The feminists who fell for a bleeding hoax

Did you know that tampons were just another brutal expression of the oppressive patriarchy? I must confess that I didn’t either, until the story broke this week about an unfortunate woman who decided to run the London marathon during her time of the month without any panty pads, in ostentatious protest against the alleged male practice of ‘period-shaming’.

I’ll come to the ‘unfortunate’ part in a moment. But first, the background. Her name is Kiran Gandhi (a Harvard MBA and former drummer of the agit-rock collective MIA) and four months ago, she chose to run the London marathon, unencumbered by the ‘absurd’ presence of a chaffing ‘wad of cotton’ wedged between her legs, and blog about her triumph for the delectation of her sisters in the third-wave feminist movement.

‘Someone came up behind me making a disgusted face to tell me in a subdued voice that I was on my period … I was like … wow, I had NO idea!’ recounted Kiran in her blog, wittily titled ‘A Modern Period Piece’.

Kiran, however, was certainly not going to be fazed by such antediluvian finger-wagging. Well, only a bit. ‘I was going through all these crazy thoughts and analyzing whether I was … a crazy chick who needs just to calm down and reach for an effing tampon,’ she confesses. Perhaps, though she doesn’t say this, she might have been better off doing it dressed as a menstruating rhino, or the bottom half of a donkey, or a seven-foot high Tampax bearing the red-painted legend: ‘MEN! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT’.

Overall, Kiran couldn’t have been happier with the generally enthusiastic response she received. (From those who noticed her statement, anyway. Her decision to wear orange leggings rather than white ones may have detracted from the full effect).