13 Vintage Tampon Ads That Are Perfectly Insane

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I was just watching a tampon commercial on TV and it was the standard business: Young, happy friends practically skipping down the street, laughing, and one of them passes the other a vaj cork and they share a knowing smile and then cut to them hanging out with boys. Lots of shiny teeth, etc.

This isn’t going to be some long thing where I talk about how sexist and unrealistic commercial depictions of menstruation are – we all get it by now. But it did make me curious if marketing efforts behind feminine hygiene products have always been so batshit insane. So I took to the Googles, and it turns out, yes. Yes, they have always been all the way cray. But also kind of hilarious.

HERE ARE A FEW OF THE BEST:

Oh right, the whole “tampons will pop your cherry” myth. That was a good time in sexual repression.

This is actually the most gentle, presh way of explain a period. I’m into it:

This is literally exactly what my transactions at the drug store look like.

BE THE YOU HE LIKES. I mean, at least they’re not even pretending that menstruation is about you. It’s about your man, duh.

God, I can’t wait until my uterine lining starts to shed and fall out of my vagina again so I can get about the business of looking glamorous and bonding over our mutual secret with the other women in my life.