Blog of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research
Ladies, are your tampons doing enough? Apparently absorbing menstrual fluid without leaking is no longer sufficient: new, Brilliant pH tampons “are clinically shown to reduce the usual feminine pH increase that occurs during your period.”
But let Dr. Streicher explain in this commercial for Brilliant pH tampons.
Video should open in new window.
Of course, Brilliant also includes a “comfortable, soft plastic applicator” with “smooth rounded tip” and raised ridge for “easy grip”.
Apparently Max le Tampax is all stressed out about heading off to the Tampon Academy, where he’ll learn all about freshness and vaginal awareness and how to be empowerful to women.
Something like that, anyway. I don’t speak French, so I’d welcome a translation of this ad for a new Tampax product introduced in France.
[via The Frisky]
Elizabeth Kissling’s March 16 post on the launch of the U by Kotex campaign and the comments that followed touched on the implications of the “new” Kotex products and their accompanying empowerment crusade. Comments ranged from how the new tampon applicators resemble glow sticks to how, with the new “menstruation optional” pills and implants, tampon and pad manufacturers are grasping any marketing ploy to keep girls menstruating and buying their products. Indeed, “empowering” women about their menstrual cycle and encouraging women to “celebrate their bodies” is a smart marketing move by Kotex in the face of the menstrual suppression option. The following comment from Giovanna Chesler’s on Kissling’s March 16 post sums up my own opinion about the “radical new product”.:
“Might I add that when I heard that Kotex was bringing a new, radical product to market, I assumed it would be a menstrual cup. What’s new about painting a tampon applicator? Still plastic. Still disposable. Shows how naive I am. Kotex selling menstrual cups… that would be the day!”
Let us not forget, these products still have the same pesticide-infused cotton and the same one-time-use, land fill-bound plastic applicators and wrappers.
So here’s an odd little study: when women are given a choice between oral contraceptives and the contraceptive vaginal ring, what characteristic is most highly correlated with a slightly greater interest in using the vaginal ring? If you said “tampon use”, you’re right!
Among contraceptive vaginal ring and OCP users, 247 (79%) reported using tampons. Contraceptive vaginal ring users were not significantly different from OCP users in terms of age, race or ethnicity, marital status, insurance, body mass index, or parity. Adjusted analysis indicated that tampon users were more likely to choose the contraceptive vaginal ring instead of OCPs.
The study was published this month in Obstetrics & Gynecology. The researchers conclude, “but all women should be offered the contraceptive vaginal ring regardless of experience with tampon use”. No kidding. Sadly, they don’t appear to be offered any non-hormonal contraceptive options, as this research was conducted in conjunction with The Contraceptive Choice Project, described in the research report as “a longitudinal study of 10,000 St. Louis area women promoting the use of long-acting, reversible methods of contraception and evaluating user continuation and satisfaction for all reversible methods.”
It seems to me that the researchers want to predict contraceptive choices based on how willing contraceptive users are to touch their own genitals, but apparently they can’t directly ask them. They might accidentally discover an interest in using a diaphragm or cervical cap!
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.
Over the last week, I thought I had participated in enough discussions of Kotex’s new “Break the Cycle” campaign; we had a lengthy discussion here at re:Cycling, and I’ve joined in the comments at several other ladyblogs, as have my co-bloggers. But then I discovered there are more videos!
Don’t expect to see any of these on U.S. television, but they’re definitely worth checking out: in one, a man seeks the advice of other shoppers in selecting the right tampons for his girlfriend (hint: her height and weight really aren’t relevant); in another, people appear reluctant to identify ink blots that resemble a human vulva, more so than identifying those that resemble a human penis. And you won’t believe the names for both. But I think this one is my favorite:
I want to be able to just press the play button on this one the next time I hear someone say, “What?!? There’s a Society for Menstrual Cycle Research?!?”
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.
So last week (and yesterday on Twitter) I was griping about missing out on the panel discussion “That Not So Fresh Feeling: Marketing Embarrassing Products To Women” at HousingWorks in New York. Muchas gracias to Jessica Grose of Double X for taking video and posting them online. This one features all four panelists – Allison Silverman, Susan Kim, Sarah Haskins, and moderator Hanna Rosin. Allison Silverman comments about aspirational tampon ads: “I was struck by all the horseback riding. Things I would never, ever want to do when I was menstruating. I was surprised there was no person comfortably reading a book.”
More video available at Double X.
ETA 02/24/10: There’s additional commentary from some who attended the event at Jezebel and at The Pursuit of Harpyness.
NBC New York’s website just announced an upcoming presentation titled “That Not So Fresh Feeling: Marketing Embarrassing Products To Women,” to be hosted by DoubleX (the ladyblog spin off of Slate.com) on February 22. The panel of experts includes Susan Kim, co-author of FLOW: The Cultural Story of Menstruation; Sarah Haskins, creator of Target: Women for Current TV; former “Colbert Report” executive producer Allison Silverman; and Hanna Rosin, co-editor of DoubleX and contributing editor at The Atlantic Monthly.
I’m not sure exactly who is the intended audience for this presentation, but nevertheless I’m disappointed that no one from the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research appears to be on the panel. Consider this an open invitation to any of our readers who will be in New York and able to attend the event to write a guest blog entry about it for re:Cycling.
Details
That Not So Fresh Feeling: Marketing Embarrassing Products To Women
February 22, 7PM
Housing Works Bookstore Café, 126 Crosby Street; 212- 334-3324
Free
Four years ago I published an article in Sex Roles (March 2006) about the twists and turns of the media coverage of a scandal that came to be known as “Camillagate.” It concerned the publication of a surreptitiously recorded phone chat between Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, and his lover, Camilla Parker-Bowles, that occurred in 1993. The reason the mild sex banter between two horny middle-aged royals got so much attention was that at one point they made joking references to tampons in an erotic context. The exchange was widely misreported with a distorted claim that Charles expressed a desire to be transformed into a tampon. It even became the basis for a skit on Saturday Night Live (only a small portion of it is available now online).
At the time I predicted that Charles would never get away from the tampon association. What I could not predict was how nuanced the forms of mockery would be. Who could possibly have guessed that the story would play out as a means of bolstering George W. Bush’s faltering reputation by contrasting his macho style with the more effete image of The Prince of Wales?
If I correctly understand the terms of SHM’s copyright agreement with Oxford University Press, I am permitted to publish this unedited version of my review as a “pre-print” article. The final version will be available only from Social History of Medicine.
Lara Freidenfelds, The Modern Period: Menstruation in Twentieth Century America, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Pp. 242. £31/$60. ISBN 978 0-8018 9245 5.
Lara Freidenfelds, an historian currently teaching in Women’s Studies at Wellesley College, has written a thorough and engaging history of menstruation in twentieth century USA. Her title, The Modern Period, is more than a succinct description; it cleverly references her discussion throughout of how advancing Progressive values shaped beliefs and practices surrounding menstruation. These Progressive values included faith in scientific rationality, belief in the value of education, and unqualified endorsement of technological progress. The ‘modern period’ also references the evolution of menstrual management practices into a coherent whole and the movement away from practices and beliefs considered old-fashioned, such as worries about catching a chill or the use of cloth pads. Her analysis throughout addresses the class implications of modernization; that is, the perceived need to adopt modern practices of bodily presentation and self-control for class mobility. Such modernization, asserts Friedenfelds, is a key component of Americans’ ability to see themselves as middle-class across great gaps in education and income.
We’ve had a couple of productive discussions recently here at re:Cycling about men and menstrual humor, so it seems a good time to introduce Vinnie D’Angelo, creator of Vinnie’s Tampon Case. Therese Shecter has graciously shared this clip from her thought-provoking film, I Was A Teenage Feminist.
I’ve written about Vinnie and the role of men in menstrual activism before, in the “Menstrual Counterculture” chapter of my book, Capitalizing on the Curse: The Business of Menstruation. Here is a brief excerpt from that chapter:
According to interviews, D’Angelo’s motivation in developing his tampon cases was to help out his female friends. He would see them fishing in purses or backpacks for a tampon and retrieve “a mangled applicator and a lump of cotton with old gum stuck to the string” (quoted in Raappana). He also liked the idea of changing attitudes toward menstruation. . . . Interviews with D’Angelo reveal a feminist sensibility that extends beyond providing menstrual support.
[ . . . .]
I confess to some ambivalence here: I am uncertain what men’s role should be in celebrating menstruation. I appreciate [Harry] Finley’s genuine curiosity, and I admire D’Angelo’s feminist approach and his lack of squeamishness. I’m glad to see men talking about menstruation and not insisting that it remain hidden. I like D’Angelo’s playful, accepting attitude toward menstruation, but at the same time I find the fact that he has built a cottage industry of it vaguely exploitive. No one is harmed by his products, of course, but it is more than a little ironic that someone who doesn’t menstruate launched this successful line of whimsical, self-conscious menstrual products. On the other hand, perhaps D’Angelo’s masculinity adds a social legitimacy (as well as a humorous novelty element, as he has noted in interviews) that a woman’s name would not carry in the current cultural climate. And he’s great with the clever slogans: He owns the domain name knowyourflow.com, and recent ads for his tampon case say, “Don’t let your period cramp your style.”
What do you think, re:Cycling readers? How do you feel about the fact that two of the most visible examples of menstrual activism in the U.S., Vinnie’s Tampon Case and Harry Finley’s Museum of Menstruation, are created and promoted by nonmenstruators? Does it matter if these ventures are commercially successful? (Just for the record, Finley has received no financial benefit – only internet notoriety – from the Museum of Menstruation. Since introducing his eponymous tampon case in the late 1990s, D’Angelo has also developed Vinnie’s Giant Roller Coaster Period Chart and Sticker Book, and Vinnie’s Cramp Relieving Bubble Bath, which is also available packaged with Vinnie’s Soothing Bubble Beats CD of “music to menstruate by”. I do not know how profitable these products are for him.)
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