This Brave Artist Is Using Period Pads To Spread Powerful Feminist Messages
A brave, creative, and all-around-badass woman is fighting sexism in a shocking way, one period pad at a time.
Elonë, a young woman from Karlsruhe, Germany, writes feminist messages on period pads and posts them around her hometown, plastering them on poles and walls.
Her project was inspired by a tweet sent last year by @cutequeer96, which read, “imagine if men were as disgusted with rape as they are with periods.”
Period pads are generally seen as taboo objects, and seeing them in public is admittedly a jarring thing for men and women alike. But Elonë’s work is putting social issues like rape, harassment, and victim-blaming into perspective. It’s basically forcing people to remember that — oh yeah! — a woman’s body is a human thing and not just an object to be sexualized.
Furthermore, it’s also bringing to light the stigma surrounding women’s periods. After all, they’re obviously a naturally part of women’s lives, but so many of us are taught to feel embarrassed or ashamed by them.
As you probably expected, Elonë has gotten her fair share of backlash for her in-your-face project, but she’s defended it by clarifying that “feminism is equality, not men hate.” She also stated on her Tumblr, “I did this to provoke. I did this to get people to think.”
Thankfully, though, the reactions to her project have been mostly positive and are even inspiring people around the world to post their own messages around their hometowns, which Elonë happily supports.
