Who hasn’t looked at period commercials and cringed when blue liquid would be poured onto a sanitary pad to symbolize menstruation? Yup, it’s weird AF but finally, a company has stepped up and said, “No more!” Here’s what you need to know about Bodyform’s awesome new ad.
In the ad, which you can watch on YouTube, there’s red liquid being poured onto a sanitary pad and then we see normal situations that women go through every month when they have their period, such as blood dripping down a woman’s leg when she’s having a shower. Yup, that’s normal. There’s even a guy doing a quick run to the store for his GF’s pads and it’s all pretty regular stuff. He’s not hiding or looking embarrassed AF as we’ve seen men do in movies. He’s just buying them like they’re toothpaste or soap. The ad ends with the words “Periods are normal. Showing them should be too.” Yes!
The ad represents the desires of women everywhere. Bodyform recently did a survey of 10,000 people and a whopping 74 percent said that they’d like more realistic representations of periods from menstrual product companies, so they delivered. But they gave us more than red liquid—they’re giving us period acceptance. This isn’t their first wakeup call for us to treat periods as normal, either. Last year, they created the first ad to show a sanitary pad being used in a real-life situation. This, plus their latest ad, form part of their #bloodnormal campaign.
Imagine how much better we all would’ve felt as young girls getting our first periods if we’d had this ad. Periods wouldn’t have been seen as scary, overwhelming, and embarrassing events. And we wouldn’t have wondered WTF blue liquid had to do with them. By removing the blue liquid from ads, Bodyform is saying that not only are periods normal for women but should be treated as normal by men too. Because, seriously, for companies and advertisers to have used blue liquid, they were saying that periods were shameful, which made us feel ashamed.
As women, we’re always made to feel badly about our bodies. Just look at all the latest vagina trends, like using crazy methods to clean them or make them smell good. The underlying message is that we’re not okay and our bodies aren’t normal. The same happened with period and sanitary pad representation in the media. But now companies like Bodyform are taking steps to make us feel more comfortable with and love our bodies and there’s nothing better than that.
