Remember the Libra ad that dared to – gasp! – show period blood on tv? It was as simple as showing Libra products in scenarios like a young woman taking a bloody pad off of her underwear, a man buying pads at the shops, and a close-up shot of a woman’s legs in the shower with blood running down them.
Since its release, Ad Standards (the group that deals with all the complaints about ads and decides whether or not they are offensive) has copped over 600 complaints about the Libra ad, making it the most complained about ad of 2019 so far. The runner up is the trailer for Jordan Peele’s movie Us, which has 244 complaints made against it.
Complaints ranged from “distasteful”, “unnecessary”, and “offensive and inappropriate”, all the way through to somebody claiming that the ad was not appropriate for children. Apparently they forgot that children get periods.
Someone else, who had clearly put way too much thought into this, lodged a complaint saying that:
“It is also extremely offensive and inappropriate to show young teenage girls, between the ages of 12 to 16, getting their period, with blood dripping down their leg and of them peeling off a period stained pad from their underwear. It appeals to pedophiles to see young girls in this manner and is exposing to young females and extremely dangerous for young girls.”
Now I would be so bold as to as to say that the problem in that scenario is the gross dude perving on the ad, and not the ad itself, but maybe that’s just me.
Thankfully, Ad Standards seemed to agree. They’ve thrown out all the complaints, declaring that the ad wasn’t in breach of any guidelines.
So to the people who have been so horrified by a natural process that they decided to go to the effort to tell Ad Standards about why a period ad is “disgusting and demeaning to women,” why not get mad about things that are actually disgusting and demeaning to women?
Why not get mad about the fact that 48 Australian women and 16 Australian children have been murdered this year alone? The vast majority of those 48 women were related to their murderer. The youngest kid to lose their life violently was a three-month-old from Victoria.
Why not get mad about the fact that the national pay gap is currently at 14%? On average, women working full time earn $1,484.80 per week, compared to $1,726.30 for men.
Why not get mad about the fact that girls aged 10 to 14 are the age group that is most likely to have survived sexual violence in Australia? The next most likely group to have survived sexual violence is women aged 15 to 24.
Or, you could be honest with everyone and admit that you don’t actually care that much about the demeaning of women, you just don’t want to see period blood while you watch tv.