Many celebrities are taking up the #PadMan challenge in various social media. PadMan is a movie about story of Arunachalam Muruganantham and his hardships to make sanitary napkins affordable and available to the village women. The PadMan challenge even though is a PR stunt but has opened the discussion of a much taboo subject “menstruation”. Even in 21st Century, talking about periods is still considered to be taboo and is done in hushed voice. Menstruation is a natural process and is directly related to women’s hygiene but talking about it is still forbidden. This challenge has tried to break that stereotype and many celebrities like Akshay Kumar, Sonam Kapoor, Amir Khan, Twinkle Khanna, Deepika Padukone etc and common people have added their names to it.
#PadmanChallenge:
Challenge accepted @Varun_dvn @AnushkaSharma 😊 YES, that’s a Pad in my hand and there's nothing to be ashamed about. It's natural! #Period.P.S congratulations @akshaykumar sir @sonamakapoor, looking forward seeing your superheroic performance this friday! pic.twitter.com/ghVg8GCofT
— Tiger Shroff (@iTIGERSHROFF) February 7, 2018
But then again, this campaign has been called out as superficial and publicity gimmick for the movie and is actually missing out the actual agenda. Many women in rural India still don’t have access to sanitary napkins whereas, the celebrities are using it as “selfie accessorise”. Stand-up comic and writer Supriya Joshi wrote in a sarcastic facebook post how pointless it is to pose with a pad. Opinions of people vary regarding the padman challenge.
So,Which side are you on?