Every woman has a period horror story: Why are we still so ashamed of them?

By Ruby Raut, founder and CEO of WUKA

In nine years of running WUKA, I’ve heard thousands of period horror stories. The jumper tied round the waist in June. The leak in PE. The sleepover where you woke up and wanted the mattress to swallow you whole.

When women tell me these stories, they almost always laugh. But they nearly always add something else too: I never told anyone. Not their mum, not their best friend, not the teacher who saw the stain on the chair.

We like to think we’ve moved on. Period pants are on supermarket shelves, VAT has come off them, and brands talk about blood using red instead of blue. Yet the shame hasn’t gone anywhere. It has just gone quiet.

The numbers say we haven’t moved on

Almost every woman has had a period mishap, and most of us would be mortified if it happened in public. Recent UK research is clear:

• 86% of women who have had a period have experienced a period mishap, and 77% would feel ashamed if one happened in public (Wellbeing of Women and Censuswide, February 2025).
• 53% of women and girls have been shamed about their period symptoms, rising to 69% of women aged 16 to 24 (same survey). The youngest women, the ones who should have grown up with more openness, report the most shame.
• 58% of women who felt ashamed, anxious or embarrassed on their period put it down to fear of leaking onto their clothes (ActionAid UK and YouGov).
• 29% of women and girls feel embarrassed buying period products in a shop, and 47% of 12 to 17 year olds ask someone else to buy them (Aldi and OnePoll, April 2026).

The common thread isn’t the period. It’s the fear of being seen.

What shame costs girls

Shame isn’t just an uncomfortable feeling. It changes what girls do.

In a survey of 1,000 girls aged 15 to 18 who play sport, 78% said they had stopped playing because of their periods, and six in ten of them did so over fear of stains and leaks. 63% had leaked while playing, and afterwards 74% felt embarrassed (Persil and OnePoll, January to February 2025).

That’s the quiet cost. A girl sits out PE. She skips the sleepover. She doesn’t put her hand up to ask a question, because the question is about her body. Each choice is small, but together they shrink her world at exactly the age it should be getting bigger.

And because nobody talks about it, every girl thinks she’s the only one.

Laughing at the monsters

This Halloween at WUKA, we decided to say the stories out loud. We took real first period horror stories from our customers and turned them into monsters. The Wear Wolf, a jumper knotted round a sweaty waist. The Pleatergeist, a netball skirt mid leak. The Nightmattress, lurking under the sheets at a sleepover. Sleevil, a blazer sleeve stuffed with smuggled tampons.

It’s tongue in cheek on purpose. Humour is how you take the power out of something. When a monster has a silly name and a worried face, it stops being scary, and the moment behind it stops being something to hide.

We’re asking women everywhere to share their own story and send a short video telling it. Not for sympathy, but so that the next girl hears it and knows: this happens to everyone, and it’s fine.

What needs to change

The products have changed. Girls today have more choice than ever: period pants in every style and flow, pads, tampons, cups. That matters, because the right product means fewer leaks and fewer horror stories. But products alone won’t end the shame. Conversation will.

That means mums telling daughters their own stories, not just handing over a packet. It means dads, teachers and coaches knowing what to say. It means schools treating a leak like a nosebleed: a normal thing that happens, sorted without fuss.

Every woman I meet has a period horror story. My hope is that her daughter won’t. And if she does, that she laughs about it the same day, instead of carrying it for thirty years.

Every mum has one. Her daughter won’t. #everymumhasone

Ruby Raut is the founder and CEO of WUKA, the UK’s first reusable period wear brand and a certified B Corp. She led the campaign that removed VAT from period underwear in the UK in 2024.