Bloody Bitches’ Nayanka Paul Leads With Her Intuition To Bring Black Menstruating Folks in Philly Together
Image of Nayanka Paul. Photo courtesy of Nayanka Paul.
By Kristen Jeré
Through her work as the founder of Bloody Bithces, Nayanka Paul is on a mission to end period poverty and stigma in Philly and beyond.
“I realized there was a demographic of folks who couldn’t afford menstrual products. It’s really a public health crisis.”
In 2018, you might have found Nayanka Paul on campus in between classes at Temple University (TU) in Philadelphia, selling her newly conceptualized Dot Boxes, care packages with a variety of menstrual products, to students on campus.
A junior in college then, Nayanka was taking an entrepreneurship class where part of her work was to create, market, and sell an authentic product. The idea itself came from Nayanka tapping into her own needs around menstruation. “I was on my period [at the time], and I was having these cravings,” said Nayanka. “I was like, ‘I’m having these cravings, and I want to feel good.’”
She also used her understanding of popular markets to create the project. “In 2018, subscription boxes were really popular, but I realized that nothing was really geared towards menstruators,” said Nayanka. The Dot Box quickly became a popular subscription based and one time purchase offer for menstruators at TU. Nayanka and her peers she collaborated with on the project, targeted students that benefited from generational wealth to encourage them to open their pockets by purchasing two boxes: one for themselves and one to be donated to a fellow menstruator who couldn’t afford to purchase the box.
“I realized there was a demographic of folks who couldn’t afford menstrual products. It’s really a public health crisis”, said Nayanka.
Nayanka Paul tabling for Bloody Bitches. Photo courtesy of Nayanka Paul.
“Being that [Philly] is a poor city and it’s a predominantly Black city, we really know that the government does not give a fuck about us. Philly really is an example of a community pulling through together.”
This realization came with a broader knowledge of the fabric of community organizing that is uniquely Philadelphia and essential to the city’s survival. Originally from Reading, Pennsylvania, Nayanka moved to Philly to attend college and the city became home.
The depth and necessity of Philly’s organizing culture is part of what made the Dot Box and Nayanka’s future organizing possible. “Being that [Philly] is a poor city and it’s a predominantly Black city, we really know that the government does not give a fuck about us. Philly really is an example of a community pulling through together,” Nayanka emphasized.
“Often, I feel people try to put a divide against Black people. There is a conversation about Black people that are a bit “uppity” and that look down amongst other Black people, where they don’t want to live with other Black people because of things they’ve been taught…Philly is the example that Black people can coexist and produce labors of love and be of service to each other”, she continued.
Through Nayanka continuing to build these connections, she was able to nourish her passion for providing solutions to period poverty in Philly beyond the initial Dot Box project. In 2019, Nayanka and her partner at the time, Zoë Velle, imagined a larger community initiative that would feature public events, art classes, and informational interviews with experts on menstruation.
They decided to call their collective Bloody Bitches.
Left to right: Bloody Bitches Team Member, Toni-Anne McDonald, coloring in the Bloody Bitches coloring book "Stay Flow". Nayanka Paul and Bloody Bitches Team Member, Amani Reid. Photo courtesy of Nayanka Paul.
In Spring 2020, right after Nayanka graduated from TU, she was attending a leadership conference when she got a bodily feeling that she should be focusing solely on Bloody Bitches.
“While I was there, we were doing so much building work…I was mostly working on the legislative aspect of Bloody Bitches. I was getting so much feedback and writing stuff down. “I was thinking, ‘I’m so happy doing this, and I’m in such a good headspace, and I really believe in this,’” said Nayanka, who, at the time, was running two businesses including Bloody Bitches.
“God was just like, ‘Forget about that. Put your focus here.’ I really heard God speak, and I didn’t second guess it,” said Nayanka. “As soon as I got home from the conference, I told everybody [on my team], ‘We’re shifting to focusing solely on Bloody Bitches’.”
The kind of programming that Bloody Bitches offered up to that point was broad and expansive. A few months already into the pandemic, Nayanka felt led to make sure that Bloody Bitches was filling essential gaps in the community.
“[Before the pandemic], I had been focusing more on the business aspect but with the pandemic and the rising needs of menstruators due to period poverty in Philly, I wanted to focus on getting people the products that they needed,” said Nayanka. Free resources, menstrual product drop offs and pickups, and free menstrual education on Zoom became the major tenets of Bloody Bitches.
Nayanka also went to classrooms to teach about menstruation as well as offering one-on-one educational sessions. Community events and public programming began to grow from there, with collaboration from Nayanka’s friends and Bloody Bitches team members, Toni-Anne McDonald, Amani Reid, and Zoë Velle.
For their first in-person event in August 2020, Bloody Bitches organized a march and a rally, where a group of around 20 people met up at Fairmount Park in Philly for the event. “It ended up being truly beautiful. So many people showed up in ways I didn’t anticipate,” said Nayanka. “Everyone looked so captivated. It was a very good, affirming [moment] to push us out there, and to let people know who the heck we are…but also an intimate vibe like, ‘Fuck the police; fuck this government,’” she said.
By the next year in 2021, Bloody Bitches was organizing many more projects and initiatives. One of which was the Black Women’s March in Philly, where they were invited to speak about their organization and also handed out flyers and networked with other Black women-led organizations in attendance.
[From left to right]: Nayanka Paul and her niece, Milan Price, and her niece's friend; Suhayla Wilson
“Philly really is a place that grooms you to be a community member.”
In 2022, Bloody Bitches worked with The Dot Project in Baltimore, Maryland (not affiliated with The Dot Box), a menstrual care organization, to co-create a coloring book filled with images on reproductive anatomy, labels for different body parts, and written pieces. Artists submitted visual art for the coloring book, as well as poems and the coloring book also featured some work by locally loved artists, including Philly poet Shirmina Geneva.
“We really wanted to offer relief for menstruaters but there was also a need for education," Nayanka said about the inspiration for the coloring book.
Bloody Bitches has also done IG Lives for educational purposes dating back to 2020. In 2022 they hosted an IG live focused on “Healing After Heartbreak. From yoga instructors to experts on fibroids, to supporting transgender students at local universities in Philly, Bloody Bitches has made it a goal to feature a wide range of perspectives in the reproductive community.
In January 2023, Bloody Bitches collaborated with 2.0 Art Collective, a Philly based group “for and by black femmes and genderqueer artists”, to make ceramics of vulvas and do other healing art activities including vision boarding and tea making.
“Having opportunities for the public to practice art making around menstruation is central to the mission of Bloody Bitches”, said Nayanka. “Black people are always producing art. Even if you’re not an artist, engaging in art is such a release because so much healing is done through art”, she continued.
Always building community and providing political education on menstraution, Bloody Bitches has slowed down while Nayanka takes a moment to pause and focus on herself. “So much of my work is care and community work, and it can be draining,” said Nayanka. During Bloody Bitches’ momentous period in 2021, for example, Nayanka was also balancing teaching a high school sex education class as well as an elementary school class. In addition, Nayanka was only in her early 20s when she started Bloody Bitches which has caused her to grow up alongside the collective. “I want to use this year to reclaim myself. Maybe once my vision becomes clearer for myself, my vision for Bloody Bitches will too,” said Nayanka.
Just like her initial intuitive moment that led her to center Bloody Bitches as her communal focus, this time of rest too is deeply purposeful. “I feel like everything I do is intricate and intentional,” said Nayanka. “I’m very in tune with my emotions, my “Yes’s”, and I don’t play about God”.
Whatever’s next for the Bloody Bitches, it’s sure to be filled with the heart and authenticity that its hometown of Philadelphia is known for.
“Philly has a rep of having a bad attitude. Even people from Philly say that. And not to say there isn’t an attitude here, but the attitude doesn’t take away from the love–the love that I've experienced, the love that I’ve seen the community give to each other, the care that I've witnessed. The care that people have given to me,” said Nayanka.
“Philly really is a place that grooms you to be a community member.”
About the author
Kristen Jeré (she/her) is a writer, doula and herbalist based in Chicago.