Introduction
Most of us were introduced to the concept of ‘ periods’ by seeing the television ads that market sanitary napkins. Unfortunately, in the absence of any other conversation around menstruation in the mainstream media or society in general, such ads hold the power to either aggravate the existing stigma that surrounds the topic or to start a revolution of normalising and destigmatising periods.
But, most sanitary napkin ads, in order to appeal to the ideas of supposed ‘decency’ and ‘morality’ of the society to market their products, end up strengthening the ignorance and negative prejudices attached to the women’s bodies and their issues. These ads need to become responsible towards the topic of periods and to the target population that they aim to sell their products to.
How Do Indian Ads Misrepresent Periods?
Most of these ads aim to capitalise on the issue of ‘women empowerment’. For instance, by wearing wings sanitary pad you end up getting wings to achieve success, climb a mountain, or maybe win an essay competition. Which is far from reality and actual representation.
Will the sale of these products plummet if they will show menstruators going through discomfort, cramps, mood swings while they are on their periods?
By showing such an unrealistic representation of periods and menstruating people, these ads are perpetuating the idea that people who menstruate do not face any issues requiring deliberation and specific public policies. This, thereby, eventually dilutes the demand for paid period leave.
Notice any sanitary napkin ad and one will only find women, upper class-caste educated fair, cisgender women.
Even though this is true for any advertisement, sanitary napkin ads have a greater impact. Consequently, such ads also end up dismissing the idea that period poverty exists, where a million of women all over the world do not have access to menstrual hygiene products or safe sanitation facilities.
Further, only portraying cis-women characters ends up furthering the idea that menstruation is a ‘women’s issue’ and that men have no business with it. It also reinforces the myth that all women bleed, and that only women bleed. Transgender men may still have periods and transgender women may not.
Not only the ads, but the sanitary products themselves are made overly ‘feminine’, ‘flowery and pink’ leading to trans men and gender non-conforming people to be possibly alienated and left out, especially in the absence of representation of any kind in the media.
Transgender model and activist, Kenny Ethan Jones, explained his own experience as a menstruating trans man highlighting his physical and psychological pain “Having a period already causes me a lot of [gender] dysphoria, but this dysphoria becomes heightened when I have to shop for a product that is labelled as ‘women’s health’ and in most cases, is pretty and pink.”
Similarly, Claire Rudy Foster, a queer, nonbinary trans writer said that their largest discomfort with menstruation isn’t the menstruation itself, but the gendering of “feminine hygiene products.”
More often than not there is little or no mention of the taboos that dominate the lives of menstruating women, with one exception of Whisper’s ‘Touch the pickle’ ad campaign in 2014.
Additionally, most of these ads obsess over ‘hiding’. Hiding the bloodstain, hiding the smell, hiding the sound of opening the pad, and more. The very idea of hiding is to say that period stains and smell is gross, dirty, and shameful and should be hidden at all costs. Only if such ads normalised bloodstains, people might be less embarrassed and disgusted by their blood. This also brings us to the question of why women bleed blue in these ads.
Why Blue Ink Instead Of Red Colour?
One thing that is mandatorily present in every advertisement promoting sanitary napkins is the blue liquid. This blue liquid symbolises the ‘blood’ which is used to show the absorbent qualities of the product. But, the question is, why do these ads specifically need blue liquid to show menstrual blood, when other similar ads, such as those marketing sports products, or first aid products use red liquid?
Pick up any movie or tv show even with the U/Unrestricted viewership, the blood showed will still be a red liquid. A similar blue liquid is used to show urine/faeces in diaper ads leading to confusion in the minds of many about women bleeding in the first place.
Placing menstruation blood at the parallel with urine/faeces is yet again problematic as the latter is considered waste, dirty, and medically toxic while on the other hand period blood is neither dirty nor toxic. Therefore, the concept of showing blue liquid is to strengthen the existing cultural stigma surrounding period blood.
Why Can’t Advertisements Just Show Blood?
According to the general ethical principles of advertising, “The principles of the moral order must also be applied when it comes to advertisement.”
Further, taste, and controversy to be kept in mind, leading to one conclusion that these ads are catering to the socio-cultural aspirations and moral values of the society, which also considers period blood to be offensive and shameful.
While this is not just limited to the guideline, the advertisement law itself which governs the content of such ads manifests the existing so-called morality.
Take, for instance, the definition of indecent representation of women under section 2(c)‘ the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition ) Act, 1986: “Indecent representation of women means the depiction in any manner of the figure of a woman, her form or body or any part thereof in such a way as to have the effect of being indecent, or derogatory to, or denigrating, women, or is likely to deprave, corrupt or injure the public morality or morals”
Due to such vague and regressive definition, could show period blood in such advertisements be considered to injure the public morality or morals leading to a penalty?
Do Better Alternatives Exist?
Although no Indian sanitary napkin ad has yet tried to correct the misrepresentation, there are foreign ads that do their part. Let us see some of these ads and understand what they have got correct.
Bodyform’s ad with the campaign title ‘Blood Normal’ not only normalised showing blood as red, but it also showed men buying pads, women taking out pads, asking for one to a group people or maybe passing one in the classroom to someone who needs without any shame and inhibitions.
It beautifully shows the frustration, the sadness, the mood swings that one goes through while on their period, at the same time also slightly touches on the issue of period leave and work from home going beyond the mere romanticization of period pain. This ad ends with showing a line that says “Periods are normal showing them should be too.”
Similarly, a Thinx period underwear ad imagines a society where men get their periods too, where there is no shame in bleeding, asking for tampons to your colleague, or just dropping your pads out of your school locker.
It also touches on the topic of getting the first period, comfortably telling your partner that you are on your period, it ends with the message o‘ if we all had periods, maybe we’d be more comfortable with them’.
A Libresse sanitary napkin ad busted the unrealistic representation of women wearing all white clothes and being overly happy and active when on their period. The message of their product ad is “Its time we get real about sanitary pads ads. No nonsense, no pretence!”
To conclude, advertisements need to be a lot more inclusive and real when they show periods and menstruating people to market their products. These ads apart from promoting their product need to use their platforms and agency in a way that breaks away the culture of silence, and shame rather than strengthening it.
This is needed because they do hold the power to change the way society perceives and thinks, which is well evident by the example of how aggressive marketing persuaded women to start wearing pads.
The author is a part of the current batch of the #PeriodParGyan Writer’s Training Program