Meet Kiran Gandhi. She's a Harvard Business graduate, a drummer for M.I.A. and a socially aware marathon runner. 

Recently Kiran completed the London Marathon, and her experience has gone viral over the last 48 hours. When her period arrived unexpectedly the night before the race, Kiran had to make the choice between wearing a tampon or pad for 42km or going without.

She chose the latter, and decided to use her decision to make a public statement about stigmas and sexism.

"I got my flow the night before and it was a total disaster but I didn’t want to clean it up. It would have been way too uncomfortable to worry about a tampon [for the race]," Kiran wrote on her personal blog. "I thought, if there’s one person society won’t f*ck with, it’s a marathon runner."

Dressed in pink and having raised $6,000 (€5,480) along with two friends for Breast Cancer Care, Kiran finished the 42km course in 4 hours and 49 minutes with her period blood flowing free. Although the marathon took place back in April, a recent article by Cosmopolitan brought Kiran's unorthodox decision into the public eye.

The reaction so far on Twitter has been mixed:

Speaking about her choice, Kiran said it definitely wasn't planned but that she felt it was the right move at the time. "They tell you that for men, their nipples will bleed because of the chafing between their shirts and their skin [while running long distance]. I worried that a tampon might have the same effect," she explained. 

"Granted, that might have been ignorant because people run completely fine, but 26 miles is different than just, like, three or four."

But once she started bleeding, Kiran said she was too excited about how the race was going to even care. "Once I started bleeding, I felt kind of like, Yeah! Fuck you! I felt very empowered by that. I did," she admits.