I was embarrassed and scared by my period. Instead of being protected and educated, my fear was publicly celebrated...

Exclusive | 3 min read | Sri Lanka

I watched silently as my friend rinsed off the red patch on her white school uniform using the tap outside our classroom. We were barely 11. When she arrived home, her mother locked her inside her room.

As I walked to school alone the next morning, a vague memory of another young school friend’s similar experience popped into my head. Some months earlier, Shakeela had started her menstrual cycles and after a few days at home, had been dressed in a beautiful new yellow maxi dress with shiny embedded sequins. It looked like Belle’s dress from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

Shakeela wore the dress as men from the community arrived to knock back hard liquor in celebration of her period whilst a stereo speaker blasted loud music. There was a generous spread of battered cuttlefish, fried tuna and bowls of biryani topped with raisins and cashews.

I suddenly remembered the significance and connection of her party - and what my new friend would soon endure too.

In Sri Lanka, the country of my birth, ‘big girl’ parties celebrate a girl’s first period, announcing to society that she’s reached puberty and there’s now a marriageable girl in the household. This patriarchal tradition shows the whole community that the girl can now be married off as she's at a biological age to give birth, limiting a woman's worth solely to her ability to bear children and do housework. 

My turn

A year later, aged 12, I didn’t even realise my dreaded period had started. Instead, it was my mother who spotted a patch of blood on the back of my dress and locked me inside my bedroom. I cried and begged to be let out. 

‘You can’t see any men until your party,’ she said. She wasn’t being malicious, simply acting in accordance with tradition, but I dreaded being locked in for days and separated from my father. I wasn’t given any tips on period hygiene or coping with this momentous physical event.

Instead, mum bought me a packet of cheap sanitary pads from the shop and I stayed in that tiny, dark room for five days. Our neighbour’s daughter came to babysit me whilst my mother brought me food. I was allowed to go to the washroom when my father was not around.

I had read about periods in school health science books (the only basic health and reproduction education we receive in Sri Lanka), so I knew what was happening to my body. During the first two days, when I felt a slight pain, my mother gave me a painkiller.

Sometimes, female cousins and aunts came to see me. Some warned me not to eat meat. Others said oily food was bad. My mother simply told me I couldn't shower until my party. I felt disgusting, confused, scared and ashamed. Years later, I learnt that these superstitions and myths plague girls’ periods in Sri Lanka.

On the day of my ‘big girl’ party, my mother woke me early, wrapped me in a white bed sheet and ushered me out of my room to a makeshift washroom in the garden covered with gok kola - tender, green coconut leaves - which symbolises good fortune.

Bad omen

My mother filled a coconut shell with cold water and poured it on my head. After she bathed me, she dressed me in a new dress my aunt had sewed especially - a white midi dress with tiny green florals all over. It was beautiful, but I couldn’t find it in me to like it, its beauty marred by my period trauma.

Many people including my aunts, uncles and cousins arrived to see me. I was told to wait outside as per tradition, before I could enter, I had to smash a coconut on the floor. If it cracked open in my first attempt, it was supposed to bring me good luck. Otherwise it was a bad omen, an age-old belief. 

When I smashed the coconut to the ground, it didn’t crack. I heard ahs, oohs and ayyoos and saw widened eyes filled with pity. I stared back, eyes stinging with tears.

My big girl party wasn’t as lavish as Shakeela’s, but it was still a party. I was given new clothes, a pair of gold earrings and a necklace as gifts, not that I enjoyed any of it.

In the past, when girls were married off in their early teens, these puberty celebrations encouraged suitable proposals. My parents didn’t want to marry me off at 12 but they still submitted to the social norm of throwing me a period party.

Dated traditions

It’s a symptom of how societies like the one I grew up in have been programmed to normalise a patriarchal tradition which inflicts trauma in our daughters at a key moment in their childhood.

These puberty celebrations also mark the beginning of the gender divide in Sri Lanka. 

Once you are a big girl, our mothers advise us against wearing anything above the knee length or laughing loudly in public. ‘It’s what boys do,’ my mother would say. Some of my female friends stopped riding bicycles or playing netball.

I didn’t submit to my mother’s limitations or internalise her unconscious belief system. 

Instead, I grew up to be a fierce, independent young woman. Looking back, I believe this was the beginning of my troubled relationship with my mother. The beginning of ‘mother wound’ - a loss or lack of mothering. 

I was a child who had been forced to keep quiet and kept isolated in a room. My puberty was celebrated against my will - publicly. Instead of being protected and nurtured in this pivotal moment of my young girl life, I’d been humiliated and traumatised. 

And yet, this tradition continues. 

Still rife

While there are no studies on this, the Sinhalese and Tamil community in Sri Lanka still hold grand celebrations. The Sri Lankan Muslim community has also adopted this practice, albeit with muted celebrations. 

Tamils in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, also hold puberty parties, which are known as ‘age attending ceremonies’.

I want our generation to put the brakes on this abhorrent, degrading tradition once and for all.

Instead of isolating our daughters in a small room, we should educate them about menstrual hygiene, sex and reproduction. If I ever have a daughter, instead of announcing her childbearing ability to the world, I will encourage my daughter to be fierce, bold and independent.

Instead of reducing all she is to her reproductive capabilities, I will instead encourage her to recognise her power and potential.

No little girl needs a traumatic period party. 

She needs an educated support system, a strong liberal family, and a society that will lift her to catch her dreams - not plunge her into a nightmare.

•  To support and empower women and girls in rural Sri Lankan communities, visit The Jasmine Foundation.

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