Jezebel: period dramas

Feminine Hygiene Commercials Are Rarely Genius

Dodai — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:30:00 EDT

Over on AdAge, there's a commercial for a company called Libra. In the spot, a woman on a rooftop rocks out on guitar as video game shapes fall from the sky. The licks are hot, the chick is cool, and the tagline is: "Play with patterns." The product? Tampons. Because having your period rocks! Actually, the ad's not bad — at least there's not blue mystery liquid being squeezed from an eyedropper or a beaver involved. As AdAge's Charlie Moran points out: "We like rock 'n roll as a source of female empowerment, but doesn't such a contrived packaging gimmick like this play into stereotypes about the frivolity of those same young girls?" Ugh. Why is "feminine hygiene" such a tough product to sell? Women menstruate. They need tampons. So how come tampon commercials rarely hit the mark?

As Tracie wrote in her post about period dramas, blood makes people uncomfortable. TV commercials are gleaming, clean shiny things where no one bleeds or poops (ever see the All-Bran commercial where bricks stand in for crap?) Especially not women. The new Tampax commercials feature "Mother Nature" giving a woman her "monthly gift," which is a red present. Not bloody jelly blobs coming from her uterus, but a neatly wrapped box that might as well have a cashmere sweater inside. I'm not saying that I want to see blood in tampon commercials. I don't know what I want to see. And it seems like the ad execs don't know either. When it comes to period ads, what would you like to see? Have there ever been any ads that you thought were well done?

The Libra commercial:

A Touch of Feminine Hygenius [AdAge]
Earlier: The Importance Of Being Able To Change Your Period Products In "Public"
Leave It To Beaver

The Importance Of Being Able To Change Your Period Products In "Public"

Tracie — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:00:00 EDT

Sharing experiences of certain bodily functions are milestones in intimacy with significant others, like pooping while they're in the house, vomiting on them when you're sick, or farting in from of them. Once you can do that shit (literally), you know that you're comfortable in your relationship. But there's one final frontier of unpleasantness that means you're really close: changing your pads and tampons in front of your boyfriend. (I say "boyfriend," because I'm assuming this isn't as much of an issue in lesbian relationships.) Some guys are apparently squeamish about this sort of thing, probably the same ones who are weird about period sex. But can you really have a lasting relationship with someone if you have to hide bloody cotton from them?

Of the dudes I polled for this post, most of them had the same answer: "If I'm into her, that stuff doesn't bother me." Which is the right attitude to have, although when asked if it was more intimate to insert a tampon or remove it, they all said they'd be less bothered by witnessing insertion. One guy actually said, "You know I'm a little crazy about blood and HIV and all that." HIV!!! On a tampon!!!

So when in a relationship do you cross that barrier? For some of us, it's not really a choice. When I was 17, I changed my pad at my boyfriend's house and his dog found it and tore the shit out of it and got it all over the upstairs in his house. We were at the movies at the time, so his brother-in-law had to clean it up. I was mortified and actually, looking back on it, they were kind of asses for telling me about it, just to embarrass me. The silver-lining to that is that period stuff has never embarrassed me at all since then.

Anyway, I've always thought it is bizarre and unacceptable when guys who like anal sex are weird about when girls talk about pooping. It's like, you know what? That hole was actually made for poop to come out, not for your dick to go in. And I think it's equally bizarre and unacceptable when guys are weird about their girlfriends changing their period products in front of them. I understand that the need for a level of mystique to keep things sexy, but it's almost impossible to sustain throughout the course of a relationship: it's exhausting. It's also damaging: trying to mask the reality of our bodily functions from men simply reinforces the idea of women as sex objects, not human beings.

Earlier: How Do You Break The Poop Ice With A New Paramour?

Doth Not A Mentally-Ill Popstar Bleed?

Moe — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:00:00 EST

At 4:53 p.m., we received an email from Henry Seltzer at US Weekly informing us that the magazine had confirmed that in the event that Britney Spears dies, the Associated Press had an obituary written and ready to ship to the tens of thousands of news organizations that subscribe to its service. A few minutes later I IM-ed Anna, suggesting we sponsor an obituary writing contest, daring you readers to humor her while she was still alive with the type of false dignity and imagined significance she would no doubt be awarded posthumously in the pages of the Times. And about ten minutes after that Anna called me with some odd news: that the photo agency X17 had just posted a gallery of photos of Britney, labeled "EXCLUSIVE: BRITNEY SPEARS NOT PREGNANT" wherein a close-up of her crotch — clad in white panties and ripped fishnets — was displayed. The white panties were red with menstrual blood.

Usually when people in photos are bleeding I get a queasy feeling and have to lie down, but with Britney I just stared for a few minutes. And got up to grab a yogurt. I tried to figure out when I'd be getting my period, failed, and sat down again. (And ate some dates. Maybe soon? Whatevs.)

The moment this woman ceased to be an exaggerated symbol of the distinctly American phenomenon that is "peaking in high school" and started being something different entirely was so long ago no one even remembers it anymore. Was it that first guy she married? Breaking up with Justin? "Do you believe in...time travel speed?" We say we want her to come back, but hello! No we don't! All she ever was to this country was a celebration of our dumbest, vapidest, most brainless guiltiest guilty pleasures. Even her voice is like... the auditory equivalent of Bugle corn snacks. And there I go again, with the overwrought analogies we all use to justify the time I just spent trying to inject meaning into that which is ultimately devoid of meaning, substance into an individual who has none. Who was never allowed to have any.

Anna called up the agency to see how much the period photos were fetching. "They're not for sale right now," she was told. But they're currently visible on their blog. "It was clear she was conflicted about them," said Anna of the woman who co-owns the photo agency. But in this business you don't really feel conflicted until the thing's already up on the internet. UPDATE: Hence with the "obituary writing contest." I was making a point by admitting that. See here for another example an attempt to make this same point.

I don't care about Britney. Perhaps in another time her meltdown would be something of poignance. Even Ronald Reagan's fiercest opponents didn't swarm his house posting photos of him having his diaper changed because hello, mothefucker deserved it for the Falklands/Panama/Iran Contra/whatever. Maybe "hate" is somehow more humane than the sort of sheer, comprehensive indifference we feel towards Britney Spears, even as we have witnessed her every hair color, wardrobe and weight fluctuation fluctuation for ten years at this point. Yeah, it probably is.

I guess we won't know for sure until Lauren Conrad dies.