Donald Clarke: Pixar’s new period drama breaks down the menstruation taboo

“The last taboo” is forever being broken. Don’t get too excited. Another one will be along in a moment. That said, the latest Pixar movie really does leap into territory that mainstream family entertainment has hitherto shunned.

Domee Shi’s charming Turning Red concerns a Chinese-Canadian girl who, some time after her 13th birthday, turns into an enormous red panda. Her mum knocks on the bathroom door and asks if she is all right. Maybe her red flower has “bloomed”. There is talk of “pads” among her understanding friends. Further adventures point us towards …

Hang on. Is the latest animation from the Disney empire all about menstruation? Pretty much. As the story moves on, the allegorical approach takes over. The temporary transformation, linked to emotional shifts, coincides with a full red moon. Mei Lee eventually learns to embrace her inner panda along with a tolerable amount of teenage rebellion.

Put it this way. Turning Red is more explicitly about menstruation than Don’t Look Up is about climate change. One’s first, baser instinct is to howl with pre-emptory laughter at the distress this will cause the “it’s all gone ‘woke’” crowd. As we speak, some reactionary blowhard is composing a why-oh-why piece under the headline “How to talk to your children about Turning Red”.

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This rare, endlessly mysterious condition – as few as 800 million people are menstruating right now – has been kept off the telly and away from movies

Never mind that. Let us celebrate a significant hack at one of the most persistent taboos in world culture. There could be complex reasons for the ancient unease. There almost certainly aren’t. We know a manifestation of patriarchal oppression when we see such a thing.

Shame has long been a first weapon for those seeking to keep their fat behinds on the upper rungs and one can hardly imagine a better example than the toxification of a natural female process. Ancient cultures prohibit intercourse during menstruation. In more recent times, this rare, endlessly mysterious condition – as few as 800 million people are menstruating right now – has been kept off the telly and away from movies.

Inglorious history

Dr Lauren Rosewarne, associate professor at the University of Melbourne, has pondered the subject in her fascinating book Periods in Pop Culture: Menstruation in Film and Television. “Historically, the place of periods in pop culture has been inglorious,” she tells me. “It’s been rarely visible and instead mostly spoken of as disgusting, as a shameful secret, as a cause of dramatic mood swings and ruined sex lives.”

'I'm late' meant only one thing when spoken nervously in high-end soap operas

You would think that there was no more controversial topic in the US than abortion, but that subject was breached in Maude, a sitcom starring the inestimable Bea Arthur, as long ago as 1972. It was not until 1985 that the word "period" was first spoken on American television. Courteney Cox dared to say it in a Tampax commercial some years before going on to barely mention the subject throughout the run of Friends.

The “sanitary product” advertisement continues to delights fans of creative euphemism right up to the present day. Before fake scientists dared to pour blue (not less evasive red) on to stacks of pads, the ads were mainly taken up with skydiving, water-skiing and snowboarding. God help the viewer who wanted to menstruate comfortably while reading a good book.

Men and women did go to the lavatory in TV drama, but menstruation only seemed to be worthy of its own plot point when it wasn’t actually happening. “I’m late” meant only one thing when spoken nervously in high-end soap operas. No more water-skiing for you, Victoria.

Sadistic distaste

Menstruation may not be quite the last taboo, but the topic has been evaded for longer and with greater vigour than the competition from homosexuality, abortion and supposed blasphemy.

In an article from 1970 titled Victorian Women and Menstruation, Elaine and English Showalter tell us: "Even the redoubtable Marquis de Sade, who took prurient delight in mouldy faeces and decapitated dogs, appears to have regarded menstruation with faint distaste." Florence Nightingale maintained "almost complete silence" on the subject. The Showalters begin their argument with a quote from Leviticus warning that if a woman's "issue in her flesh be blood" then she should be "put apart" for seven days.

Domee Shi knows that barriers have been in place for centuries and that popular culture has a duty to help its consumers heave them down

With all this shame around, it is hardly surprising the makers of Turning Red use their platform to – directly and indirectly – address the fears and unease that so often still attend the arrival of a girl’s first period. In an ideal world, the subject would be a matter-of-fact reality in dramas for viewers of all ages and genders. But Domee Shi knows that barriers have been in place for centuries and that popular culture has a duty to help its consumers heave them down. “The hope is with putting it on the screen and having it be something that is cringy, but also funny, and a part of this story, it does normalise it,” she said.

Dr Rosewarne thinks the tide is turning. “In recent years film and TV has come to reflect an audience that has come of age and who is now ready to see their lives and bodies presented frankly – visibly! – in all their messy glory,” she says.

It’s only taken two or three millennia.

Turning Red is on Disney+ from March 11th