Men Experience Periods For The First Time

There are few things more gratifying than watching people who would never otherwise be able to understand a struggle (and perhaps even make jokes about it) experience it firsthand and promptly shut themselves down — which is almost exactly what happened when these men experienced periods for the first time. Yet another gift from the mad geniuses over at BuzzFeed, a group of volunteers decided that it would be a great idea to walk around for a week as though they had periods. If you're wondering how this was logistically possible, the men had a concoction of beet juice and cornstarch being funneled through a car siphon pump in their pants all day. The results were, well, expected.

Anyone who has ever been through a menstrual cycle can relate to the struggle of not being certain that you'll make it through the day without staining, trying to keep all of your products changed and cleaned as often as (you think) is necessary, and the anxiety-ridden waddle that happens when you realize a burst of Niagara Falls has just slipped out of you. (This is graphic. I'm not sorry.) Raging hormones aside, the pressure of just trying to keep yourself ~clean~ all day is enough to drive anyone insane, and it is so unspeakably gratifying to watch men who would otherwise never understand what this is like have to deal with it for a measly four days of their lives.

In the beginning, they expressed their judgments.

A few of the men even admitted to previously making jokes about women being on their periods, and were refreshingly honest about it.

The experiment begins ...

The men had funnels of beet juice and cornstarch pumping fluid into their underwear all day (at varying rates and quantities, as with a real period), and they were less than prepared to deal with it. There were a number of bloody floor accidents, a lot of pants that were lost to the cause, and generally an unexpected amount of stress. A few of the guys even noted that it was hard to simply focus on what they had to do that day, as they were too worried about leaking (sigh — newbies).

In conclusion ...

As expected, the guys were totally unprepared to deal with fluid coming out of their nether regions for an entire day (forget a week!). Unsurprisingly, they ended the video more or less apologizing for ever having made jokes about or passed judgment on women going through this, and laughed with some of their partners about how they just didn't realize how difficult it really was. Now, this isn't to say this makes women who have periods less capable of doing other things (we're not plagued), but it is totally to say that this makes women who have periods 100 times more badass than these guys were giving them credit for.

Check out the rest of the video here:

Images: YouTube