Let's Talk Periods: Practicing Menstrual Confidence Through Conversations
Sama Srinivas' thesis, Let's Talk Periods: Practicing Menstrual Confidence Through Conversations, creates a variety of opportunities for menstruators and their communities to practice and build menstrual confidence through interventions such as literacy, humor, celebration, and love languages.
“Everyone deserves to have a dignified menstrual experience. Do they feel confident that their environment promotes one? We might think this problem only exists in historically marginalized countries, but no. It exists here too.”
- Anmol Sharma, Global Public Health
Sama’s thesis project was inspired by a personal experience. On June 27, 2023, she got her period; but three weeks later when it didn’t stop, she went to the doctor feeling scared, anxious, and confused. Sama had a transvaginal ultrasound performed which showed multiple small bilateral ovarian follicles and mild prominence in her right ovary—raising the possibility of polycystic ovarian syndrome, a hormonal disorder that causes menstrual irregularity and a whole host of other symptoms. With no other solutions to be found, she hoped homeopathy would work and watched her flow fluctuate and feel endless. More than two months later, on September 1st, her period ended.
Sama had been menstruating for over ten years and didn’t feel confident about navigating this lonely, confusing, and new menstrual experience. She was left with a lot of questions. Most glaringly, why didn’t she feel confident? Was she alone in this?
Sama interviewed Anmol Sharma, a Master’s graduate in Global Public Health. She told her, “Everyone deserves to have a dignified menstrual experience. Do they feel confident that their environment promotes one? We might think this problem only exists in historically marginalized countries, but no. It exists here too.” This solidified Sama’s argument that practicing menstrual confidence is profoundly necessary.
“It turns out, confidence builders are needed across the menstrual lifecycle as menstruators are constantly facing new challenges from pre-menses through to post-menopause,” Sama explains. “And conversations can become a great deterrent from forming long-lasting negative associations.” So, how do we practice menstrual confidence through conversations? Sama proposes we can do so through four different typologies: literacy, humor, celebration, and love languages.
CLOT — Your best A.I. menstrual buddy
Starting with literacy, as literacy is the core of a conversation, Sama designed CLOT. CLOT is a chatbot that allows menstruators of all ages to ask burning questions, receive answers in the voice of their chosen conversation partner, and share their learnings to get human second opinions.
Dr. Sally King, Founder of the evidence-based non-profit Menstrual Matters, described her theory of change: “Once we have education, then maybe we can have conversations about healthy menstrual physiology…This shouldn’t be a political issue, it’s normal.” As the lack of standardized education about menstruation continues, discussions on periods can reproduce old myths and lead menstruators down a confusing path of trying to navigate social media advice and other medical advice.
“Once we have education, then maybe we can have conversations about healthy menstrual physiology…This shouldn’t be a political issue, it’s normal.”
- Dr. Sally King, Menstrual Matters
How might we motivate menstruators to navigate their experience with a variety of second opinions to confidently take action?
In this scenario, Isa is a 14 year old girl who is curious about tampons. She wants to chat with an 18 year-old menstruator, because her friends say that older sisters are super helpful when it comes to this kind of stuff. Because she doesn’t have one, CLOT is her next best option to ask about tampons—especially if she can go swimming with them. After she’s asked all her questions, CLOT nudges her to share this conversation with a friend, to ask them what they think. The more inputs, the better. For menstruators located in areas where reproductive information is sensitive, these chats can be made anonymously and subsequently deleted.
The goal is for all menstruators to receive a quick answer to “I don’t know? Who do I ask?” Clot is just the first answer along that journey.
Menstrual Mayhem — Act. Laugh. Chaos Ensue!
After chatting to Clot, menstruators are encouraged to chat with other humans. Menstrual Mayhem is an interactive party game with hilarious period-themed charades and prompts to play with family and friends! Each card deck contains different categories like: General Symptoms, First Period, Menopause, and Period Products.
The game is played by splitting into teams to play simultaneous rounds of charades trying to gather the most correct answers for points. After each round, the funniest enactments are shown to the group!
The goal of Menstrual Mayhem is to Act. Laugh. And let the Chaos Ensue!
Blood Sugar — For any time of the month!
Wouldn’t it be a shame to have a party game and no party? Have you ever heard of a period party? Historically, this is a celebration held to honor the rite of passage and a first period. But in this context, it’s a moment of care, celebrating a menstruator’s unique trials and tribulations, no matter where they are in the menstrual lifecycle.
One of Sama’s interviewees mentioned that the ritual already existed in her daughter’s friend group. “My daughter is the last of her friends at school to get her period…All her friends have had period parties, and she’s wondering when she’ll be able to have hers.”
As menstruators have conversations with people in their broader community, Sama wondered if we might adopt a new menstrual ritual. “Could period parties make those conversations more accessible?” Sama says that she would love to go back in time and throw herself a period party for surviving a two month period! With period parties in mind, she founded Blood Sugar ~ for any time of the month.
Blood Sugar is a cake & bake shop all about baking menstrual confidence into every cake for the period party of your dreams. Why a celebration?
“Celebrations are ritualistic and historically represent moments of care within a community,” Sama says. “Think birthday parties, coming-of-age celebrations, and more. They also allow for new kinds of celebrations to be easily accepted or adopted in communities of any age or experience.” Blood Sugar held its inaugural Launch Party, in an effort to create and disseminate a period party recipe that partygoers and viewers alike can steal, adjust, and tailor to their taste.
The party’s agenda included three cake tastings. The Seed: Reflecting on Early Menstrual Experiences, The Flower: Reflecting on Menstruation as an Adult, and The Fruit: Reflecting on Menopause & Relationships with Elder Menstruators. The physical design transformed the idea of traditional menstrual-related aesthetics. Using cake-stained bed sheets, clotty-looking jam, and cut fruits and melted red candles to remind of the physical experience of menstruation.
Creating richer and more nuanced documentation of menstrual experiences can help shift the mental models and words we associate with menstruation on a regular basis. And in turn, incorporate a new ritual into our everyday lives.
CODE!RED — We’ve cracked the code, so you don’t have to
Speaking of rituals, when was the last time you sat with a partner or family member and checked on their menstrual experience? After speaking with many non-menstruators in Sama’s community, one said something that hadn't clicked before: “There needs to be an easier, more straightforward way to support the menstruators in my life.” The role of allies can be essential to one’s menstrual experience. Maybe if you’re reading this now you are curious about how you can tangibly support the menstruators in your lives. What if we reframe an ally and a menstruator to a ‘Sidekick’ and a ‘Hero’?
CODE!RED is a paired digital experience designed for a menstruator’s community members or sidekicks to support them by completing actionable, tailored, tangible quests. CODE!RED brings heroes and sidekicks together to complete missions of menstrual care and confidence, tailored using our very own menstrual love language quiz. “By aligning love languages and piggybacking off of a Hero’s health tracking apps, CODE!RED will send Sidekicks’ missions based on their Hero’s needs, preferences, and mood!”
In this scenario, Sidekick comes across the CODE!RED website and creates his Hero Portal. He invites Hero to match with him, and adds their type of relationship and their distance. These two factors will help CODE!RED sends tailored and achievable quests to Sidekick! Once Hero accepts the invite, she will give CODE!RED permission to track her apple watch inputs. To finish the pairing, both parties will take their love language quiz and download the CODE!RED app.
Sidekick will receive quests by notification. Once in the app, his dashboard will show previous and current quests, including his newest one. He will chat with CODE!RED to choose his quest, give feedback, and log his progress along the way.
Post-Quest, both Sidekick & Hero can log feedback so CODE!RED can recommend better quests next time, and aggregate a more comprehensive FAQ on each love language type.
Each menstrual experience is unique, so it can be difficult for a sidekick to find a way to care for the various heroes in their lives: a partner, a sister, a mother, etc. CODE!RED takes out the guesswork for the sidekick. Using a gamified digital experience allows for both heroes and sidekicks to have fun with practicing their menstrual confidence as a team!
Sama leaves these proposals with you and asks you to have the conversations and ask the questions you haven’t before. There are people out there in our cities, in our world that will benefit from your curiosity, bringing us one step closer to an inclusively designed society.
To learn more about Sama Srinivas' work, take a look at her projects in more detail at samasrinivas.com.