Code red. Shark week. Crimson tide.
It may sound like a terrifying news alert, but these three phrases are actually euphemisms for ‘period’.
In fact, there are around five thousand different ways of saying ‘period’. While that may be good news for columnists like myself trying to avoid repetition in articles about my ‘time of the month’, it doesn’t help the effort to break through period shame and stigma.
When we use euphemisms to refer to our health in day-to-day life, it perpetuates shame and embarrassment around a subject on which we should be able to speak freely.
Which is why Wellness HQ is calling for an end to period stigma by empowering women to use the right language to describe their natural, feminine bodily functions.