Maybe you’re one of the, presumably, millions of people who grew up thinking that pads and tampons were meant to absorb some sort of mysterious blue liquid. No info on where that blue stuff comes from or anything — just, at some point, you were going to have to deal with a blue liquid and various products competing to absorb as much of it as possible.
Then you grow up and realize OH IT’S BLOOD! IT’S JUST BLOOD, WHY DIDN’T ANYONE JUST TELL ME THAT?!
Point is, periods are stigmatized. Which is dumb! Because everyone gets them. Well, everyone who gets them gets them. But we still have to deal with secrecy, shame, and commercials that act like everything is all clean and medical and blue.
Until now.
This commercial for the U.K brand “Bodyform” actually showed blood in their commercial. Blood! It’s just like the real thing!
The commercial ends, saying “Periods are normal. Showing them should be too.” Preach!
The commercial comes with a full-on social media campaign called #bloodnormal, which is taking aim directly at the stigma surrounding the menstrual cycle. The company wants to bring “blood out of the dark, onto our screens, and into the conversation” and to pave “a positive path for women of the future.”
They also surveyed 10,000 women and men, and 74% of them wanted to see periods represented more realistically.
“We know that the ‘period taboo’ is damaging,” Traci Baxter, Bodyform’s marketing manager, told Cosmopolitan UK. “It means people are more likely to struggle with the effects of period poverty, whilst others struggle with their mental health and wellbeing. As a leader in feminine hygiene, we want to change this by challenging the taboo and ultimately removing the stigma, making it even easier for anyone to talk about periods, now and in the future.”
That’s right folks, the blood is here. And the world hasn’t ended.