It had felt awkward when boys at her academy didn’t know why Aditi Mutatkar came for badminton training, wearing dark shorts a few days of the month. And doubly embarrassing when they finally figured out why. Because they giggled. And it grated on her already jumpy nerves.
The former international shuttler remembers that feeling of annoyance, and thinks back to the times she wanted to shoot back and say, “Chup baitho, period pe hoo (keep quiet, I am on my period)”, hoping those five words will someday be normalised in a sports setting and prevent life-long scarring.
As Wimbledon awakens from its long pristine-white slumber with myriad voices raising questions about SW 19’s pedantic white-only clothing rule, unrelenting even for women players on their periods, sport is in for a serious sartorial reckoning of its age-old traditions. Chinese Quinwen Zhang kickstarted the discussion speaking of how menstrual cramps affected her in her loss to Iga Swiatek at the French Open. Over a summer of discontent, heading into the white-clothing Slam quaintly dressed up as ‘tradition’, tennis broadcaster Catherine Whitaker has been quoted in The Telegraph asking “if a tradition that affected men the same way as women going into their biggest day on a period, forced to wear white, would last.”
Chinese Quinwen Zhang kickstarted the discussion speaking of how menstrual cramps affected her in her loss to Iga Swiatek at the French Open.
Whitaker also raised flags on policing…
