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Thursday, February 6, 2014

What women want on bloody days

Letter to sanitary napkin advertisement makers:
Dear Ad makers,
I am a woman and I want to to share my views on what you try to sell me is a happy period. I also write this on behalf of many women I know who menstruate and use sanitary napkins.
Some of us are heavy bleeders, some of us are not, some have stomach cramps, some have bloated breasts, some have bloated stomachs, some have food sensitivity, some of us have back aches, some of us have legs hurting, some of our migraine gets triggered by the period and the list goes on.

It is bad enough we can not talk about some of us being emotionally sensitive before our period and PMS is a 'bitch' word. Now I have to sit and take it year after year, you guys showing what women can achieve during periods? Wear a white pant and run around? Or wear sexy clothes and go for dinner? Mother and daughter skip together on the beach? Or climb up a ladder and take photos? Or save the world and come back to cook for the family?

One wonders who comes up with these concepts? As a woman who bleeds every month, I can say this about these ads, one thing that is very cleverly ignored is, what women want on these days. I need rest, I need my partner to be helpful, if I am mother then I want my partner to pitch in, I might need a day off if I am cramping up, I might want to rest and read, in the office I might need a day where I can put my legs up on a foot stool or anything except what is shown. ...

So these patriarchal and capitalistic messages tell me to ignore what my body tells me because I am now able to overcome my 'menstrual disability' by being super efficient, super chirpy, super enthusiastic and super whatever?

So next superwoman movie should have the line 'strap on your sanitary napkin sister' you can do whatever you want? (not that superwoman movie is being made).

I do not want to discount the comfort of wearing a sanitary pad which absorbs more or does not let the panties stain or whatever. But we the women are clientele remember? Why sell it to make us ignore our bodily signals and push us to perform high gear all the time?

At work place as it is the patriarchal culture makes it a taboo word to use. Already women with reproductive organs are a liability for 'efficient performance', we have PMS, periods, pregnancies and the likes right. Now you are telling everyone that with a correct napkin, we can do whatever we want? What about other days? We do not exist in your ads except for applying creams to become fairer and win a guy, testing out detergents for whiter clothes winning the husband's heart, falling all over men with hypnotic deodorants, selling tooth brushes to insurance policies ... with body parts which are deliberately removed from the reproductive function...

So if women lived in the world created by ads how would we look like? How would our day be? Where would our happiness reside in? No prizes for guessing..
The Stepford wives we are not because they are not real ..

5 comments:

Pulakesi said...

I have seen it lately but left my comment on Fb while sharing. It moved me

Aparna Kalley said...

Thanks Bava :)

Sharmishtha said...

This is a good piece Aparna. We should get it published on a more popular forum so that young couples can read it and find some sense of the whole process they are going through everyday. It helps to understand that nobody is an exclusive position and also, every thing that seems "massive" is quite tiny in the overall scheme of things :)

Aparna Kalley said...

I am happy you visited and commented dear :) I am glad you liked it :) somehow all of it seems like it happening to us only but it looks like that is not the case :)

Arpita said...

hahaha nodding along to all of this :) the chirpy happy ads are soooo annoying.. really wanna give em a whack for setting ridiculous standards in tight white pants.