Corporate America finally accepts that women bleed red

You’ve probably never noticed it. Or if you’ve noticed it you probably didn’t give it much thought, that ubiquitous bright blue liquid being poured onto maxi pads and absorbed by tampons in commercials. But a new ad campaign from feminine hygiene brand Kotex has finally decided that using blue liquid to demonstrate the efficacy of its menstruation products in commercials is outdated and, well, absurd.   

The Kimberly Clark Corp., maker of Kotex products, has just released a new ad campaign showing red liquid—the deep, dark red of period blood—absorbing into its products. While these are not the first menstrual ad spots to use red fluid, they are the first from one of the biggest such companies in the U.S. And, on trend, Procter & Gamble Co. used a pink liquid in its Facebook ads this month. Together, it appears that corporate America is ready to help destigmatize what has long been considered taboo by people too squeamish to recognize the natural bodily function that is menstruation.

“Blood is blood,” Sarah Paulsen, creative and design director for Kimberly-Clark’s North American feminine-care brands, told The Wall Street Journal. “This is something that every woman has experienced, and there is nothing to hide.”

Even the way we have long talked about these everyday products has been cleansed for public consumption. Consider that tampons and pads have long been called “sanitary” products. It took until 1985 for anyone to even say the word “period” in a commercial (side note: the actress to do so was Courtney Cox). 

“Fem-care advertising is so sterilized and so removed from what a period is,” Elissa Stein, co-author of the book Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation, told The New York Times in 2010. “You never see a bathroom, you never see a woman using a product. They never show someone having cramps or her face breaking out or tearful—it’s always happy, playful, sporty women.”

How is it that in the 21st century we are still so cagey about the realities of menstruation? This 2017 Bustle article gives a good backgrounder: “In many ways, we're still carrying the consequences of ancient beliefs about menstruation and its ‘impurities,’ from Pliny the Elder's belief that it could spoil crops and kill bees, to medieval European myths that periods were a contaminant. Menstruating people throughout human history have been ostracized, regarded as unclean, and forbidden from access to areas as diverse as religious institutions and their own households.”

In a country that still pushes vaginal douching despite its multiple ill-effects and continues to consider women “too emotional” for public office, the move toward portraying a more straightforward public version of women’s health is one step closer to demystifying—and accepting—the reality of women’s lives.