Nick Kyrgios recently made headlines for breaking Wimbledon’s all-white dress code by donning red sneakers and a cap, but there’s a more important issue at stake here. Female tennis players are speaking candidly from inside the oldest tennis tournament in the world about the need for change in order to accommodate their bodily functions and their wellbeing.

Wimbledon began as a male-only tennis tournament in 1877 with an all-white dress code. As well as camouflaging sweat marks, which were not considered genteel, white also reinforced the superiority of this noble game designed for the upper echelons of Edwardian society.

It took seven years for Wimbledon to include women, which signifies the all-white dress codes were decided by men for men.

While this choice of colour has been a persistent problem for Wimbledon’s women on their periods, it is only on rare occasions that players talk openly about this taboo topic to the press. In 2015, British tennis star Heather Watson broke convention, discussing the adverse effect that her “girl things” had on her performance in the Australian Open.