Menstruation can be uncomfortable and messy, but it's a natural bodily function for about half the human population. Despite this, some people don't handle periods well, to the point of actively shaming and shunning people who are currently menstruating, as well as anything related to the subject.
Period shaming often involves people acting as though a person is disgusting or even scary for getting their period, suggesting that they're only getting upset or are acting 'irrationally' because of PMS, and dismissing or downplaying physical discomfort and pain caused by menstruation. Characters (often men) who don't really understand how female biology works may express some insensitive and inaccurate views around menstruation, such asking a woman why she can't just "hold it in". Some characters will freak out just at the sight or mention of period products like pads and tampons (even if they're unused). Don't expect them to be sympathetic if a character experiences problems like accidental leakage, either.
While it's common to have male characters reacting this way, even female characters who have periods themselves may ostracise or mock other female characters for menstruating, which may be a sign of internalised misogyny. Sometimes, this can be a wide-scale attitude permeating an entire community or culture, which may also result in a lack of education around menstruation due to it being considered taboo. Characters on the receiving end of period shaming may suffer internalised feelings of disgust and shame. However, others will push back against this attitude, especially if other people offer them support; it's become increasingly common for characters (particularly teens) to go through an arc of overcoming and taking a stand against the stigma around menstruation, sometimes inspiring others to reevaluate their opinions and become more understanding.
In more modern times, a character mocking or disparaging someone for menstruating tends to be used to indicate this character is a Jerkass, or at least severely ignorant and immature. Sometimes, this character is used as the butt of jokes, with their squeamishness over menstruation being presented as a ridiculous overreaction and worthy of mockery in and of itself. This is often the source of a lot humour related to the Tampon Run.
May overlap with First Period Panic, with the character's distress being heightened by other people's negative reactions. Also related to Menstrual Menace. An aversion of No Periods, Period, though the concept of periods being something shameful and taboo (or male writers just plain not understanding how they work) is likely a factor in why that trope is so common.
This is definitely Truth in Television, but because it's a sensitive subject, No Real Life Examples, Please!.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Genshiken: In a flashback, Madarame remembers once belittling a crying girl in school by suggesting her distress was merely the result of her period, as well as the subsequent lesson he was taught by one of the other girls.
- Only Yesterday: When the fifth-grade girls first get their periods, the boys laugh at them for it and even flip their skirts to see if they're menstruating. The girls usually chase them off with a broom in response.
Comic Books
- Be Prepared: Blonde-Sasha's underwear get run up the flagpole at camp. It's while she's on her period, so they have visible stains. Brunette-Sasha is implied to have done it in revenge and pettiness after Blonde-Sasha was found making out with Alexei during the last game of Capture the Flag, since they both had a crush but Blonde-Sasha got exceptionally chummy and flirty with him. The two get into a huge fight and stop talking to each other until the last day of camp, when they make up off screen while Vera's packing.
- In Doom Patrol, Rachel Pollack's run established that one of the many causes of Dorothy's dysphoria is the fact that when she started menstruating, the bullies who were already targeting her because of her apelike appearance started beating her up while chanting "Monkey on the rag!" Not helping matters was that her mother subsequently told her to her face that she should've been aborted (which was made worse in hindsight when John Arcudi's run later established that the Spinners were Dorothy's adoptive parents).
- Swamp Thing: This comes up repeatedly in The Curse, as part of its overarching theme about sexism and patriarchy.
- Phoebe recently discovered that her house is built where the "Red Lodge" of the Pennamaquot people stood long ago; due to menstruation being considered unclean by their culture, women who were on their periods had to stay in the cramped darkness of the lodge, not being allowed to even look outside, being fed on the ends of sticks "like lepers" and the gourds they drank from being smashed and buried. Phoebe empathises with the women, as she feels permanently trapped and oppressed by society's sexism.note
- When Phoebe buys pads from the supermarket, she notes that the cashier - an older woman - puts the box into a separate paper bag as if they might contaminate her groceries.
- Phoebe's sexist husband Roy cracks jokes with his equally-unpleasant friend about the Pennamaquot women getting locked up for being "cranky around that time o' the month" and that he doesn't blame the men, right in front of their wives. Phoebe is visibly hurt and angered, though Roy doesn't notice. Roy later finds Phoebe outside, clearly in distress, and starts whining about her not making dinner yet; when Phoebe tells him to leave her alone, he snaps that she's just using PMS as an excuse. And then Phoebe turns into a werewolf.
Fanfiction
- Aftermath of the Games: Sci-Twi has a vision of Midnight Sparkle enticing her to take revenge on those who hurt her, including Fleur de Lis, who bullied her and made fun of her when she got her period for the first time in the school's locker room.
- In Chapter 4 of Umbrellas and Bracelets
by SKayLanphear, Juleka is mocked by a gaggle of boys after accidentally dropping her tampon. In revenge, the girls collect everyone's tampons and throw them at a large gathering of boys. Adrien is accidentally caught in the attack, but doesn't understand what the big deal is.
Film — Live Action
- Carrie (1976) adapts the scene where Carrie gets her first period pretty faithfully; Carrie freaks out, the girls jeer at her in response, throw sanitary products at her and chant "Plug it up" while she cowers and cries for help. When Carrie asks her mother why she didn't tell her about periods, Margaret just slaps her and preaches about menstruation being a punishment for sin, claiming that if Carrie "had remained sinless, the curse of blood would never have come upon her" and that she must pray for forgiveness. Chris plays a cruel prank on Carrie by rigging the prom votes so that Carrie will be crowned prom queen, then dumps a bucket of pig’s blood on her just to remind everybody of her traumatizing shower incident. Needless to say, this was the last straw for Carrie.
- Carrie (2002): Like its source material, Carrie is tormented by her peers when they notice her getting her first period as she showers; she cowers on the floor as the other girls slam against the shower walls chanting “Period!”, until the gym teacher storms in and orders them to Get Out!. In this version the bullies go as far as to vandalise Carrie’s locker, writing “period” on the door and filling it up with tampons, then laughing their heads off when she discovers the ‘prank’. When Carrie asks her mother why she never told her that all girls go through menstruation, her mother seemly soothes her, but then punishes Carrie for “sinning” and locks her up in a closet. Once the prom disaster happens, several people laugh at Carrie being drenched in blood, while others react with horror or shock. Carrie’s fragile mental state leads her to believe they’re all laughing and she unleashes her powers on them.
- Carrie (2013): As in the book, Carrie is mocked by the other girls in her gym class for getting her first period in the school shower and freaking out about it. Given this adaptation has a Setting Update to the 2010s, one of the girls also films the incident and it gets played during prom after Carrie is covered in pig's blood, showing her bleeding and crying on the locker room floor while the other girls laugh and pelt her with sanitary products, adding to her humiliation. A few prom-goers laugh at the video, but others are shown to be appalled and disgusted at the bullies. Unfortunately, Carrie's mental state is so fragile by this point she sees everyone as her tormentors.
- The Craft: Legacy: On her first day at her new school, Lily unknowingly gets her period and leaks blood through her pants onto her chair and the classroom floor. Some students - including Jerk Jock Timmy - notice and loudly mock her for it, and she ends up sobbing in the bathroom while trying to clean herself up. Later, Timmy sexually harasses her by cornering her and whispering that sex helps with period cramps; this gets him telekinetically shoved into some lockers.
- Moonlight (2016) has an interesting case where the stigma against menstruation is leveraged against a cis male character, Chiron. His bully, Terrel, mockingly says that Chiron "forgot to change his tampon" in the middle of class as a way to demean and emasculate him because he's gay.
- In The Northman, Olga is able to use this to her advantage; when Fjolnir tries to rape her, she dissuades him by revealing she's on her period and smearing some of her blood on his face, prompting Fjolnir to call her an "unclean whore" and shove her aside. Amleth, who secretly witnesses the altercation, privately sneers that Fjolnir is fortunate that Olga's is the only blood that will flow under his roof tonight.
- Pitch Black: When it's revealed that Jack is a teenage girl (disguised as a boy for protection while she travels) and is on her period, thus drawing the creatures to their location, Johns gets especially angry and crudely snaps at Jack to "put a cork in it". While the situation is far from ideal and Jack could've mentioned it earlier, it's hardly Jack's fault she got her period at the worst possible time and the other characters are more sympathetic to her, as she's distraught enough already. Even Riddick simply points out the practical problems rather than blaming and insulting Jack for it, underlining that Johns is even worse than Riddick. Johns then suggests using Jack as bait for the creatures to save his own skin.
- Unfriended: One of Laura's classmates took a video of her passed out drunk at a party, showing that she'd both soiled herself and gotten her period. The video was shared around and widely mocked, with bullies cruelly dubbing her "Leaky Laura". She was bullied so relentlessly over the incident she took her own life. It's revealed that Laura's friend Blaire was the one who recorded and posted the video, and also anonymously harassed her online.
Literature
- Carrie:
- One of the earliest scenes involves the title character getting her first period in the school shower and being brutally mocked for it (or for freaking out about it) by the other girls, including the girls flinging tampons and pads at her and chanting at her to "plug it up". It's made worse by the fact the highly sheltered Carrie has no idea what's happening and is utterly terrified that she is bleeding to death. Carrie's mother later locks her into their prayer closet and orders her to pray for forgiveness because she believes menstruation is sinful.
- This trope comes into the climax of the tale, where Chris Hargensen dumps a bucket of pig's blood on Carrie during prom as a reference to the earlier incident. Several people laugh, though it's implied some do so from shock as opposed to finding it genuinely funny, not that it makes much difference to Carrie. It's this that causes Carrie to snap and wreak vengeance upon the town.
- Earth's Children: The Clan consider menstruation to be taboo - they believe that a woman menstruates after her totem has fought and defeated a man's and so she is unclean for a week - and women who are menstruating must isolate themselves and aren't permitted to interact with men. This causes a problem for Ayla when she's living alone and has to tend to Jondalar's wounds; she gets her period but has no choice but to keep being around Jondalar and caring for him because there's no one else to help. Ayla later learns that Jondalar's people have no such taboos about periods and he's quite comfortable discussing it with her, which Ayla initially finds a bit embarassing.
- In the Chinese Yuri Genre web novel Matrilocal Marriage (a.k.a. Ruzhui), Yun An, a Time Traveler in the Alternate Universe Ming China, discovers that her local wife Lin Buxian (whom she had to marry in a Shotgun Wedding while undercover as a man) has never been told what periods even are — instead, her mother and older sisters have wrapped this topic in so much shame for her, Buxian has difficulties talking about it with Yun even after discovering that her spouse is also a woman (whose own periods are suppressed by the same future tech that makes her body appear functionally male for the purpose of blending in).
- Nineteen Minutes: Peter has a brief brush with popularity when the girl who sits in front of him gets her period in class while wearing white jeans and is interrogated about what her blood looked like.
- Used to underscore the misogyny of Tudor England in The Other Boleyn Girl. After giving birth to her second child, Mary bleeds heavily for weeks afterwards. Her sister Anne has to help her bathe and is less than sympathetic, openly calling her "disgusting" because the bathwater gets bloody. Unsurprisingly, this doesn't help Mary's post-partum depression. When Mary is summoned to have sex with the king, she has to shove cotton into her vagina to hide her bleeding; she's told she can't refuse the king but that he'd also be repulsed by her blood.
- The Red Tent: Some of Dinah's extended family is from a culture that views menstruation as "impure", with women who are menstruating being required to isolate themselves until it ends. When Dinah's cousin Tabea gets her first period, she's treated as disgusting and locked up in a dark hut by herself, without even being told what's happening to her. Dinah is horrified by this, as her immediate family's culture views menstruation as something to be celebrated; although the women still have to isolate themselves in the titular Red Tent, this is a time for them to relax, bond and share traditions, more so than something shameful and punishing. They see it as a gift of "periodic renewal" from the goddess Innana.
- Invoked in The Rose of Asturia by Iny Lorentz. When attackers try to rape Ermengarde and Maite, the latter, quick-thinking, tells them that Ermengarde, whose face is hidden, is ugly as sin (actually So Beautiful, It's a Curse), and that she herself is "unclean" since she's menstruating. Later, one of the attackers yells at Maite: "Keep away, you unclean whore!"
Live-Action TV
- Degrassi: Next Class: In "#WorstGiftEver", Shay accidentally leaks a spot of period blood onto her boyfriend's shorts during running practice. Another girl notices and mockingly draws attention to it, commenting that Shay "brought [her] monthly visitor to practice" and asking "Does anyone else smell a butcher shop?" Shay feels extremely embarrassed, but later realises she has nothing to be ashamed of; other girls show her support by running with red paint on their legs to mimic blood. Shay's boyfriend also assures her he isn't upset and just feels bad for her because she was humiliated.
- In the pilot episode of Everything's Gonna Be Okay, Genevieve gets her first period, and her frenemy Tellulah decides to tell the whole class because Genevieve had previously lied to her about getting it earlier, leading to Genevieve getting pelted with tampons.
- In Son of a Critch, among Fox's many acts of bullying was spreading a rumor that one of her classmates, Tina, was on her period.
Web Video
- The Nostalgia Critic: Parodied in Critic's review of Full House, in which he plays the trademark sappy music while acting out a scene where Danny teaches Stephanie about periods and tells her her body is disgusting.
Danny: Stephanie. There's a time in every girl's life when she notices that she's going through some changes. They might seem bizarre or strange to you, but it happens to every young woman. It's called having a period. It's gross, disgusting, and unnatural but it's something that all females go through. You may see your body as something possessed, horrifying, or despicable, and that's because it is. Stop it. Right now.
Western Animation
- Big Mouth: Jessie gets her period at summer camp, but her tampon slips out during swimming practice and is witnessed by the entire camp. The boys are revolted while the other girls delight in the fact it wasn't any of them. Jessie then spends the rest of the summer hanging out with fellow outcast Natalie.
