Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal has exposed the sheer ignorance of Indian men when it comes to periods and menstrual cycles. And it took only one dialogue to achieve that.
Ranbir Kapoor’s character Ranvijay Singh yells at his wife Geetanjali (Rashmika Mandanna) and ‘calls her out’ for her ‘period drama’. “You change four pads a month and cause so much drama over it. I’m changing 50 pads a month!!” says Singh, whose character undergoes surgery in the film. He doesn’t need pads; he needs a diaper.
However, ignorance has not stopped men from explaining the menstrual cycle to women. And X (formerly Twitter) is full of mansplainers.
When a woman tweeted about the lack of logic in the dialogue, one man was quick to show off his deplorable knowledge of biology. “As per my knowledge, a woman bleeds only once in a month & 4 pads are more than enough for a day,” he wrote.
On being shamed for acting like Vanga’s ‘muft ka lawyer’ (lawyer hired for free), the man doubled down. He genuinely believes that women only menstruate for one day in a month. Apparently, he studied biology in 10th grade and claimed to have “passed with distinction”. Vanga’s fanboy then proudly told everyone that his logic was supported by his male gynaecologist friend who “knows about women’s bodies better than any woman”.
Shame on Vanga for fostering this ignorance. At a time when countries are offering period leaves, our cinema is regressing so much that women are being hated on for openly sharing their experiences of menstruation. It’s clear that the dialogue stems from male contempt over women vocalising their pain. It is also clear that Vanga, and the people cheering him on, snoozed through eighth-grade biology class.
But what would you expect from Vanga, whose latest movie looks like it was made to put feminists in their place, after the large-scale condemnation of his previous film, Kabir Singh (2019)?
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Bhaago, bhaago mansplainer aaya
In a society where menstruating women are still made to feel less than, often banned from places of worship and also ostracised, there needs to be more conversations on periods—in classrooms, homes, and popular culture.
The level of ignorance was magnified when a woman uploaded a clip of the infamous scene on X. She had to take it down for copyright violation—but not before it went viral. The response from male X users makes the blood boil.
Their entire pool of knowledge probably comes from 30 second sanitary pad ads and memes made by the Andrew Tates of the world.
A lot of people making a fool of themselves on X could have saved themselves from this embarrassment had they listened to Rachel Green in Friends two decades ago– “no uterus, no opinion”.
Was it too idealistic to think that school-level biology books and exposure to women breaking the shackles of silence around periods would have led to a more informed opinion regarding menstrual cycles?
The lack of knowledge on menstruation is so acute, that 65 per cent of Indian women don’t even recognise the symptoms of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) or PCOD—they continue to suffer in silence.
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Manly men of cinema
Dialogue around periods entered the Indian mainstream after Akshay Kumar’s Pad Man (2018). Kumar can still be seen on cinema screens, before the movies start playing, urging people to quit smoking and buy sanitary pads with that money instead.
A National Family Health Survey report revealed that 50 per cent of young women still use cloth during the menstrual cycle instead of pads.
At a time when it’s extremely crucial to de-stigmatise periods and conversations around it, the contemptuous dialogues from Vanga’s film would only vilify women more. We need more of Pad Man’s Lakshmikant Chauhans and less of Ranvijay Singhs. The former will always be more of a man than the latter.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)