I’ve been fantasizing for months now about writing a letter to the makers of Always feminine hygiene products. These fantasies, oddly enough, occur around the same time every month. It currently being that time of month, I’ve been busy fantasizing.
Dear Sirs,
First, let me point out that my greeting was ‘Dear Sirs’. The reason for this is that there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that you have a woman working on your ad exec team, and you surely don’t have one on your board of directors, or in any position of power where rational decisions about advertising are concerned.
Did it occur to you to hire an advertising company with women working in it, or – gasp – with a woman on the team? There’s no way that a woman was involved in any way in this campaign. Did you test this before a female demographic? I’m sure it would seem like a very sweet commercial to a room full of men. Oddly enough, Always is marketed under the name Whisper in Asia. Even if they “whispered” to me to “have a happy period”, I’d still be fighting to not hunt down the ad execs and choke them.
Have you heard of Pre Menstrual Syndrome? This is a time that runs up to a week before a woman starts menstruating, in which she is flooded with hormones that lead to raging emotions, fatigue, sore, swollen breasts, insomnia, anxiety, joint pain, acne, various bloated body parts due to water retention, and a heroin-like jones for chocolate, further ensuring that nothing in her closet will fit, which continues the cycle of irrationality and fury which intensifies until her period finally arrives.
Once her period arrives, she is often doubled over with abdominal and/or lower back cramps, and a feeling of being dirty and greasy, no matter how often she showers. She spends the next few days wearing pants with elasticated waistbands (because nothing else fits), and has to check repeatedly to make sure she’s not staining whatever clothes she wears or sheets she sleeps on. And she wants to be left alone to sleep. Her skin often crawls when she is touched, and having her name called by her children can sound an awful lot like nails on a blackboard.
With these and other physical, emotional and psychological nerve-wracking symptoms rolling in seemingly never-ending waves for an extended period (no pun intended) of time, do you really think she wants to be told to “have a happy period”?
Every month when I’m bleeding, my husband has to take heavy objects out of my hand to stop me from hurtling them at the television set when your commercial comes on. Luckily, he hits the room when he hears me screaming obscenities at the TV. What in the world could make you think that could possibly be calming or soothing to a woman in a week-long state of agitation? Or that it would be construed in any way other than condescending and infuriating?
I am shocked to see that these ads have run as long as they have. Please, please make them go away.
Have a happy period? Yeah, have a joyful colo-rectal exam.
Yours,
Fae C.
P.S. – I just found a link on their site that give us girls tips and advice about how to “have a happy period”. Are you kidding me?? Do I sound to you like I want to go to a yoga class???
