🔥 Read this insightful post from BBC Sport 📖
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Hartley, 32, added: “If a young girl was listening to the radio and heard I was on my period, she would say: ‘That’s totally normal for people to talk about that.'”
“It shouldn’t be taboo. Females shouldn’t be afraid to talk about their periods. It’s normal and normal.”
“I had 4,000 German marks [direct messages] From people saying it was great, “thanks for talking about it.”
“A lot of parents, teenage girls and men stood up for me. It wasn’t all bad.”
During the podcast, Hartley and her co-host, England bowler Kate Cross, discussed an email received from a listener in India, who was banned from playing cricket with boys due to her period.
In the UK, the 2022 campaign said 64% of school-age girls would stop exercising in their mid-teens due to menstrual pain and shame.
“The more we talk about it, the more normalized it becomes,” Hartley said.
This topic is often discussed in cricket in relation to menstrual bleeding and players wearing white in Test matches. England players have said they want to continue wearing the traditional colours.
“My first spell was in a club cricket match,” Hartley said. “We were all wearing white clothes. I felt a bit funny and went to the toilet and got my period.
“I was so old. All my friends had gone through it.
“I had to go into the dressing room and say I got my first period. Has anyone gotten any kind of sanitary product? Being 13 and going through that.”
Cross, who played the last of her eight red-ball caps for England in 2023, said test match weeks can be “worrying”. She said that some female players take pills to delay menstruation.
“Everyone would rather do that than risk something bad happening when you’re on TV in your white clothes,” she said.
Hartley added: “I wouldn’t do that. Every drinks break I would get off the pitch and change my clothes every hour just to be safe. Some people would put pads on too.”
⚡ What do you think?
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