Why Should A Woman Hide Her Dignity ?

                     Cloth pad from Rutu enterprises 

Shared thoughts on days during menstruation from combined male-female perspective.

As a research scholar in life sciences, I was taught to trace hormonal pathways, decode endocrine feedback loops, and examine human physiology through the lens of clinical objectivity. However, no curriculum has addressed the far more insidious burden that many women carry within the confines of their reproductive system and embedded deep within their psyche. One of the most overlooked of these burdens is the cultural discomfort surrounding something as routine and necessary to carry or dispose of menstrual products. Instead, what should be an ordinary act is steeped in surveillance, shame, and silence to reveal in a society that pathologizes female biology and, in doing so, erodes mental well-being in quiet, persistent ways.

I have seen women in hospitals, classrooms, and homes wrap pads in layers of paper, shove them into opaque bags, and time their movement to ensure no one notices. The act itself is painful and the anticipation of being seen, judged, or shamed inflicts damage. A pad slipping out of the handbag becomes a moment of panic. A tampon held in a tissue while hunting for a dustbin is handled like toxic waste. This constant vigilance, the need to hide, to be discreet, and to avoid eye contact chips away from a person’s self-worth. Over time, it plants the idea that something about one’s bodies is inappropriate, unclean, or shameful.

What begins as a cultural habit is slowly embedded into the psyche. Repeated often, shame begins to mutate. Not only does it stay confined to the product but it also attaches itself to the body and to the self. Many women grow up internalizing the belief that they must not be seen in their bleeding, bloated, and vulnerable states. They must maintain composure, cleanliness, and silence, no matter how severe the cramps or how heavy the flow is. The result is emotional repression, which is disguised as resilience.

Where the damage deepens, when a woman is repeatedly told that her natural processes must be hidden, she begins to detach from her own sensuality. Menstruation is closely linked to fertility, arousal, pleasure, and the broader arc of womanhood. However, when this monthly rhythm is met with disgust or discomfort, especially from men, it inadvertently sends the message that their body, in its most powerful, cyclical form, is not welcome. That it is best managed quietly away from sight, and returned to the male gaze only once it has been "cleaned up."

This has had devastating consequences. Some women, especially those raised in environments where menstruation is treated with disdain or fear, begin to withdraw from their own bodies and also from intimacy. Sexuality, which should be a space of connection, becomes an area of confusion, guilt, or numbness. I have met women in clinics and therapy rooms who describe themselves as emotionally distant, “asexual by conditioning,” or are unable to enjoy intimacy because they feel like a performance meant to please, but never as a space meant to include.

Worse still, some women begin to resent men because of individual experiences, and also because of accumulated generational silence. They remember the boys who laughed during the health class, the brothers who recoiled at the word “period,” and the male colleagues who looked away when a pad dropped. Are these grand acts of misogyny? No, they are micro-abandonment. Small, frequent moments when empathy was absent. Where understanding was replaced with awkwardness or ridicule.

In addition, resentment such as shame is cumulative. It builds layer-by-layer until it becomes difficult for men to engage emotionally or physically. For some, it manifests as anger—justified, simmering, and often misinterpreted as bitterness. For others, it calcifies as a detachment. They stopped expecting their understanding. They stop explaining. They stop hoping. Moreover, emotional distance, once formed, is difficult to bridge.

It is often overlooked that these wounds are caused by the absence of language in a society that refuses to look for menstruation in the eye. The damage is emotional, relational, and, in many cases, spiritual.

Imagine what it does to a person to grow up believing that their biology is a burden. Imagine what it does to intimacy when a woman flinches at her partner’s touch because she has been taught to hide her rhythms. Imagine what it does to mental health; when carrying a pad feels like carrying a secret no one is supposed to know.

If empathy is applied as rigorously as science, we might begin to see the full picture. Stigma surrounding menstrual products is never a minor issue. It is quiet violence, a slow erosion of confidence, sexuality, and trust.

To hide a pad in the fold of a dupatta or tuck it beneath a book is about surviving a world that has long demanded invisibility from menstruating bodies. These small, repeated gestures of concealment shape just how women navigate public spaces and also how they internalize their worth and bodily autonomy. The very act of managing menstruation becomes a performance of shame and, a constant reminder that their biology must not offend, disrupt, or be seen. Over time, this quiet violence erodes something far deeper than comfort. It gnaws at dignity, making even the most natural rhythm of womanhood feeling like a burden to bear alone.

However, this was not the case here. The path forward demands more than sanitary products or improved facilities; it demands cultural unlearning. It calls on allies, especially men, to stop turning away, to bear witnesses, to ask questions, and to hold space without judgment. It urges institutions to see menstruation as a vital, living part of the human experience that deserves visibility, empathy, and respect. It asks each of us to unlearn the silence we have inherited and to replace it with tenderness, rage, and the radical belief that bleeding should never be hidden to be honored.

Perhaps the real question is not about better packaging or discreet disposal. Perhaps the question we must ask, as doctors, partners, brothers, and friends, is this:

What if a woman can carry her pad without carrying the weight of the world?

© Ravi Teja Mandapaka