January 7th, 2010 by Laura Wershler
I love Terry O’Reilly’s take on advertising and enjoy listening to his program The Age of Persusion on CBC radio whenever I get the opportunity, usually catching it by chance as I did this past Monday morning. This episode, Marketing the Unpleasant, tackles the subject of advertising feminine hygiene and other “delicate” products.
Here’s how the episode is described on the show’s website:
They are the ads that make everyone squirm- consumers, media, and especially ad copywriters; ads for the funeral industry, laxatives, incontinence pads, and the queen mother of unpleasant ad briefs- feminine hygiene products. Terry O’Reilly kicks off the 4th season of The Age of Persuasion with an insider’s look at marketing the unpleasant, from the strange-but-true history of marketing menstruation products, to Wal-Mart’s recent decision to sell caskets and urns online.
Now I don’t appreciate the marketing the unpleasant description as regards advertising menstruation products, (he actually calls the assignment ”the Queen Mother of awkward (ad) briefs”) but the show provides some interesting insight into the history of menstrual product advertising. I learned that it was ad legend Arthur Lasker who came up with the idea to bring menstruation education to high schools, which subsequently “led generations of young ladies” to his client’s product – Kotex. Men setting the agenda for what young women learned and thought about menstruation? Just to sell a product? Hey, it’s still happening today. Now we’ve got male doctors setting us up to buy cycle-stopping and other hormonal contraceptives for everything that ails us. If you listen to the show you’ll hear some clips from a 1950’s Disney produced film called Molly Grows Up. The film was written, directed, produced and consulted by men. It will make you either laugh or gag. Continue reading...
Tags: advertising, FemCare advertising, pads, tampons
Posted in Disposable menstrual products, Menstruation | 11 Comments »
December 22nd, 2009 by Laura Wershler
In a December 21, 2009 news release the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) proclaimed that “hormonal contraceptives offer benefits beyond pregnancy prevention“.
You’d have to be an ostrich with her head in the sand not to have heard this message before. Just open any woman’s magazine to any ad for the pill, or any of the myriad varieties of drug-based birth control, and you’ll find the litany (a prolonged and tedious account) of non-contraceptive benefits used as marketing messages to “sell” birth control to girls and women. So the news release begs the question: why now?
Maybe the pharmaceutical companies are putting pressure on the gynies to protect their funding and the drug companies profits. Maybe this news release is damage control. A recent article in Maclean’s magazine proclaimed a trend towards ”ditching the pill for good“.
[O]ral contraceptive prescriptions in Canada levelled off in 2008, reports pharmaceutical industry analyst IMS Health Canada. Health care workers are seeing a growing demand for non-hormonal methods. Spurred by concerns about their health, the environment, or even frustration with family doctors, who sometimes seem to push the pill as a modern-day cure-all, Canadian women are looking for other options.
Are declining prescriptions for hormonal contraceptives a growing trend in North America? Is there a backlash brewing against the pill, the patch and the ring? One can only hope that the days when your gynecologist could convince you that taking the pill is a panacea for everything that, supposedly, is “wrong” with women’s bodies are coming to an end.
Hormonal contraceptives are drugs that disrupt a woman’s normally functioning endocrine system with synthetic versions of estrogen (ethinyl estradiol) and progesterone (progestin) to induce infertility. [Do not be fooled by the language used in the press release.] These drugs have a time and place. But precribing the pill must never become the “standard of care” for being a girl. Mothers everywhere, take note.
Tags: ACOG, birth control pill, Health Care, oral contraceptive pills
Posted in Activism, Advertising, Birth Control, Girls, Health Care, Language, Menstruation, Pharmaceutical, magazines | 2 Comments »
December 10th, 2009 by Laura Wershler
Mammograms showing healthy (left) and (right) cancerous breast. Courtesy of the National Cancer Institute.
Can having too many menstrual cycles give you breast cancer? That’s what one might conclude from two unrelated articles that appeared in national newspapers this week.
First was Nicholas D. Kristof’s Op-Ed in the New York Times. Kristof had recently attended a symposium exploring whether certain common chemicals are linked to breast cancer and other ailments. The role of estrogen – both the real thing our bodies produce and the pseudo-estrogens – in breast cancer was his major example.
The real thing:
One theory starts with the well-known fact that women with more lifetime menstrual cycles are at greater risk for breast cancer, because they’re exposed to more estrogen. For example, a woman who began menstruating before 12 has a 30 percent greater risk of breast cancer than one who began at 15 or later.
The pseudo-estrogens:
One class of chemicals that creates concern — although the evidence is not definitive — is endocrine disruptors, which are often similar to estrogen and may fool the body into setting off hormonal changes. This used to be a fringe theory, but it is now being treated with great seriousness by the Endocrine Society the professional association of hormone specialists in the United States. …These endocrine disruptors are found in everything from certain plastics to various cosmetics.
Continue reading...
Tags: birth control pill, breast cancer, drugs, estrogen, hormones, Menarche, Menopause
Posted in Birth Control, Health Care, Media, Menarche, Menopause, Menstruation, Newspapers, ovulation | Comments Off
Readers should note that statements published in re: Cycling are those of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Society as a whole.
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