When it comes to ads about sanitary products like pads and tampons, we all know what to expect: shiny, happy women who wear white pants and who are always dancing with friends at music festivals and taking selfies.
There’s also that super weird trend where companies use blue liquid to demonstrate just how absorbent their products are.
Periods are meant to be ‘fun’ and ‘happy’ and not at all messy… but only if you never actually talk about the fact that having a period means you are bleeding out of your vagina.
Watch Libra’s #BloodNormal ad that aims to normalise periods. Post continues after.
But Libra wants to change that with a new ad aimed at transforming the way we talk about periods
The #bloodnormal campaign is “calling time on period taboos”. That means the commercial, which first aired in Australia on Sunday night, shows RED liquid on a sanitary pad:
It also shows a dude picking up a packet of pads for a woman in his life. And get this, he doesn't look the slight bit awkward or confused about it:
And in a groundbreaking first, the video appears to show a woman with menstrual blood running down her thigh while in the shower (although some argue the limb shown is actually an arm, not a leg):
With their 'Blood Normal' campaign, which first launched in the UK under its British name Bodyform in 2017, Libra wants women - and men, too - to know that periods are a natural part of life, and should be given the screen time to reflect that.
"Surely hiding something so normal only adds to the shame and embarrassment many women feel when it comes to their periods," the company's website reads.
LISTEN: A man just 'invented' a solution to women's periods. Hint: it involved a lot of glue.
Research conducted by the company found that 74 per cent of respondents (which included both men and women) want to see more 'realistic' representations of periods on their screens and in advertising.
So, the company wants to show "true-to-life" situations.
"We show blood; we show the world that the only way to kill stigma is to make the invisible visible," Bodyform said in 2017.
"By bringing blood out of the dark, onto our screens and into the conversation we're paving a positive path for women of the future. After all, shouldn't period-talk be as normal as periods themselves?"
Naturally, women were pretty happy with seeing their monthly visitor represented in a real and relatable way:
We're with them: it's about bloody time we got a period ad that showed actual periods.
This piece was originally posted in October 2017. It has been updated as Libra just launched their #bloodnormal campaign in Australia.
Top Comments
"Clean menstrual blood soaked up by a large "Bandaid" - not a bad thing at all."
This is what I wrote 2 years ago (further down) and I still feel the same way.
I'm very happy with the new commercial - the imagery is appropriate and necessary in 2019.
Of course we still have to endure the sexist (even misogynistic) rants of "males who cannot cope" - too bad for them.
This is how we should always have raised our boys - to accept this natural part of female life with a healthy attitude
Aligning menstruation with faeces & urine is despicable and has always sent the wrong message - about the process, about the cleanliness of women and about the self-entitled right to control women.
Ignore the "old-school" protests - they're wrong.
They were always wrong.
So should we also now show faeces on toilet paper too? Or urine in tv commercials ? Completely unnecessary to have this on tv. What’s gone wrong with people? Are there no boundaries anymore ??