© 2022 IJNRD | Volume 7, Issue 12 December 2022 | ISSN: 2456-4184 | IJNRD.ORG IJNRD2212058 International Journal of Novel Research and Development (www.ijnrd.org) a430 Padman: Successfully challenging the Stereotypes Dr. Chitra Dashora Assistant Professor, Manikya Lal Verma Shramjeevi College, Udaipur, Rajasthan. Abstact: The article tries to focus on how a bollywood movie named “Padman” becomes successful in highlighting the highly sensible issue pertaining to women menstruation and challenges the myths and humiliating stereotypes associated with it worldwide. The article tries to promote the practice of highlighting such issue pertaining to stereotypes. The article identifies how a movie helps in changing the age-old conventional thought process; it should be welcomed with hands held wide. While making the movie, the producers have also carefully showcased the “Make In India” Idea, Swaying away from gender discrimination and women empowerment is shown during few scenes in the movie. Index Terms: Menstruation Cycle, Stereotypes myths, Movie’s and overcoming societal taboos Padman focuses on a bigger issue that is the humiliation and restrictions which are framed with menstruation. These taboo’s, in India are, no entry in the holy places, staying away from people and food in the kitchen, also barred from eating or touching pickles. Such restrictions regarding periods are wide spread across every nation in the world and not only India, which shows that huge number of females, face discrimination. Few of the humiliating practices around the world are: Nepal: The ethnical custom called Chaupadi in western Nepal is a practice associated with menstrual taboo in which the females in periods are forced to sleep out of their homes, in places like cowsheds. This custom of Chaupdai was barred in 2005 and was announced as illegal in 2017. However, a lady lost her life in January 2018 due to this practice (Miglani, 2019). Japan: The women are not allowed to become Sushi Chefs as it is believed that the menstruation period adversely affects their taste buds. However, a lot of brave women are fighting this by starting their own restaurants (Ethan, 2018). Afghanistan: A bizarre thought process is followed which says that bathing or washing self leads to infertility. Bolivia: The females are told that they can get affected by cancer if they discard their used sanitary pads with other garbage. USA: Period shaming is widespread and almost 42% of the women have experienced it, around 58% of the women were ashamed of it and a whopping 73% of the women hide the sight of sanitary pads and tampons (Govender, 2018). I had a proud feeling for the makers of the movie, the day I first saw the movie. The director, actors and the makers even considered the topic of menstruation, serious enough to make a movie. Since then, I scribbled about my share of experience of this very normal monthly physical happening. Later a lot many of the people turned out to tell their part and experiences. This movie helped a lot to start discussing about a topic, which till now was considered to be a feminine only issue. A challenge went viral and was trending on the internet in which a lot of celeb’s posted their pictures holding a sanitary pad. Even though this challenge attracted some bashing as it was considered as publicity stunt to promote the movie, it attracted lot of women and they posted their own pictures while holding a sanitary pad. I believe that it should be given a chance – if this trend helps in changing the age-old conventional thought process, it should be welcomed with hands held wide. While making the movie, the producers have also carefully showcased the “Make In India” Idea, Swaying away from gender discrimination and women empowerment is shown during few scenes in the movie. Still, when a person moves out of the cinema hall, those awesome sentiments of honor/enthusiasm/encouragement while watching the story of a societal businessman fades away shortly. That’s where Padman loses out on creating an ever-lasting impression on its audience. The movie takes the right path from the beginning, crafts the highly required attention of the issue and makes the people start discussing about the topic, but later steers away from its target when it stats following the typical standards of a Bollywood movie. This movie takes its plot from the life of A. Muruganantham, a professional mechanic. Lakshmikant Chauhan and gayatri gets married who are played by Akshay Kumar and Radhika Apte (Airoldi, 2004). Laksmikant is worried about his wife using a dirty cloth in the 5 day menstrual period. Lakshmikant being a reasonable and sensible person by nature, never believes the centuries old beliefs related to menstruation and doesn’t want his wife Gayatri, to fall prey to the unhealthy ways of handli ng the menstrual periods and get sick. This makes him buy a packet of sanitary pads for his wife. His wife couldn’t digest the cost of 55 rupees for one packet and asks him to return it for a refund. Lakshmi gets baffled by the heavy price for such a light weighing packet. This motivates Lakshmikant, a critical thinker, to start working with cotton and muslin cloth to come up with a cost-effective, homemade variety of pads to convince his wife start using one. After much persuasion, Gayatri starts using them but declares it as a dripping fiasco in the next month. Being