A white skirt at Wimbledon. A sudden red stain. And a TikTok that turned an awkward moment into a cultural conversation. Brooks Nader, the Sports Illustrated model and former Dancing with the Stars contestant, didn’t try to hide it. She filmed it, posted it, and watched as millions of women said: yep, been there.
The moment that broke the script at Wimbledon
Nader was at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club with her sister, Sarah Jane, dressed for tradition—polka-dot blouse, white midi skirt, cat-eye sunglasses, the whole prim-and-proper brief. She had leaned into the etiquette of Centre Court, even joking that she toned down her usual look to fit the Wimbledon mood.
Then the unexpected happened. Her period started, and a red stain showed on the lower part of that bright white skirt. Instead of scrambling for a jacket-around-the-waist fix or ducking out of sight, she pulled out her phone. In a TikTok filmed with her sister and friends, Nader spun to show the stain and captioned it: “Tries to be chic. Starts 🩸 at Wimbledon.”
The clip landed the way honest things do—fast and hard. Comments poured in from women who were relieved to see someone with a glossy public image admit to a very familiar mishap. One wrote that it “happens,” and thanked her for normalizing it. Another said she was “so real” for posting it. The tone wasn’t pity; it was solidarity.
Later, Nader explained why she posted it at all. She didn’t plan to go viral, she said, and she wasn’t trying to stage anything. She has three sisters, she’s a woman, and this is life. She could have cried, but she chose to laugh. And that choice—humor over shame—was the point.
Her decision resonated even more because of where it happened. Wimbledon is built on a century-old dress code steeped in white. It’s part of its identity, from the lawns to the players’ kits to the spectators’ summer looks. White is timeless. It’s also unforgiving if your period arrives by surprise.
That tension isn’t new. Over the past few years, athletes and advocates have pushed sports organizations to rethink uniform rules that make menstruation harder to manage. Wimbledon itself adjusted in 2023, allowing female players to wear dark-colored undershorts beneath their all-white outfits to reduce anxiety around leaks. That change followed requests from players who said the old rule added stress during competition.
Nader, a spectator not a player, ran into the exact real-world dilemma those athletes were talking about. A stain on white—no warning, no time to change, no easy fix. The fact that she posted it at one of the most formal sports venues on the planet only underscored how everyday this is, even in places designed to look perfect.
Her Wimbledon moment came on the heels of another high-profile appearance—Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez’s wedding festivities in Venice—where she was photographed among a sea of celebrities. That contrast, from couture in Italy to a candid clip at a tennis tournament, shows how modern fame now includes something else: the unfiltered parts of life that used to be edited out.
Why one TikTok hit a nerve: stigma, sport, and what’s changing
When people say “normalize periods,” they mean moments like this. What might have once been handled with whispers and a jacket around the waist is now a social post and a cascade of “same here” replies. And the conversation isn’t only about influencers—it’s about sport, uniforms, and performance.
Female athletes have been saying it for years. In 2015, British tennis player Heather Watson talked about struggling with “girl things” at the Australian Open after a tough match, a frank admission that made headlines because it was so rare to hear in post-game interviews. In 2016, Chinese swimmer Fu Yuanhui openly mentioned her period after a relay at the Rio Olympics, telling reporters she wasn’t at her best. A year earlier, runner Kiran Gandhi completed the London Marathon while free-bleeding to raise awareness, igniting a global debate about shame and visibility.
These moments added up. In women’s soccer, top teams have moved away from white shorts, acknowledging the stress it creates during competition. England’s Lionesses switched to darker shorts. Clubs in Spain, the U.S., and Australia have made similar changes. Brands have responded too—designing kits and base layers with leak protection and better materials. It’s not about politics. It’s about players not having to think about their bodies leaking on game day.
Research backs up what athletes report. Surveys of tens of thousands of recreational and elite sportswomen have found that a large share say their period, or symptoms tied to it—cramps, fatigue, headaches—affect training and performance. Many adjust workouts or competition routines around their cycle. Coaches are starting to plan with that in mind, using basic tracking and communication to reduce surprise and manage load more intelligently.
That’s the sport side. On the social side, honesty like Nader’s strikes a chord because the script for public women has long been perfection. The hair, the fit, the poise—especially at a place like Wimbledon. A stain blows that up. It says the quiet part out loud: bodies are bodies. Sometimes they leak.
Her post also shows how the platform changes the message. A press release about destigmatizing periods would have sunk without a ripple. A seven-second TikTok with a spin and a caption made the same point with more impact and less sermon. It wasn’t framed as a cause. It was just real.
Of course, there’s always a risk when public figures share personal moments. The internet can be cruel about anything that dents a polished image, and viral attention can veer off course quickly. That didn’t happen here. The reaction concentrated around relief and praise, which says something about where the culture has moved—especially among younger women who live in app-native communities and value candor over curation.
It also spotlights how dress codes intersect with biology. Wimbledon’s white-on-white tradition makes for iconic photography. It also asks women, both athletes and spectators, to thread a needle during days when discretion is harder to manage. The All England Club’s shift on undershorts was a meaningful tweak for players. Event organizers elsewhere could take notes: offer period products in restrooms, train staff to help discreetly, and accept that accidents happen without turning them into a scandal.
There’s a business angle too. Brands that market to women in sport increasingly build products around the realities of the menstrual cycle—think breathable fabrics, darker shorts, and base layers designed to reduce leaks. That’s not just optics. It’s responding to a known need, one that participants have articulated for years. When events, teams, and sponsors line up on solutions, the stigma tends to shrink.
For tennis, the conversation is broader than uniforms. It touches scheduling, recovery, and even media coverage. If a top player mentions that cramps or heavy bleeding affected a match, it shouldn’t become a headline about “excuses.” It should be treated like any other physical factor—heat, fatigue, injury niggles—that athletes manage as part of competition.
Back to Nader. Her video worked because she didn’t over-explain. She didn’t try to teach a lesson or tell anyone how to feel. She simply showed what happened and cracked a joke. The internet did the rest, turning a small mishap into a signal flare for everyday honesty.
Her fans didn’t just applaud; they recognized themselves. The comments read like a group chat: we’ve all been there, thank you for saying it, this made my day. Some even argued the moment made her more stylish, not less—chic because she didn’t hide, not because she stayed spotless.
That shift—connecting chic with candor—matters. Teenage girls and young women take their cues from what they see. If fashion, sport, and media keep reinforcing the idea that a period is something to smuggle past the cameras, the cycle of silence continues. If high-visibility people show the opposite, the tone changes. Little by little, the embarrassment drains out.
None of this makes the stain fun in the moment. Nader herself noted the irony: she dressed more conservatively than usual for Wimbledon, tried to play by the rules, and still ended up at the center of attention. But choosing humor over panic turned a would-be nightmare into a pressure-release valve—for her and for everyone watching.
It’s also worth remembering that spectators aren’t equipped like athletes are. Players have locker rooms, spare kits, and staff. Fans have whatever’s in their bag. That’s another reason to normalize slipups and make venues more accommodating. Fixing the practical stuff—stocked restrooms, discreet support, simple signage—goes a long way.
There’s a cultural lag here. Dress codes born in the 19th century collide with 21st-century expectations about health, comfort, and dignity. Wimbledon has already shown it can adjust without losing its identity. Other institutions can too. Tradition is strongest when it can flex.
In the end, one TikTok did what a dozen panel discussions might not. It pushed the conversation forward without lecturing anyone. It reminded people that style and honesty can exist in the same frame. And it nudged the sports world to keep improving the details that make participation less stressful for women.
Call it a small win with big reach. A model in a white skirt had a human moment on a famous patch of grass, and the sky didn’t fall. If anything, the applause suggests the audience was ready—and maybe a little hungry—for a simple show of period positivity.
Will we see more of this? Probably. Social media rewards authenticity, and sports settings still collide with real life in unpredictable ways. When that happens, the smartest response isn’t to pretend it didn’t. It’s to show it, fix what you can, and move on. Nader did exactly that, and a lot of people were grateful.