Feminine Hygiene: The Landmine in the Ad Break

The menstrual cycle, the scourge of men, women and in recent times television viewers everywhere. Period’s happen, we all know this and we live with it, we just don’t talk about it. Why? Because it’s unpleasant, no matter which way you look at it it boils down to two words, bleeding vaginas. Wince a little? Of course you did, this is why nobody discusses jammy dodger season. Unfortunately the necessity of ‘feminine hygiene products’ has created a necessity to advertise said products, meaning we are now subjected to thinking about this unfortunate twist of nature potentially any time we are too lazy to get up and do something constructive during the ad break.

I can’t tell you much about the vast array of products designed for that certain time of the month apart from Always Ultra sanitary pads, a name now burned into my head thanks to its incredible advertising techniques. My first encounter with this particular ad came a long time ago whilst enjoying Chuck Norris at his finest, before he was cool, in ‘Walker: Texas Ranger’ on Bravo in the middle of the day. Now forgive me if I’m wrong, but surely, no woman is ever watching Bravo, a channel that is so overly macho you expect it to give you a playful yet bruising punch in the ribs and a pint of Stella served on a Nuts magazine every time you tune in. Despite this however this particularly worrying advertisement came blazing on to screen about as welcome as a pork chop in a synagogue right in the middle of a program that is so male oriented it borders homoeroticism.

Instantly we’re hit by a wonderful visual metaphor of bumper cars bouncing off the new “blue secure guard protective contours” which according to the soft female voice narrating this mental torture keep “all you’d want, exactly where you’d want it to be” now I can’t speak as a woman, but I believe if women had a choice the vast majority would want the lining of their uterus to stay where it was and not have to periodically bleed it out, no matter how great the “blue secure guard contours” are. This awful visual metaphor continues for a round twenty seconds, accompanied by traditional fairground/circus music, a disturbing juxtaposition which gives the advert a sinister nightmarish feel ensuring that what you have just seen will be scarred in to your memory forever. It all ends with a tag line that baffles even the greatest minds “Have a happy period” I challenge everyone reading this (if anyone is actually reading this) to find anybody who has experienced a “happy period” A time of the month where women become irritable (understandably may I add just to ensure the sexist door in this post is firmly locked shut) and straight men in committed relationships have to wait anything up to a week to enjoy penetrative sex again, or not, if that’s how you choose to live your life.

We hardly ever see adverts for other genital related products such as condoms or contraceptive pills and there’s a simple reason nobody suffers as a result of their infrequent exposure, it’s because we already know they exist. Like we already know tampons and sanitary pads exist, for what reason do we need televised reminders of their existence, purpose and availability on such a regular basis other than to spoil peoples viewing enjoyment?

Music in Advertising: The Lobotomy of Art

One of the undisputed song writing masters of our time Stevie Wonder once sang that “music is a world within itself with, a language we all understand”. But what happens when that world is invaded by money hungry corporations that twist its language to lure the precious little money you have from you in a scenario ironically similar to Stevie’s career in the 80s?

Sadly we’ve all been there, sat enjoying some of television’s richest fruits only to find that in the commercial break corporate blood suckers have seized the opportunity to rape and pillage a much loved song in to a 30 second backing track to accompany garish images of something new to squander your meagre funds on. Most recently Clark’s has touched a nerve, although the rage that I felt when watching this particular advert was more accustomed to somebody physically throttling my spinal cord.

The crushing hammer of musical disillusionment began to fall whilst I was leaving the glare of the TV screen to avoid such a catastrophe during the ad break. It was only until I was just out of the door did I hear the opening line to Birdhouse in Your Soul, a personal favourite by the American new wave come alternative rock band They Might Be Giants, flowing with all its saccharine nostalgia and optimism. In disbelief I whipped back in to the room to see what possible purpose this song could possibly be serving between the two halves of ‘Coronation Street’ only to be greeted to a nightmarish vision of a society, where select children have grown to gigantic proportions and are allowed to run, cycle and skate freely over school playgrounds and idealised suburbia in the name of promoting a shoe retailer most people of recent generations have not had the displeasure of dealing with since they were in need of shoes for school. In little over thirty seconds a favourite song had become irreversibly mentally linked to the thought of generic shoe design and the childhood dread of starting a new year at school with shoes your mother chose for you. All of its original sentiment and personality removed, lobotomised.