Because vaginas are offended by polyester

Today smacking: Tampon and pad advertising.

I don’t know about you, but when I’ve got my period, I don’t secretly long for the comforting sensation of silk to caress my nether bits. They do not need to be nursed and reassured that everything is okay; that this will all be over soon, and then we can have a nice, long bath and a hot cup of cocoa. My vulva is really never going to care that much.

Which is why my face seizes up into a teeth-bared sneer when I see ads on TV touting the latest improvements to tampons and pads (or ‘napkins’, as the Brits like to call them, but that puts me far too much in mind of fine dining, and heartless as I may be, I’m not Nosferatu: I don’t fancy imbibing blood on a regular basis. But I digress). The one that really got me going recently was this ad that proclaimed their newest pad was crafted especially for your delicate ladybits with ‘genuine silk, for greater comfort.’

Say what now?

Okay, two points here:

1.) anyone who has ever worn a pad, for any reason, knows there’s no such thing as a comfortable one. They bunch, they stick, they ride, they sometimes leak, they are not form-fitting – no matter what the manufacturers have deluded themselves into believing – and you certainly cannot just ‘forget’ you’re wearing one. Sure, they come in degrees of inconvenience, from ‘surfboard-shaped absorptive brick’ to ‘thin, flexible and cites crack-riding as a favourite pastime’ but no amount of silk cradling your lady-garden is going to change that a menstrual pad is, by nature, hellfire uncomfortable. And;

2.) a menstrual pad is a product designed to absorb a (literally) bloody mess. Great, viscous globules; spongy strings; free-flowing gush: it’s all bloody. Eventually, you throw it out. Isn’t the ‘silk’ content (in single quotes because I believe the silk is about as real as that body wash available just now that claims to contain ‘crushed pearls’) just a tad, you know, wasteful and unnecessary?

So why don’t the advertisers get a bit more frank about it? There seems to be an assumption that someone, somewhere out there, is afraid of actually thinking about what menstrual products are for. That’s why they get saddled with stupid, nonsensical names like ‘feminine protection’ (protection from whom?), ‘feminine hygiene’ (because we’re so ritually unclean), and the dreaded ‘sanitary products’. Someone out there is afraid to admit what these products are actually for. But who is it? Is it men? Are they really completely squicked out by the notion of blood (and nutrient-rich tissue produced to sustain developing life) coming from 'Down There'? Or is it women? Are we really that afraid, likely even ashamed, of our own bodies and their normal functions?

My answer: c) all of the above.

So in the interests of forcing us to stop being so juvenile about it, I really wish the advertisers would just call a spade a spade, and a blood clot a blood clot. We’re not ever going to get any truth in advertising, I can concede that. But a little frankness would go down well. I remember a tampon ad that was played a lot on TV when I was a kid. It featured a young woman walking down the street when a fire hydrant suddenly erupted, shooting a thirty-foot fountain of water into the air. Passers-by, fun-loving rapscallions they were, thought it was a great idea to go dancing and playing in the fountain of water raining down on the street. Young woman looks vexed for a moment. But then, remembering she’s ‘protected’ (which we know because she gives her trusty tampon packet a little tap so it sinks further down into her back pocket), gives us a grin and goes dancing in the fountain, too. The tagline was something to the effect of, “X brand: giving you the freedom to do whatever you want.”

As a child I was utterly perplexed by this ad that never actually used the words 'tampon' or 'period'. I didn’t understand what this packet in her pocket signified, and why it gave her the freedom to dance in a fountain when she apparently couldn’t do so under some other circumstance. Some explanation would have been nice: “Unlike pads, these tampons will plug you up like a wine barrel so you don’t have to worry about bleeding all over the place should you be submerged in water.” That would have assisted my understanding a fair bit, I should think. I know it’s not TV’s job to educate me, but it could try to be honest with me. How about, “We know pads will never be comfortable to wear, but we’ve tried to make ours a bit smoother so at least you don’t chafe your groin down to the sinew”? Refreshing frankness, and not a mention of the comfort of silk in sight.

Yep, that would work for me.