#GirlsShitToo

#GirlsBleedToo

That night, the Snap of my armpit hair had gone viral. Not really viral viral, but it had been shared numerous times. Snapchat was designed so the Snaps would disappear after ten seconds, but people could still screenshot them, which is what happened when Eric took the shot of my seven long hairs and captioned it with, "D. Delaney can't grow proper pit hairz."

I wasn't angry—I mean, I'd let him take the Snap. And if anything, the image served as a testament to the fact that I was letting go of my femininity. And hopefully the fact that some people were saying things about how my pits were "disgusting" (including a comment by Dennis Hepler) was making Adree feel better about some of the hurtful comments she'd gotten lately. Some dude had even claimed the image had made him puke.

Eric texted me to apologize:

Eric

Tue, Feb 23, 9:03 PM

Eric

Dude I'm so sry about that snap 😞😢

Dallas

No worries. I enjoy making grown men puke with so little effort.

Eric

Who knew your pit hair would be so popular?

Dallas

It's like...horror film material. The Creature from the Fuzzy Lagoon

Eric

Not thick enough to be considered fuzzy lol

On Wednesday during Chemistry, Valerie smirked at me and clapped. "I see letting go of your femininity is serving you well. Your armpit hair has gotten more attention than any bikini photo I've shared. How do you do it?"

"Simple," I told her. "I wake up like dis," I winked and held up my arms, posing like one of those Greek statues where the female subjects never seem worried about potential five o'clock shadows.

Valerie smiled at me, making me giddy. Then she asked, "What'd you think of Adree's vlog?"

Sitting down at my chair, I said in a low voice, "She is like...a traitor to feminism. I never talk about the ways my periods debilitate me. It's like...exposing a weakness." I looked over and saw Reba was eyeing me from diagonally across the table, but she looked down as soon as I looked over. I lowered my voice more. "What did you think?"

"I guess I'm feeling conflicted. I mean—I feel that way too. I would never go into work and tell my fellow engineers I'm on my period. But at the same time...I mean...it's not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of strength. Chad was sick last week and he was so annoying. He was barely sick, yet he was acting like he was on his deathbed! We're sick once a month, and we just deal with it. We're strong, but men want to turn our strength into a weakness."

"Good point," I said, wondering if I'd been too hard on Adree. I really had been thinking she'd made a huge mistake in writing that tweet, but why were women given so much crap for their periods? I mean, dealing with our menstruation was no easy feat, and we weren't ever applauded for it or anything. Rather, we were shamed for it.

That night, when Adree released her vlog, I found out that Reba had snitched on me.

Girls Bleed, Too

Published on February 24, 2015

Youtube Video Transcript:

Adree here. Embrace Femininity.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter probably saw my tweet about how PMSing while reading cruel comments made me want to quit the Internet. And I guess that "wasn't okay" or something.

I don't know why so many women in the U.S. still pretend our menstrual cycles have no effect on us. We pretty much pretend we don't have a menstrual cycle, period. I guess I can sorta understand why we've done this. There's a long and brutal history of how men have learned to deal with our menstrual cycle. The Old Testament said that anything a woman touched while she was menstruating would be unclean, advising husbands not to sleep with their menstruating wives. Even now, in other countries, girls are excluded and shamed when they are on their periods. In the Philippines, where my dad is from, menstruation is still considered a social taboo, and girls can be so ashamed that they miss school for it. 

Even here in progressive America, we are expected to keep periods as our dirty little secret. Which doesn't make sense.

Is keeping them secret—pretending they are nonexistent—a good thing? Dallas Delaney will proudly tell us that she defecates, but she won't admit anything about bleeding monthly. I have it on good authority that she thinks girls talking about how our periods debilitate us is a "sign of weakness."

Why am I considered a "traitor to feminism" when I talk about how my period debilitates me? I mean, don't our periods cause us pain, discomfort, and inconvenience? Of course we can manage them; we're strong. And they don't turn us all into psychotic and irrational bitches, despite what some Internet trolls think. But they can mess with us. Before I get mine, I feel a little blue. That's why I said I wanted to quit the Internet. That was the truth. Had I not been PMSing, then I wouldn't have cared what those guys on Youtube think about the shape of my cheeks or the fact that I have Filipino heritage.

But I'm not going to back down now and minimize my experiences with PMS just because I've been accused of being irrational. What's irrational about being upset about a rude comment?

The goal of Dallas Delaney's efforts are for girls to be able to speak openly about the fact that we shit, which is a goal many of us fail to see the importance of. That is why I'm proposing a new goal with Embrace Femininity: for us to be able to speak openly and without shame about the fact that we bleed. This form of activism isn't new; it's called Menarchy, or menstrual anarchy, and while it has been successful in some ways, it hasn't really had much influence on my generation. I didn't even know about it until I was researching for this vlog.

So, followers, I implore you to research Menarchy for yourselves, and to share some facts about it on Twitter, using the hashtag #GirlsBleedToo.

Periods are not a sign of weakness, and we need to remember this.