. Then they are nowhere to be found. I fumbled, yes sorry, some toilet paper into my underwear and opened the door. Who did I see there? Fashion friend Fiona Hering, who had the ‘supplies’ with her. In the category of lucky moments.

In our editorial restroom, there is a Chanel bag filled with sanitary pads and tampons, because with a team full of women, there is always someone on their period. We share the hilarious stories. About colleague J who accidentally had sex and forgot she still had a tampon in. Or about colleague M who was a lesbian and didn't want to have sex during their periods. We understood very little of that.

Things like that. The moral of this story: being on your period is a part of our lives. From about your twelfth to your fiftieth, so quite a, sorry, period. I notice that in movies or books, the subject is almost never discussed. As if it doesn't exist, while it is indeed a monthly factor in our lives. Something that binds us women, something that indicates your fertility (unfortunately not always correctly, because you can of course menstruate and be infertile) and last but not least: the very best excuse to eat that whole Magnum Pint. Alone. In America, they say menstruation is ‘bloodnormal’ and I fully agree with that.