Long before the current fad in Reality TV shows that trade in humiliation and embarrassment, the prevailing menstrual culture inculcated in women a feeling that exposure of the fact that a period was in progress was a social catastrophe. However, just as “The Biggest Loser” invites participants to parade their socially unacceptable bodies before the cameras for fame and fortune, there are times when women are invited to share their stories of menstrual humiliation in exchange for a moment of media recognition and even a cute photo spread.
Consider the October 1, 2007, issue of FIRST: for women on the go, a supermarket checkout publication. A regular column titled “First Blush” that specialized in sharing readers’ “mortifying moments” in this issue was titled “My most mortifying tampon moment!” It consists of four letters from women aged 35 to 50 relating stories of an exposed string, a blood stain on a car seat, dog mischief, and a child’s blurted remark about her mothers’ “bagina.”
The piece is illustrated by the smiling author of one of the letters, “Meg Fitzpatrick, 42, Yardly, PA” whose story about the adorable daughter’s outburst earns her a prized photo in the magazine.
Accompanying the article is some promotional copy for a product called “The Combpanion Tampon and Pantiliner Case” that is described as “a hair comb with a hidden compartment in its hollow handle” so that the reader can “carry a tampon . . . without fear of being spotted holding your feminine product.”
I’m prompted to wonder what an equivalent column in a men’s magazine would look like. Do men ever have “mortifying moments?”
I wasn’t the only one who noticed: a recent article in Ad Age says the “30% better protection” strategy has not been used in femcare marketing since Rely tampons were withdrawn from the market in 1980. Not coincidentally, that was the last time Tampax picked up significant market share — a lot of those former Rely users switched to Tampax (Tampax was not owned by P&G at the time, but Rely was).
With the U by Kotex brand apparently winning new customers as well as winning others away from Tampax, how successful will “30% better protection” be as a persuasive strategy? Jack Neff (author of the Ad Age piece) points out that it’s pretty challenging “in a category where absorbency has been tightly regulated by the Food and Drug Administration in the wake of the Rely withdrawal.”
From time to time menstrual references show up in TV programs, mostly on situation comedies and, unsurprisingly, they are usually played for laughs. The most common inclusions have had to do with menarche with menopause coming in second. First periods have provided laughs and plot material for the writers of DeGrassi, Roseanne, Californication, Seventh Heaven, The Cosby Show, Beverly Hills 90210, King of the Hill, and others. In nearly every one of these episodes the humor and plot tension derives, at least in part, from an exploration of male response to unwelcome exposure to the cycle: close encounters of the menstrual kind.
The most recent, and most daring, occurrence appeared in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm (Season 8, Episode 1) involving a girl selling Girl Scout cookies getting her first period standing in the foyer of Larry David’s home while writing up a cookie order. Rather than dashing off to find a woman to “take care” of the situation, as depicted, for example, in King of the Hill and Beverly Hills 90210, the protagonist rushes upstairs to get a box of tampons, left behind by his wife who has left him, and stands outside a bathroom door shouting instructions to the bewildered girl inside. Apparently she knows what the period is but has never been told how to use a tampon.
The episode is extraordinarily daring. Even the simple detail of having an older man hand a young girl he just met a tampon is startling, given the depth of social taboos requiring strict gender separation in matters menstrual. But to have him stand outside the bathroom door shouting instructions and reading the sheet packed in the box about placing the tampon in the vagina while the girl inside responds with confusion and frustration is risky indeed. But the most striking thing of all is that while both characters find the situation awkward, neither one is overly embarrassed, particularly the girl who calmly announces, “I think I just got my period for the first time.” Though she has apparently received little education about the technology, she is fully aware of what is happening in her body and accepts the fact that the adult she happens to be with when it happens is able to help her out. The fact that it’s a male, and a quirky older one at that, seems not to matter at all.
This indifference on their parts is both a source of the humor and, perhaps, an indication of a watershed in menstrual decorum. Or is that too optimistic a reading?
Kotex still wants us to “break the cycle“. But every time I see these ads, I think of Chella Quint‘s message to Kotex: We’re only gonna stop feeling the shame when we take ownership of our periods. And we’re taking it back from you, dude. So you can’t reclaim our periods for us. You’re some of the people we’re reclaiming them from. Got it?
It looks like Kotex is winning. Explicit comparison to the competitor’s product is an advertising strategy of 30-40 years ago. Under the new rules, the competitor’s product doesn’t even exist, and certainly isn’t deserving of mention in a promotion for your own.
This ad for Tampax appeared in the March, 2011, issue of Marie Claire
Last spring, Kotex introduced U by Kotex, a.k.a. You Buy Kotex, small tampons with bright neon applicators and a forward-thinking “Break the Cycle” advertising campaign announcing that Tampon Ads Are Ridiculous. Apparently tampon ads are STILL ridiculous. Here’s the new installment, developed by New York ad agency Ogilvy:
Like Sheldon says, you could save a lot of money if you buy tampons in bulk. Lots of women are probably wishing they’d bought o.b. tampons in bulk, now that they’re going for $20 a box on ebay.
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.
Guest Post by Nicole Luna, Marymount Manhattan College
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.
At first, Kotex had successfully baited me with their empowerment rhetoric (although I do not buy their products), because YES I want the shame and embarrassment that surrounds the menstrual cycle to be banished, and YES I want “vagina” to be taken off of the list of “dirty words”, and YES I think tampon and pad commercials are ridiculous. Thus, the Kotex marketing campaign is remarkably cleaver, since it speaks, at least on some level, to those of us who want what is on the “U by Kotex Declaration of real Talk” pledge, which is as follows:
I Will…
Celebrate my body and my period as natural, normal, and important
Respect my vagina, and know that ‘vagina’ is not a dirty word
Challenge society to think differently about what it means to be a woman
Talk openly and without embarrassment about periods and vaginal care with my friends and family
Take good care of myself and encourage my girlfriends to do the same
If you think this is a progressive step in the direction of menstrual activism, visit the U by Kotex website, where you will find a woman to show you, with the aid of a vulva pillow, how to insert a tampon. She mercifully doesn’t make any reference to freshness or boys; instead, she just gives you straight-forward tampon instructions using candid language and anatomy books (although the images she uses are depictions and not actual human genitalia). Also, the U by Kotex site makes the connection that women who are not ashamed about their periods are more likely to have a positive self-image. My own research has shown me that the more educated a woman is about the logistics of her menstrual cycle, the more likely she is to be assertive about safe sex practices and actually enjoy sex more. She is also less likely to fall for age-old myths like “you can’t get pregnant on your period”. Continue reading...
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!
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.
Long before the current fad in Reality TV shows that trade in humiliation and embarrassment, the prevailing menstrual culture inculcated in women a feeling that exposure of the fact that a period was in progress was a social catastrophe. However, just as “The Biggest Loser” invites participants to parade their socially unacceptable bodies before the cameras for fame and fortune, there are times when women are invited to share their stories of menstrual humiliation in exchange for a moment of media recognition and even a cute photo spread.
