"The Cubicle"

3 October 2015

80s

About bloody time

Finally it looks like we may be moving into an era where 'sanitary products' - as they have been euphemistically referred to since time immemorial - are no longer a topic of shame and mortification.

Thanks to this extremely shrewd campaign featuring well-known characters Lydia and Ferne from TOWIE, tampons are on the verge of being rehabilitated as items that women can be open and matter-of-fact about, and which men can ask about without seeming weird.

Although the premise of this spot is that their conversation about Lil-lets' superior features sounds full of double entendres to Bobby, the eavesdropper in the next cubicle, it's actually busy demystifying some of the myths and taboos around menstruation. And the more men understand about this monthly occurrence, the easier it is to accommodate it as something normal which deserves respect rather than the onset of temporary female madness.

The whole 'blue liquid' thing is cleverly dealt with too: instead of undermining the message by having to acknowledge that we can only cope with a sanitised demonstration, the liquid in question is presented as a cocktail. And - as a challenge to anybody squeamish - Bobby takes a tampon out of one of the glasses and chugs back the remaining drink.

We're a bit uneasy about the stereotyping involved in casting a black actor as the toilet attendant but - that aside - this is a significant move forward in tampon advertising that consigns all the bollocks with white trousers and earnest science bits to the 'feminine hygiene' bin. About bloody time.

UK

Sanitary Protection