A dirty word?
Which product did the feisty Spice Girls refuse to endorse at the height of their fame? Sanitary pads. They championed "girl power", but like their sisters across the world, they'd been socialised to regard menstruation as embarrassing and even shameful.
You're an emancipated woman, right? None of this dainty petunia, woman's-place stuff for you. So why do you cringe when you take that pack of tampons out of the supermarket trolley and expose it at the pay point?
By doing so you're announcing to the world that you menstruate, or could even be menstruating in your fellow
shoppers' midst, right? And that's... What? Embarrassing? Offensive? Funny how we don't suffer similar mortification when we buy a pack of toilet rolls. Everyone knows what they're for, too.
But we've been socialised to regard those four to six tablespoons of blood that slip out of our wombs along with mucus every 28 days as something to be dealt with as discreetly as possible.
Is it only us?
Can you imagine men responding to a natural bodily function in this absurd manner? As UK stand-up comic Ben Elton pointed out on stage some years back, if men menstruated they'd boast about the volume of their menstrual flow, as in "Whoa! Only super-plus for me!"
A decade ago, the US Women's Tennis Association (WTA) turned down a three-year, $10 million sponsorship from Tambrands, makers of Tampax tampons. At the time, WTA president Martina Navratilova said local sponsors would have withdrawn their support and comedians would have turned the "Tampax Tour" into a laughing stock.
Former professional basketball player Mariah Burton Nelson was outraged. "Tennis and its brave leaders have helped emancipate women from sexist stereotypes about money, muscle, sweat and sex," she wrote in a Newsday article at the time. "Tampons are an essential element in the radical transformation of women through sports... Tambrands and tennis are a perfect match. But rather than acknowledge that women have been menstruating for oh, about four million years now, and that there's nothing shameful about that fact, the WTA refused to associate itself with Tampax.
"What's the WTA really afraid of? Offending men?" Nelson asked. "It still matters too much what men say about women's bodies. I wish that [the WTA] had proceeded as if women were proud and free and unencumbered by male prejudice and control."
However...
Today, in the same country, male impotence drugs Viagra, Levitra and Cialis sponsor some of the country's biggest male sports events Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the PGA Tour, respectively. And no one makes Floppy Dick League jokes.
Former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka happily agreed
to be a spokesman for Levitra, yet, in 1997 when Johnson
& Johnson went in search of a celebrity spokesperson for
its menstrual pad Stayfree, no one wanted to be identified
with it, least of all the Spice Girls.
Why are men happy to be associated with a drug for a disorder, and a potentially embarrassing one at that, but women don't want to be linked to something that's perfectly normal – and a sign of fertility, good health and youth?
Could it be that we've bought into all those messages about it being something to hide, something to be embarrassed about because, well, because it's yucky and smelly and it has to do with that naughty, unmentionable "down there"?
Who taught us?
Where do we get those messages? From the way our mothers behaved (mine hid her tampons in the bathroom cabinet
and locked the door when she had to change one), from the way we were separated from the boys to watch the menstruation film or get the talk from the sanitary protection company reps, and from the adverts that promise to protect us from anyone ever knowing that we menstruate.
Many of the adverts zero in on women's fear of exposure,
promoting a culture of concealment. They reinforce the notion that the ultimate humiliation would be an
indication that a woman is menstruating.
If we're desperate to conceal our periods and their paraphernalia, we're fair game for ever-smaller, slimmer products in handy carriers we can hide in our hands and pockets. If our biggest fear is leakage, we'll double up on protection and wear pantyliners on days we have only a remote chance of getting our period, and if we believe we give off a terrible odour when we're menstruating (doctors are adamant we don't), we'll want to snap up products that promise to keep us cleaner and fresher in our "intimate area", such as wipes and deodorised pads.
In recent years, marketers have started punting pantyliners as an everyday item, and these slim pads are now the fastest-growing sub-category of the feminine hygiene market. "Using a pantyliner should be seen in the same light as applying a deodorant," says Accantia, a major player in South Africa's sanitary protection industry. "It ensures higher levels of comfort
and freshness we don't have to do it, but we feel better for it."
A 1987 Tampax advert, published in South African magazines, spread the word that periods ought to be kept secret, even from girlfriends. "When you're having a period, you don't want your friends to know about it. To save you asking one of your friends if you can try some of her tampons, we'll send you a free pack. And when we write back, we promise not to say Tampax on the envelope. We know how to keep a secret."
Image: Nick Bolton/Truelove
- Fairlady