The month of May is globally observed as International Menstrual Awareness Month, and May 28th is the Menstrual Hygiene Day.
Though menstruation is a highly important biological process for girls or female population, it’s often shrouded in secrecy and often considered as a taboo in society. None explain it as a completely normal biological activity that every woman undergoes.
Consequently, girls tend to withdraw before they even fully understand what’s happening. Even when problems arise, they feel hesitant to consult a doctor.
And if a menstrual stain appears on clothes or there is a mood shift of a girl due to hormonal changes in the body during this particular point of time, boys often make jokes, saying things like, “Oh, must be that time of the month”.
But the scenarios could have changed if we had been taught simply and openly about this biological function from our childhood. Then the girls wouldn’t have to suffer in silence for having this natural activity, while the boys wouldn’t grow up thinking menstruation is something shameful or embarrassing.
I’ve spent a long time thinking about how we can explain menstruation to adolescents—both boys and girls—in a way that feels normal and understandable.
How do we simplify it? Sure, YouTube and Google have plenty of resources, but most are filled with complicated biological terms. Can a mother easily use those explanations to teach her daughter or son? Can an elder sister or brother explain it to a younger sibling?
In looking for a better way, I myself learned many things I hadn’t known. For example, I didn’t know that women’s bodies have one extra opening compared to men’s—just for menstruation.
Men have eight openings: six on the face (two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth), and two at the lower body (one for urination and one for defecation). Women have one additional opening: the vagina, for menstruation and childbirth in adulthood.
Let’s think about it: if you have a cold, where does the mucus come out? Through the nose, of course. If you cry, tears roll down from the eyes. There’s no substitute for these exits.
Similarly, for urine or stool, there’s no alternative route. In the same way, when a girl reaches puberty, her body will release blood from a specific opening once a month—this is menstruation. Since it happens monthly, we call it “period”.
Now it’s important to understand why menstruation happens. Menstruation exists so that a woman’s body can bring new life into the world.
When explained simply, the process becomes less intimidating and more fascinating. Across countries and cultures, many are taught that period blood is dirty or impure. But in truth, it’s the exact opposite.
When a girl is born, she already carries about 10-20 lakh eggs (1 to 2 million) in her body. As she grows older, these eggs gradually get reduced. Even before her first period, around 10,000 eggs leave her body each month—without any bleeding.
By the time she reaches puberty and experiences her first menstruation, she has around 300,000 to 400,000 eggs left.
Now, you may ask when does bleeding occur? Around ages 9 to 13, when a girl has her first period, her body releases one egg each month. This egg waits in the uterus for fertilization.
Meanwhile, the body prepares the uterus by building a nourishing lining from the purest, most nutrient-rich blood. If no fertilization occurs, the egg and the lining are shed together—resulting in bleeding.
That’s menstruation. Since the egg breaks through the blood lining, it’s natural for bleeding to occur.
Menstrual blood isn’t just “blood”—it’s also the uterine lining. And unlike urine or stool that come out all at once, menstrual flow happens gradually over 5–6 days.
I watched a video where a speaker said, “The purest blood in our body is what flows during menstruation.” This is the very lining that would otherwise nurture a baby for nine months during pregnancy.
So, pregnant women don’t menstruate—the lining continues to grow stronger to support the baby, giving it a safe, nourishing place to float, move, and grow.
In my quest to explain menstruation to young people, I ended up learning so much myself. I also learned something profound: just as every person’s face, hands, or hair is unique, every woman’s reproductive organs are unique too.
Yet while we women are so aware and concerned about our outward beauty, we remain unaware and uninformed about our reproductive health.
So this Menstrual Hygiene Month, let’s take a step forward.
Let’s learn about our bodies.
Let’s understand why menstruation happens.
And let’s learn how to manage menstruation safely and confidently.
The author, Nahid Akhter, is Communication Manager at the Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh.
