Kiran Gandhi ran the London marathon while on her period without wearing a tampon, with the intention of encouraging women to not be embarrassed about their period. Now I’m not too sure what to think about this. 1. fair play for trying to do some good and having balls of steel in carrying out such an act, but 2. that was kinda gross.

Here’s Kiran at the finishing line with blood freely dripping over her leggings:

“I ran the whole marathon with my period blood running down my legs,” Gandhi said on her personal blog.

“I got my flow the night before and it was a total disaster but I didn’t want to clean it up. It would have been way too uncomfortable to worry about a tampon for 26.2 miles. I thought, if there’s one person society won’t fuck with, it’s a marathon runner. If there’s one way to transcend oppression, it’s to run a marathon in whatever way you want. On the marathon course, sexism can be beaten. Where the stigma of a woman’s period is irrelevant, and we can re-write the rules as we choose.”

It’s a weird one because I’m sure there were hundreds of other women participating in the marathon who were also on their period, but did they need to let their period blood be on full display for the duration of the run? It’s mother nature and all, but there’s no doubt the situation would have made other runners have felt uncomfortable, man and women.

I must admit that I am a man writing this post and maybe I don’t understand the whole period shaming thing, but I also asked a room full of women what they thought about the story before publishing and they all said the same thing: ‘that is completely gross and unnecessary’.

At least Gandi didn’t collect her period blood and turn it into modern art, like these women did.