Menstrual Hygiene day, a global platform that brings together voices and actions of nonprofit organisations, government agencies, individuals and the media to promote good menstrual health and hygiene.
Friday last week was a day for the whole world to celebrate Menstrual Hygiene day and Shyaka Lwanyaaga Farid the Founder of Wellbeing Foundation, an organization that advocates for Menstrual Rights and Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights held a Menstrual themed fashion show. The fashion show dubbed Menstrual Shebang Fashion show was held at MoTIV located on Old Portbell road.
With the whole event production handled by Joram Muzira of JMM, the event that was hosted by Malaika Nyanzi started on a low with a panel discussing Menstrual Health and Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights before taking it to the run way.
The models who were mixed gender showcased outfits from different fashion designers like Yasmin Kalungi of Yasmin K, Claire Asiimwe and Kirabo of Bantu Fashion, Aliad Hadija of Aliad Zoe, Margarete Namutebi of Rays Design, Jamila Brown of JB, Shurea Yasmin of House of Shurea Fashion and Musema Robert of Musema Culture.
Before modeling for the guests who were already waiting to cheer them up, the models all had their hair done by Hair by Zziwa whose employees were also seen backstage to make sure the models not only look great in the outfits but also the hair.
According to Robert Musema one of the designers of the evening, his collection was about menstrual periods which is a normal vaginal bleeding that occurs as part of the woman’s monthly cycle and it had most of his outfits having a touch of red to represent blood. Another designer Aliad Zoe says the designs of her collection was inspired by the shape of tampons. Tampons is a plug of soft material inserted into the vagina to absorb menstrual blood.
Lwanyaaga the organizer of the event said that the inspiration of the show is to fight for equal enjoyment of participation in day to day life and rights. Lwanyaga believes that menstruators are most of the times affected by beliefs and myths connected to religious and cultural meaning which makes them feel worthless.
The event that observed S.O.Ps from sitting arrangement to wearing masks and sanitizing started at 4pm and ended at 8:30pm giving the revelers time to beat the curfew time that was imposed by the Ministry of Health to fight the spread of Covid.