This blogger lost a load of followers after putting a picture of her period blood on Instagram
Periods have been a taboo subject pretty much since day dot. Despite the fact that our menstrual cycle literally enables the majority of the female-born population to be child-bearers, some people would really rather block out the idea that we have uteruses with linings that need to shed once a month.
Blogger Grace Victory is not one of those people. As a womb-having human, she is fully acquainted with her monthly periods, and isn't ashamed to say she bleeds. But when she experienced a leak during her most recent period and decided to tackle the stigma by posting a photo of it on Instagram, she got way more of a negative response than she'd anticipated.
A post shared by Grace (@gracefvictory) on Aug 1, 2018 at 1:39am PDT
Uploading a picture of her bedsheets stained with period blood, Grace captioned it with a poem.
"for the redness turns to shame
and the inner peace blends to hate
and the sweetness of chocolate to cure the pain does nothing"
"Lets normalise bleeding," Grace followed her poignant words with, asking: "How does this image make you feel?"
Evidently, the picture made some people feel offended, because Grace later reported on her Instagram Stories that she had lost 150 followers as a result of her honest upload.
"I lost 150 followers after posting this. How wild is that," Grace wrote.
"2018 and people are still grossed out over period blood. We are still full of shame and embarrassment over something so so so natural," she continued.
"I knew it was bad but I didn't realise it was THIS bad. Still inspired to create more conversations though," the blogger, who still has 148,000 followers on Instagram, wrote.
Finishing her post, Grace summarised: "Just hate how period blood is viewed. It's so important for my healing to express and grow through the uncomfortableness of who I am. Sexuality, vaginas, our wombs - why is it so wrong for them to be seen and talked about?"
Ultimately - and sadly - it's not surprising that some people feel offended at the sight of period blood. But what is interesting is that some of Grace's followers felt so strongly, they removed her from their feed. You'd have thought that people who follow Grace might admire her bold honesty, and her desire to speak openly about shapes and sizes and feelings and bodies and the way they work. But clearly, for some people, this was just a step too far.
We need people like Grace, though, who are willing to go out of their comfort zone to start conversations like this, if we want anything to change.
Follow Cat on Instagram.
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