A slideshow history of marketing feminine care.

How do you sell something most people consider not only private, but embarrassing and off-putting? Advertisers have struggled with that problem for more than a century in their effort to sell tampons, sanitary pads, and other forms of femcare. Femcare ads have never depicted bathrooms. They rarely use the words “period” or “flow.” And they don’t show the color red, much less actual blood. Instead, advertisers have long relied on a tacit code built of images and euphemisms. These tend to reinforce notions of the dirtiness and shamefulness of menstruation, profoundly influencing how we think about not just about our periods, but our bodies. Does it go too far to say that our whole menstrual mindset is the result of effective advertising?

Click here for a slideshow history of marketing feminine care. And read more in the new book Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation, which I co-wrote with Elissa Stein.

Tags: advertising, menstruation, tampon

Susan Kim is a playwright, TV writer and upcoming graphic novelist. She wrote Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation, with author and graphic designer Elissa Stein.

Comments

I think the major problem

By: buggie | Wed, 11/11/2009 - 20:41

I think the major problem with advertising of pads and tampons from the very beginning is that it seems to imply that menstruation is only a superficial problem. Just stick in the tampon, and go on with your day. I think it really caused stigmatization of women who have severe periods, in terms of both menstrual pain and all of the emotional or other physical symptoms of PMDD, and have NOT been able to go along with their day. I read that before feminine care products were mass produced and marketed, it was perfectly acceptable for a woman feeling badly due to menstruation to stay home and rest. Today, you press on. Thanks to super absorbency, no menstrual tissue leaks out, so the problem doesn't exist! I've suffered from very severe periods, in every aspect, since I was 13 years old. I remember suffering through algebra tests in junior high while being in severe pain. I remember telling a swim coach that I couldn't swim because in pain, light-headed, and barely able to walk and told I was just trying to get out of practice. I really think that it's our, "stick a tampon in it and go on with your day" culture that has really caused the lag in the medical community with respect to menstruation and related issues. I am shocked that even now, doctors don't even know much about what causes emotional problems associated with menstruation or how to treat them.

What?

By: Sihaya | Tue, 11/10/2009 - 13:41

Look, I don't want to return to the days of rags, but Kim seems to be implying that we were freer and healthier in the days when we had the equivelant of giant diapers wrapped around ourseleves, hidden under a layer of voluminous skirting. If one really threw period techonology all the way back, we'd go bleed in private for a week. Little girls would lose a quarter of their instructional time and women would be gone from work. Yeah, we'd get really far then. This school-level analysis of feminine care ads completely lacks context and works from the assumption that we've all been saddled and constrained by the ability to effectively keep up our daily, working lives while cleaning ourselves of an ounce of rotting, dead blood every month. This is, to be honest, weird, and not in a cool way.

"In purely visual terms, the

By: norahc | Tue, 11/10/2009 - 08:49

"In purely visual terms, the ads imply that all women need to be ritually cleaned after their periods, as if by religious immersion in purifying water."

Or maybe they just wanted to show that you can wear their product and still swim during your period. Not everything has some deep sinister anti-woman meaning behind it.

"Femcare ads have never depicted bathrooms. They rarely use the words “period” or “flow.” And they don’t show the color red, much less actual blood. Instead, advertisers have long relied on a tacit code built of images and euphemisms. These tend to reinforce notions of the dirtiness and shamefulness of menstruation"

I don't know, modern ads tend to be pretty graphic and don't shy away from any of this stuff.