PERIODS: Lets break the taboo.
Sanitary products are commonly advertised on TV, on billboards or via social media. They usually contain a group of pretty females skipping around in the sunshine, as if being on your period really is a bundle of laughs, uniting females all around the world. Sometimes, we’re lucky enough to see a demonstration of how absorbent sanitary products are, usually exemplified by having a mysterious blue liquid dropped on to them.
It wasn’t until very recently I even noticed this odd blue liquid. I watched a #bloodnormal campaign video launched by Bodyform, and it wasn’t until they pointed out the blue variation of blood that I realised how wrong this advertising was. How had I lived my whole life accepting that TV periods are blue?
Thanks to the campaign #bloodnormal, it’s becoming widely known that actually, periods aren’t blue and women do bleed around once a month. Bodyform conducted a survey as part of their new campaign to normalise period blood and found that 74% of men and women want to see a more realistic representation of a period in adverts. Which, yes, is a majority. But why is it only 74%? What do the other 26% want to be shown, avatar periods? Obviously sanitary adverts aren’t going to start showing graphic, obscene images of bloodbaths and agony so what’s the problem with having an accurate representation of blood?
In the UK in 2017 we like to think we’re living in a fairly evolved society. So why are periods, something so normal, still socially unacceptable? We often laugh at my Mum who tells us that when she was younger she’d go to the shop and pass a note over the counter in exchange for brown paper bag with sanitary pads inside, which wasn’t even that long ago. Nowadays, sanitary items are readily available in all shops, to buy, but there is definitely still a sense of shame surrounding it. I know myself, that if I go to the toilet and am taking a sanitary item to change, I will 100% of the time hide it up my sleeve or bashfully whisper to a friend asking if they’ve got one spare.
In fact, I remember having sex education and the boys being taken out of the classroom to play football while the girls were taught about periods. It was treated like a secret – the boys all came back from their rough and tumble asking what the big secret was. So it’s really no wonder girls are embarrassed and boys are so unsympathetic.
We throw around accusatory phrases every time a female is emotional, deciding they ‘must be on their period’. The worst thing about this is that I’m just as guilty as anyone for saying this – I’ll often jokingly ask my friends or my Mum if their mood is due to their time of the month. Colloquialisms such as these need to change and we need to stop labelling everything with the period taboo…
Bodyform conducted a study that found almost half of all women found it difficult to talk about periods to their family. If from 11 years old at school we’re taught periods are to be kept hush, then we’ve been brought up by society to believe periods should not be talked about. Considering periods can start far earlier than 11 we should all be taught about them in a free, open manner (boys too) and realise they’re actually very, very normal and healthy. The average woman spends 1/8th of her life on her period, but we won’t even talk about it? Why is it more socially acceptable for boys to talk about masturbation and condoms than for girls to chat about periods?
This campaign by Bodyform has forced the period taboo to the forefront of the media. They’re conducting surveys and asking the important questions that need to be talked about. Their new TV advert shows women actually experiencing period pain, having to miss work due to periods, having sex, leaking, but just living their lives. And the advert ends with the jarring statement from Assorted TV Broadcast Authorities Worldwide who in 2017 stated ‘the sight of period blood is unacceptable’…
This is only the very beginning of a much bigger movement, we’ve not even touched on the period tax on sanitary items, periods in poverty or why this consensus that periods are unhygienic…Stay tuned.
All images screenshots of twitter or from linked bodyform video opening.