Niine Sanitary Napkins seeks to lift taboo from menstruation

“Don’t visit religious places of worship if you are on your periods. Don’t touch the pickle if you are menstruating. You are ‘dirty’ right now, you cannot enter the kitchen”. These are some of the common things most girls across India have heard growing up. While menstruation is a natural body process that women undergo, it is a topic discussed in hushed tones even today, thus contributing to the taboo attached to it. From wrapping sanitary pads in newspapers and brown-paper bags to hiding them in black polythene bags, everything related to menstruation is deemed as the elephant in the room – something that has been turned a blind eye to, for too long. As a result, 71% of girls in India have no knowledge of menstruation before their first period.

Niine Sanitary Napkins is on a mission to change this and strongly believes that it is important for a family to embrace and accept it as a normal occurrence for a girl or a woman in their family. Niine Sanitary Napkins wants to change the conversation by encouraging all parents to stop treating menstruation like a contagious disease or a taboo. It urges everyone to start a dialogue with their families on the topic - #LetsTalkPeriods.

Unlike most Sanitary Napkin advertising, which often lacks an emotional core in favour of a clinical message, Niine Sanitary Napkins seeks to connect with its audience on a deeper level. Following on from the success of last month’s #SurakshaBandhan video campaign, which garnered over a million views on social media, Niine Sanitary Napkins has now launched a moving daughter’s day video campaign.

The film depicts the awkward struggle of a father when he wishes to speak about periods with his daughter.

Speaking about the concept of the film, Creative Director, Ankita Gupta, said: “Our culture has an odd attitude towards menstruation; often, just the mention of a girl’s monthly cycle stops a man in his tracks. With this film we wanted to address the awkward struggle of a father when he wants to have ‘The Talk’ with his girl as she turns into a woman. It’s time for all parents, especially fathers, to take a more active role in educating and creating a comfortable environment for their daughters so that they don’t feel like menstruation is a shameful secret, but something they can talk about as its the course of nature that is totally normal and natural.”

Despite menstruation being an experience lived by as many as 355 million girls and women in India, approximately only 18% of them currently use sanitary napkins with approximately 82%  of women often reverting to unhygienic and unsafe alternatives such as old cloths, rags, hay and even ash. The reasons behind this staggering statistic include decades of archaic attitudes and stigma surrounding menstruation, the lack of choice and accessibility for safe and affordable sanitary products and the limited awareness of the importance of proper menstrual hygiene management; even amongst the 18%, some are still unaware of maintaining proper genital hygiene and the correct usage of the product, often overusing sanitary napkins.

Amar Tulsiyan, Founder of Niine Sanitary Napkins, said “Parents rarely discuss period hygiene with their daughters because 70% of them believe it to be a dirty subject. It is still considered taboo and shameful to talk about periods but we feel the more we talk about it, the better it will be. It is a natural phenomenon and we need to help all girls get their basic right to bleed hygienically. With this video we hope that parents will be encouraged to start a dialogue around menstruation and talk about periods with their daughters.”