Period proof underwear company, Thinx, came out with a television ad for their product. The only problem is, they are marketing to the wrong people, people who do not have periods.
Numerous television networks agreed to air a commercial that depicts a world where men and boys menstruate. See the problem yet? Men cannot menstruated due to the fact that they do not have ovaries or a uterus. It is biologically impossible.
The ad, titled “MENstruation,” starts out with a worried young teenage boy who is telling his dad the he think he got his period. The father hugs him and replies, “It’s just part of growing up.”
Life Site News reports:
Many of the nine rapid-fire vignettes in the one-minute, 20-second ad are jarring: a man rolls over in bed, revealing blood-stained sheets; in a public bathroom, a man passes a tampon to another beneath a toilet stall partition; and a man walks through a locker room with a tampon string dangling from his briefs. In one, as a young man and woman suggestively kiss, he stops to say, “I’m on my period.”
“Me too,” she replies.
The commercial concludes with the message: “If we all had them, maybe we’d be more comfortable with them.”
NBC’s Bravo and Oxygen channels, as well as MTV, BET, and VH1 will be airing the ad in its entirety. Discovery Networks’ HGTV, the Food Network, and AMC’s WE TV and A&E will show a tampon-string-free version.
However, channels like ABC, CBS, and BBC America shut the ad idea down immediately.
Thinx CEO Maria Molland said, “In our first national television campaign, we are imagining the answer to this question: If all people had periods, including cisgender men, would they be normalized?”
“Would we be able to talk openly about them, without shame?” she continued, “Half the population does have a period, and we want to broaden the conversation to everyone, no period required.”
ADweek, an advertising trade publication, wondered on Twitter: “Would everyone be more comfortable with periods if men had them?
Would everyone be more comfortable with periods if men had them? https://t.co/i5n2kT9aQl
— Adweek (@Adweek) October 3, 2019
“I think it will upset quite a few people,” Molland added, “That’s OK because part of being a brand that stands for something is: Sometimes you irritate people. Even if we’re irritating them, our objective is to get them to think.”
Men do not have periods. To suggest they do is absurd. It will never be normalized to claim that they.