A lot of cultures across the world celebrate a girl’s first period – or rather her first step into womanhood. As weird as that sounds, some of them can be quite cool, and some…not so much.

For example – In Croatia, the family celebrates the girl’s first puberty by pouring her a glass of wine, followed by the other members of the family.

And in Israel, the girl is given a spoonful of honey to bless her with ‘easy periods’ for the rest of her life.

The Icelandic rituals are by far the best till now – The mother of the girl bakes a red and white coloured cake to mark this occasion! This is really something we could all, as a race, embrace 🙂

Some of these rituals might be awesome, but some not so…

When a Filipino girls bleeds for the first time, her mother washes her blood-stained panties with water. Then the blood-stained panties are smeared on the girl’s face owing to the belief that this will prevent pimples. The girl is also supposed to jump three stairs to signify the number of days she will bleed.

If this is not weird, then I don’t know what is.

As strange as this might be, it still doesn’t bother me quite as much as the South Indian traditions of announcing the girl’s puberty throughout the village/city. Now, in the olden years, this was merely a means of letting the people know that the daughter was ready to bear children – which implied that she was ready to be married off. (This ceremony is called Half-Saree Ceremony, converting it to Full Saree when the rituals are completed. lol)

If we are STILL doing this to let the city people know that our 12 year old daughter is ready to bear children, THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH US.

But I’m gonna give South Indians the benefit of the doubt and HOPE that maybe they are just trying to conserve old customs and they won’t really marry off their underage daughter.

Now, consider a whole country of people who willingly celebrate a girl’s puberty…wouldn’t we at least expect them to honor and respect menstruating women. But oooh nooo, we couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Women in India are deemed ‘IMPURE’ by many religious groups and are not allowed access to many temples and even rituals. I personally came across an 18 year old boy in the city of Banaras, India who told me NOT to wear the Rudraksh bead because it was a great disrespect to their Lord Shiva AS WOMEN WERE TOO IMPURE TO WEAR IT. !!??

There are a few temples in South India where no woman is allowed to enter and/or even see the idols.

One awesome woman went and ‘touched’ the idol. The men were so disturbed that they had to shut down all operations only to perform intensive purification rituals. Hahahahahha

Imagine millions of people collectively celebrating the coming of age of a girl, and yet throw this much shade for this very thing. Uff. I can’t even. The hypocrisy of it all leaves me more frustrated than waiting for a man to find the ‘G’ on his own. -.-

It’s 2021 fam and we are now even farther away from evolution than we ever have been. Hahaha. We are gonna go drink this one off, as usual. Here’s to – hoping men finally grow some brains, cuz let’s be honest – if it wasn’t for reproduction, we still wouldn’t need them. 0.o