Blood! Yay! Period parties are now a thing...

How to throw your very own menstruation celebration

For many young women, getting their first period, external can be one of the most striking - and perhaps scary - parts of puberty. It’s a sign that your body is changing, hormones are kicking in, and yeah, potentially, you could have babies…

But recent research has found that lots of girls are still not comfortable discussing their period, external, with one in 10 saying they’ve been unable to afford sanitary products, and around 350,000 girls in the UK admitting they've missed school at some point because of being on their period.

This is on top of a study revealing British women shell out thousands, external on their periods over their lifetimes. Something men don’t even have to consider!

Now a trend that's going viral is seeking to do away with any jitters and shame that young women might feel about their first menstruation: period parties.

Yes, you read that right. A party to celebrate a girl’s first bleed.

But in a world where we celebrate everything from gender-reveal parties to our pets getting older, celebrating something as monumental and life-affirming as periods is a wonderful thing.

Menstruation celebrations have a fascinating history; Tamil societies, external in India and Sri Lanka hold coming-of-age ceremonies when girls start to menstruate, for example.

And all of this comes as periods make a move into the mainstream of society more generally.

In 2016, a Bristol company announced that it was introducing a "period policy" to allow female staff to work flexibly around their menstrual cycles.

And the recent 'free-bleed' movement, which has seen women running marathons without wearing sanitary products, went a long way to help bust the stigmas that still persist around periods.

Period parties have been going on under-the-radar for a while, but the trend really kicked off in August last year, when the comedian Bert Kreischer revealed on a US chat show, external that his daughter came to him with the idea of throwing a period party for herself because “all the girls are throwing them”.

They held the menstruation bash, complete with red velvet cake (of course) and lots of red food.

“I had the best time of my life!” Bert told chat show host Conan O’Brien. “I got beet juice, pomegranate juice, pasta with marinara sauce, ketchup and fries. It was awesome.”

Back in 2017, 12-year-old Brooke Lee from Jacksonville, Florida went viral after her family held a seriously extra period party to celebrate her first menstruation.

Speaking to BuzzFeed, external, her mother said she threw the party because her daughter was “anxious to have her period” and she was keen “to make this event a little more fun”.

Other women have been sharing incredible images on social media of period parties they’ve thrown for their daughters, their friends, for themselves - and even their pets.

But some people are not so down with the whole period party concept.

So let’s imagine you’ve decided to throw your very own period party - what do you need to get things going? Here’s our ultimate, unofficial period-party checklist:

- Red velvet cake

- Tampon-themed biscuits

- Cranberry juice

- Plenty of party games (like, pin the tampon on the vagina)

- And, finally, a banging Janelle Monáe playlist, just because of those amazing ‘vagina trousers’ from the PYNK video, external