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| Pads. Period. |
For my final project, I created a BLED Tak, which was a play on the well-known TED Talk. While I am not the most skilled at video editing, I feel the project got my point across. In short, I was trying to educate my audience about periods. In the sub-18 minute format that TED Talks follow, I reviewed the biological basics of menstruation along with its connected symptoms. I provided simple diagrams of period products, an overview of birth control’s connection to periods, and even brought up a hotly debated topic: period sex. Later in the video, I touch on period absenteeism, period poverty, and period advertising.
I went on to discuss the period shaming I have experienced, and supported my example with actual statistics. These stats come from a poll commissioned by Thinx, linked below, which asked 2,000 people across the country about their attitudes towards periods. The results speak to a typically male ignorance as well as to women’s self policing, both of which are a result of the stigma surrounding menstruation.
This stigma is truly the heart of the project, because it was my own experiences that prompted this idea. A few days before my project proposal was due, I was in a bad mood and cramping and buying tampons when a man had the audacity to tell me to smile. I turned around and showed him the box of Tampax, and I swear I have never seen a man run away faster. Looking back it’s funny, but he also looked legitimately scared. Another relevant example is that while I was finishing up this project, I was talking to my sister about my period. My mom gave me a look, a signal for me to stop because my father was in the room. It seems that men are either scared or disgusted by periods, and that people with uteruses have been conditioned to stay quiet about a process that takes up so much of our time. I say forget that. I hope this video makes people uncomfortable, and I hope that discomfort makes them open up to the fact that the way society treats menstruating bodies is unacceptable.
Throughout the whole video, I used the phrase people with periods, instead of the expected use of women. That’s because I wanted to respect that periods are not (or at least should not be) gendered. Biology and gender expression are two different things, and thus those who have periods, and thus have uteruses, can be men, women, or gender-nonconforming individuals. I discuss the fact that no one talks about periods for non cis women, but at the same time, I could only say so much, because I am not the expert on periods for trans men or nonbinary folk. I tried to be as inclusive as possible, but I apologize for any missteps in that respect.
The point of my project was to educate, but also to get people moving and talking. I provide examples of companies that are trying to make a difference, and the links to these are all included in the transcript. I spent a good deal of time researching, but I hope this project inspires people to do their own Google searches.
I mentioned a lot of media and period product companies in the talk, but one thing I think is important to highlight is the Libresse ad. In 2017, Swedish brand Libresse released an ad called Period Normal, which took an art-house look at menstruation. People in the video were featured cringing from cramp pain, having sex, swimming, and gasp, even changing their pad. This is the kind of ad I want to be seeing here in America.
The class prepared me for this project in that I was exposed to female-identifying writers that spoke out with anger about the world’s treatment of women. I even mentioned one of the writers we read in class, Gloria Steinem. In creating the video, I tried to follow the energy of bell hooks’ oppositional gaze, in that I chose a topic that society tells me and other menstruating folk to be embarrassed about. In the video, I take that male gaze and aim it right back at the camera, trying my hardest not to look away as I often do when making eye contact. I do wish I could have expanded on advertising through the lens of Jean Kilbourne’s Beauty and the Beast of Advertising, and originally had a section on the hilarity of tennis-playing models in period ads, but it was left on the editing floor (so to speak). I am thankful for what I have learned in this class, and I hope my project can serve as a similar resource.
Some photos to entice you to watch:
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| There's a whole bit on this question in the video, you're gonna love it. |
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| I actually say the word period 78 times in this video. |
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| You'll have to watch to figure this one out. |
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| My uterus is uneven but I bet money that ovaries aren't actually symmetrical. |
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| In case it's unclear, that's a tampon in a ring box. Luxury, amirite? |
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| For anyone with a uterus, this image is self-explanatory. |
Link to Libresse Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm8vCCBaeQw&feature=youtu.be
Link to Thinx poll video: http://menstrualhygieneday.org/nearly-half-us-women-experienced-period-shaming/
Link to video project: https://youtu.be/s9dFDsEJJBk
Link to video transcript and embedded sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18Qor2HFCiRyEfxJ0JG6oInmVsjuKRHImVuPmQbFAUAw/edit?usp=sharing
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