Yoga instructor Steph Gongora did something bold this week. Dressed in white,I Am a Plaything (2025) she got onto her mat and filmed herself in various poses that revealed a red stain from her period.
Then she put the clip on Instagram, where she now has more than 258,000 followers.
SEE ALSO: When the trolls come at you over birth control coverage, here's what to sayBy Saturday, the post had been viewed 208,000 times and elicited more than 4,400 comments, both cruel and kind. Some were disturbed by the imagery while others were inspired by Gongora's message.
Her hope, she said in the post, was to help people who menstruate feel less ashamed of a natural bodily function.
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"I am a woman, therefore, I bleed," she wrote. "It's messy, it's painful, it's terrible, & it's beautiful. And yet, you wouldn't know. Because I hide it. I bury things at the bottom of the trash. I breathe, ragged and awkward through the cramps, all the while holding onto this tight lipped, painted on smile."
Gongora urged people to talk openly about menstruation so that girls will understand it both as an "inconvenience and a gift" and boys will never "recoil from the word tampon."
Her post is the latest high-profile effort to defy period shame. Last year, Newsweekran a cover story on how the fight to end the stigma was going "mainstream." In 2015, musician Kiran Gandhi received viral coverage for running the London Marathon without a tampon and, in 2016, YouTube star Ingrid Nilsen drew a big audience for asking President Obama about the sales tax on pads and tampons.
Gongora, who recently started sharing causes and nonprofit organizations with her followers, also used her post to highlight Cora, an organic tampon company that donates pads to some of the estimated 100 million girls around the world who lack access to menstrual products.
"That's the kind of stuff I can galvanize behind, no money or even product needed," Gongora wrote. "Just a mission I support on a topic we should ALL be talking about."
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