Of periods and Voldemort: Twinkle at Oxford

By Nichola

on January 19, 2018

Proud husband and producer Akshay Kumar shared a video of Twinkle Khanna at Oxford University, taking forward the PadMan message of menstrual hygiene. “From period taboos to period poverty, @twinklerkhanna takes the conversation on menstrual hygiene global at Oxford Union, the debating society of Oxford University!” he captioned it.

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Twinkle, elegant in a polka-dotted pantsuit and ruffled blouse, was her usual articulate self, speaking simply and convincingly about the issue. “When I first met Muruganantham, in his idiosyncratic English which he proudly calls Linglish, as you saw in the trailer, he told the same thing. He said, ‘All country want to be strong. But to make country strong you have to make mother strong, sister strong, women strong, and then country strong’. And that, I think, is the global issue,” she pointed out.

“With PadMan I’m hoping it’s more than a movie; it’s a movement, where women are no longer held back or embarrassed by their biological functions. Where commercials don’t show blue liquid on sanitary pads instead of red. Where President Trump cannot try and shame a reporter by saying, ‘She’s bleeding from her whatever’. And where we can’t promise all our schoolgirls iPads but we can give them all the sanitary pads they need,” she summed up.

[embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/BeIKs7XAByx/?taken-by=twinklerkhanna[/embed]

Talking about why she chose to address the stigma around menstrual hygiene in her debut production, Twinkle said, “My primary motivation to make a movie on menstruation was to bring awareness to a subject that so far has been tucked away in shadows and like Voldemort is never mentioned.”

Twinkle also posed for pictures with the students, including Nobel prize winner Malala Yousafzai, holding sanitary pads, sending out a strong message. She also discussed with Malala why it is important to end the taboo around menstruation.

Discussing her view on failure, she revealed, “I would say failure has been my role model. Every time there was an obstacle in my life, I examined it, and invariably it taught me something about myself or the world around me that I didn’t know. To not be afraid to keep leaping is what I’ve always believed in.”