Femcare brand Libresse / Bodyform and creative agency AMV BBDO, London, have launched the “Never Just a Period” campaign to highlight the dissonance between what women+ are taught to expect, and the reality of their menstrual experiences, showing the unsettling and absurd experience of having so little knowledge about their own bodies. The campaign aims to initiate an open conversation and education around menstrual health throughout women+’s lives.
Central to the new integrated campaign is this film about how painfully unprepared women+ are for a life inside their bodies, bemoaning centuries of terrible education, lack of research and knowledge, and years of dismissing and minimizing health problems. Directed by Netflix hit show Eric director, Lucy Forbes, through production house SMUGGLER, the film uses comedy and hyperbolic mixed-media to poke fun at the strange experience of inhabiting a body without the proper knowledge–from first periods to surprising discharge smells, to mind-boggling tampon manuals.
All the action is scored by a female only Greek chorus-inspired orchestra responding to the ups, the downs, and the ouches. This beautiful, inclusive chorus for women+’s experiences help to create a sense of collectivity and community. Women+ are experiencing it all together and reacting and responding together in many ways–even though it can so often feel like they’re the only person going through it. Ultimately, the ad is a rallying cry to share knowledge and encourages women+ to talk openly about their experiences. “What do you wish you’d been told?” it asks.
As a commitment to dynamite shame surrounding periods, vaginas, vulvas, and women+’s bodies, Libresse / Bodyform has been tracking the perception and prejudice of taboos globally through its Global V-Taboo Tracker since 2020. Four years on, Libresse / Bodyform is digging deeper than ever into the reality of women+’s experiences in relation to taboos. The study listened to 10,000 people across 10 countries, exploring not only all stages of menstrual life in relation to taboos, but all dimensions of women+’s menstrual experiences. From attitudes to behaviors, knowledge, exposure and emotions, the result of this deeper listening has also informed the brand’s latest creative work.
The new data reveals that more than half (59%) of those who menstruate wish they’d been taught more about their periods and intimate health. The campaign highlights the lifetime of confusion women+ go through from first period to last, because the systemic and societal taboos and attitudes which minimize and dismiss women+’s experiences, especially in medical settings.
In a joint statement, Lauren Peters and Augustine Cerf, the AMV BBDO creative team behind the work, shared, “The film stages many not talked about, yet not uncommon experiences, like getting a period whilst breastfeeding, periods not coming back for months after stopping contraception, and large clots during perimenopause–all things that we’d have expected if only somebody had told us. The campaign plays its small part in representing these experiences while also touching on the big systemic and societal issues which stand between women+ and better knowledge about their own bodies. Whether it’s pain being minimized and dismissed in medical contexts and being told it’s ‘just a period’, when it’s always, always so much more.”
