Always Runs First Feminine Hygiene Ad To Show Blood

If marketing campaigns have taught us anything about periods, it is that menstruating women love to dance, are drawn to white spandex and, oh yeah, bleed a Kool-Aid like blue liquid ... which they store in beakers.

Until now. Maxi-pad company Always has broken the taboo and revealed that sanitary napkins are actually produced for the absorption of blood.

That's right, in what advertising expert/blogger Copyranter describes as a "historical advertising move," an ad for Always ultra thin with Leak Guard protection shows a hygienic looking pad with a red spot in the middle.

Granted, the pin-sized droplet might not be the most accurate representation of what to expect when "Aunt Flo" (what's your favorite period euphemism?) comes to town, but it's definitely a step in a more accurate direction.

With the average woman using an estimated 16,800 sanitary napkins or tampons in her lifetime, the demand for feminine hygiene products is substantial. Still, there is a history of advertisers using idioms and "subtle" imagery to avoid directly marketing products that the public might find off-putting. In Elissa Stein and Susan Kim's book Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation, the authors explore the stigma of the period, writing that menstruation is often "hidden in a figurative box (scented, of course), stuffed deep inside the great medicine cabinet of American culture: out of sight and unmentioned."

As Tina Fey notes in her comedic memoir Bossypants, this advertising could prove confusing to your average pubescent teen having her first period. Fey writes of her own menses, "I had noticed something was weird earlier in the day, but I knew from the commercials that one's menstrual period was a blue liquid you poured like laundry detergent into maxi pads to test their absorbency."

While there has been a recent movement to break from the "I like to spin in slow motion while wearing white skirt" stereotype in tampon commercials, blood still has yet to appear in TV commercials. The Always ad only appears in print.

What do you think? Should feminine product advertisers abandon their signature sterile blue liquid in ads?

Comments

[Erica Stein]

12:40 AM on 07/28/2011

I am indecisive on this. One one hand, I'm indifferent. On the other, it gets publicity. And on my third hand, I have to say should there be vomit in anti nausea commercials? Real genital herpes sores in Valtrex commercials? Diarrhea in Diarrhea AD commercials?

Dirty toilet paper? Cat litter filled with poops? Etc. So is a red dot groundbreaking, or just a body fluid that nobody cares to see? Doesn't personally bother me either way. I am not normal though. One of my favorite things is when my dog lifts his leg to pee, and the poop shoots out like a missile at the same time.

[omgriri]

10:45 PM on 07/19/2011

ladies? listen up. menstrual cups. that's it, that's all. they're life changers. thank me later.

[PunKinPai]

09:49 PM on 07/19/2011

Almost 20 years ago a maxipad manufacturer (can't remember which) had a print ad that showed blood -- brownish, not bright red. There it was, right on the pages of TVGuide. Independently, a friend and I both sent letters to the company, who responded that the color in the ads should have been blue. Riiiiight. The ads disappeared, for good I hope.

[omgriri]

10:42 PM on 07/19/2011

why? that's what it's FOR. get over it.

[PunKinPai]

11:47 PM on 07/19/2011

And toilet paper is for wiping s#^t, but I don't wanna see it in my magazine. Is there anybody over age 12 who doesn't know what they're for? Then why be graphic about it?

[Alexandria Wolf]

01:03 PM on 07/12/2011

Call me old fashioned but I really don't enjoy seeing commercials for "feminine hygiene" products, drugs for erectile dysfunction, or anything having to do with diarrhea. Couldn't we please just be spared this constant "flow" of freaking TMI?

[Counterglow]

11:27 PM on 07/10/2011

My favourite euphemism? "Please, honey, put the axe down. All I said was that you seemed a little edgy today".

Now that the taboo has been broken, no doubt they'll gradually increase how graphic these ads are until they look like something out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and run only between the hours of 4 and 7 (to catch the dinner crowd).

[Kristen Houghton]

10:24 AM on 07/08/2011

I think there is way too much unnecessary information about many advertised products. The bathroom tissue commercials for instance; one with the bears concerned with paper being left on them after using the tissue, the other one where women talk about needing paper that cleans and also leaves your hands clean. Can't we figure this out on our own? I don't think we need to see blood on a maxi pad in a commercial no matter how minute. While I am all for every bodily function being seen as healthy and totally normal, I also feel we need to be a little less "in-your-face" with commercials.

[Wood]

01:27 PM on 07/08/2011

LOL.. I agree about the bear.. absolutely unnecessary ;)

[grapost]

10:08 AM on 07/08/2011

And the next big breakthrough will probably be showing actual turds in baby diapers!

[Counterglow]

11:29 PM on 07/10/2011

I bet that smell would even carry over the airwaves.

[PunKinPai]

09:42 PM on 07/19/2011

Or, in Cialis commercials, actual.....

[UmaUma]

08:51 PM on 07/07/2011

I don't need to see blood in maxi pad commercials any more than I need to see an actual erection in a Viagra ad. I also don't need to see poop on toilet paper or boogers on kleenex.

[Jarret Boisvert]

05:41 PM on 07/07/2011

There isn't fecal matter on television. There is rarely urine. There should not be menstrual blood.

[Wood]

01:28 PM on 07/08/2011

agreed.. i think we can all figure it out...

[Counterglow]

11:30 PM on 07/10/2011

I'll have to politely disagree about your first point. Have you ever seen Fox News?

[PunKinPai]

09:43 PM on 07/19/2011

BWA-HA-HA!!!

[Lellie]

05:25 PM on 07/07/2011

Why???? Do they think no one knows that it represents blood? Is it really necessary to change it?

What's the next step... an actual crotch? How ridiculous!

[andrebhub]

05:18 PM on 07/07/2011

Maybe the blue was a scientific thing, we recognize blue as more calming or something, so it's not seen as a big deal I guess. We should also start showing other uses for sanitary napkins as well. It's a good replacement in case there is no gauze available.

[BamaRainbow]

04:57 PM on 07/07/2011

Well, I'm of two minds on the issue. I see the sense in using the blue liquid but also the sense in actually using a red liquid.

Of course, what we need next is to have diaper commercials (whether for Huggies or Depends) to use a yellowish fluid instead of plain water. (Yes, many people speak of "passing water" but unless you drink gallons of plain water throughout the course of the day, your own "water" is going to have a bit of a yellowish tint.)

[Mister Caribou]

03:11 PM on 07/07/2011

Poor blue stuff. It's only going to be in diaper commercials soon :(

[Amber McKenna]

02:11 PM on 07/07/2011

You think this is revolutionary? Check out http://ChangeYourTampon.com

[alineobrien]

02:11 PM on 07/07/2011

I'm well past the age when I need such products, but I well remember my mother washing the blood out the torn-up white sheets -- sheets only came in white in those days -- in a utility tub each month. I don't know how they were fastened in place. By the time I needed such things, there were Kotex with belts that had safety pins; then belts with little plastic doohickies to which pads were fastened. The belts tended to wedge uncomfortably between the buttocks. By the time I no longer needed these things, there were all kinds of winged things, pads with blue stripes, all manner of tampons, little catch cups, cloths. I wonder what our foremothers used, like the women on wagon trains going across the plains. Whatever it was, it didn't contribute to the landfill. Just a reality check.

[UmaUma]

08:55 PM on 07/07/2011

I have always been curious about how women dealt with this in the days before pads. Can you imagine being in a wagon train and having to hang your blood stained strips of flannel off the back of the wagon to dry? Man, the good ole days!

[alineobrien]

05:45 AM on 07/09/2011

Since I made this comments, I've been reminded that most of those women were either pregnant or lactating, so not so much in need of anything to collect blood flow.