Blog of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research
The lovely ladies of LunaPads have made a sweet little video that explains why you should make the switch from paper products to cloth pads – in less than 90 seconds!
If you’ve already made the switch, this is an easy way to persuade your friends. You can email it, Tweet, share it on Facebook, heck, cue it up on your smartphone and show it to ‘em!
But only when you’re clean and fresh “down there”. Apparently women’s natural, in-born courage is best nurtured with scented moist towelettes.
I can’t decide what’s more offensive – the content of this ad, or the fact that someone got paid to write it.
[via Copyranter]
Is it wrong that I like this ad because it makes men look foolish for fearing tampons? It’s not that I mean to endorse mocking men as a class, it’s just that unlike the Kotex “Ridiculous” ad, this new ad frames something other than menstruation as this lady’s biggest problem.
Mooncup, shown actual size.
A small study published this month in the Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology tested effectiveness of the mooncup. The results won’t surprise anyone who has used one: “The Mooncup leaked 0.5 times less frequently and required to be changed 2.8 times less frequently, on average, during one menstrual period than regular sanitary protection.”
Or coochie, or bajingo, or vajayjay, or any other term for female genitalia. The big news in U.S. femcare this week is the launch of Kotex’s new “Break the Cycle” campaign, and the refusal of American television to air commercials that use the word vagina. As Amanda Hess put it, “you know, the place where the fucking tampon goes.” Meanwhile, Mooncup has launched new ads for their menstrual cups with a “Love Your Vagina” campaign in the UK. The campaign includes posters all over the place with different names women have for their vaginas – fru-fru, bajingo, coochie, lady garden and vajayjay – and the domain name LoveYourVagina.com.
According to this article in Marie-Claire,
Mooncup intend[s] to stimulate debate and encourage women to care about their vaginal health as much as they care for their hair, nails and make up. Kath Clements, Campaigns Manager for Mooncup, says: ‘We hope the ads will get women thinking, smiling and talking about their vaginas.’
No word yet on whether British media are permitting television ads.
Magazine advertisement for Stayfree Maxi-Pads, March 2010.
In the ongoing femcare arms race, manufacturers compete to promote the latest technology in menstrual wear. We’ve seen LeakLock®, Four Walled Protection®, Built-in Backup® Skirt, Clean SorbTM Cover (I am not making this up, to borrow an old line from Dave Barry), and now THERMOCONTROLTM technology.
But it’s illustrated with one of the world’s oldest technologies for period management: Just tear off a piece of your shirt. There. Isn’t that nice – soft and absorbent?
By the way, the fine print at the very bottom of the ad reads, “DRAMATIZATION. Stayfree® Ulta-Thins are not made from the same material as athletic fabric.”
This week, Kotex is launching a new campaign “that aims to encourage women to talk candidly and without embarrassment about periods and vaginal care”. Research statistics from the brand indicate that “vaginally-aware women” are more likely to have a positive body image (40% vs. 31%) and to be satisfied with their level of self-confidence (64% vs. 43%) and ability to express themselves (76% vs. 55%). In the same survey, 70% of women said they wish society would change the way it talks about vaginal health, but less than half feel like they can do anything about it.
Of course, this means new products from Kotex. But from where I sit, there’s little new here. The products seem to be the same old Kotex pads and tampons, now individually wrapped in bright, “fierce” colors instead of the usual pastels. The same old plastic applicators are now yellow, blue, or green, instead of just pink. The anti-ad advertisement technique (see video at right) was pioneered by Sprite (a CocaColaTM product) in their mid-1990s “Image is Nothing. Obey Your Thirst.” campaign. The Sprite ad was featured in Douglas Rushkoff’s 2001 film, The Merchants of Cool, as an example of how corporate advertising appropriates youth culture to appeal to young people.
In a controlled study of 268 Australian women with surgically confirmed moderate-to-severe endometriosis (cases) and 244 women without endometriosis (controls), researchers found that characteristics of a woman’s early menstrual cycles were associated with later development of endometriosis. Data showed those who did not start their menstrual cycle until after they turned 14 had a significantly reduced risk of later developing endometriosis.
Duration of the cycle, intensity of flow, and preferred choice of menstrual product showed no association with endometriosis.
The results are published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, December 2009. You can read the abstract here.
In the grand tradition of Ms. magazine, we present the latest installment of SNL’s “Classic ESPN Women’s Sports Tournament” with NO COMMENT.
(OK, if you really want to know what we think, see our previous posts about this misogynist series. We’re just too tired to say it again.)
Specifically, we’ve questioned the assumption that menstrual FLOW management is girls’ biggest menstrual problem (it is not, says at least one recent study–cramps are!). And we’ve been MORE critical of so-called altruistic solutions that are, underneath the (silent?) disposable wrapper, little-more than consumer socialization. Menstrual shame, sexism and poverty are not ameliorated though the cultivation of brand loyalty. Girls need information, support and the tools to develop awareness of their bodies while learning to live sustainably–this does not come in the shape of a box of single-use products that ends up clogging landfills.
Making green products available to girls while supporting economic growth and self-sufficiency in the Global South seems a more enduring and girl-centered initiative and there are number of projects that are doing just that. There Elizabeth Scharpf’s SHE initaitive in Rwanda and Lunapads donation program in collaboration with a number of related initiatives:
An Israeli inventor has applied for a patent for a device to shorten the duration of menstrual flow. Apparently it works by insertion into the vagina and “delivering pressure oscillations and/or acoustic waves and/or shock waves to the vagina and cervix to change the flow properties of menses fluid”, which causes the rate of blood flow to increase so that total time of bleeding decreases. Also, “the device also includes an absorbent member attached to the pressure oscillations generating unit for absorbing menstrual secretions.” In other words, there’s a built-in tampon to catch the increased flow.
For my money, that little device looks and sounds a lot more uncomfortable than wearing pads or tampons.
Word on the street is that Apple is introducing their first tablet computer today. With their usual flourish, they’ve named it . . . wait for it . . . the iPad.
ETA: The ladies at Jezebel have published more than one compilation of period-related iPad jokes. A sample:
Are you there, God? It’s me, Marketing.
Don’t make fun. The iPad is the technology of the future. Period.
Can I get a scented iPad for when my data feels not-so-fresh?
Edited again to add: The Week has an interesting comparison of historical femcare slogans and Apple slogans – more similar than one might expect.
[Video via Lunapads]
We at re: Cycling have been tracking the African-girls-miss-school-because-they-menstruate equation for a while now.
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