We all would like to think of ourselves as enlightened, civilized folks in this day and age – especially after the whole thing with the Industrial Revolution and now the internet.
With just how easy it is to obtain information, and how much emphasis there is these days on ensuring you are well educated, you would assume that things like women’s sexual health would be something that everyone knows about.
After all, only uneducated people would consider a subject important to half of the world’s population as something taboo, right?
Alas, this is still the case.
While sex education has certainly and undeniably come a long way since the dark days before the development of modern medicine, it is still a highly taboo subject, especially in developing countries.
And with this comes a whole host of problems that people suffer unknowingly under for decades.
This is where folks like Demetra Nyx come in.
Nyx is a young woman who has a job that is definitely out of the ordinary – she is a sex coach.
According to her personal website, it seems that what she means by this is that she helps to counsel people, specifically when it comes to sex..
When you realize just how many folks are starting to realize that they truly need help when it comes to sex, either due through past trauma or sexual repression, it is easy to see why her services are in healthy demand.
But just offering her services isn’t enough for this ambitious young woman.
She is now on a journey to stop one of the main factors for causing such sex anxieties, especially among other women – the shame and controversy surrounding the menstrual cycle.
Her documentary, Period. End of sentence proved itself to be so impactful regarding stigma around menstruation, it even won an Academy Award for Best Short Documentary.
Most people would think that receiving such prestigious acknowledgment is awareness enough, but Nyx knows this is only the beginning.
Now she has embarked on a different project, although with the same goal.
The project?
To post a picture of her face covered with her own menstrual blood on Instagram every month.
Blood is blood, and so the sight of it (and in such large amounts) will be alarming to just about anyone, no matter the case.
But just exactly why do we think of menstrual blood as “unclean”?
As Nyx points out, it isn’t really.
The blood comes out of the wound perfectly sterile, as it was meant to fuel a fetus that never was.
With this in mind, Nyx hopes that such a graphic display of menstrual blood will not only raise awareness about the stigma associated with period blood but also force people to stop and think as to why they associate the fluid with dirtiness.
Hopefully, in this way, both little girls and full-grown women alike will stop thinking of themselves as “unclean” whenever their period begins, and understand that it is natural and isn’t gross at all.
