--- title: Thinx TV Ad About Period Stigma Rejected Over Tampon String description: Thinx, a company that makes period underwear, tried to place a TV ad that showed a tampon string, and it was rejected by major networks, writes CEO Maria Molland. canonical: https://time.com/5706034/thinx-ad-tampon-rejected/ author: Maria Molland article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-10-21T15:44:53.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T07:36:15.447Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Who's Afraid of a Tampon String? Major TV Networks og:description: Thinx CEO says the company was told its ad would have to change in order to run og:url: https://time.com/5706034/thinx-ad-tampon-rejected/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt34fe06679c708120/698a049bdb29873713264561/thinx-period-women-tampons.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2121 og:image:height: 1193 og:image:alt: What's the Deal With Period Stigma? og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Who's Afraid of a Tampon String? Major TV Networks twitter:description: Thinx CEO says the company was told its ad would have to change in order to run twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt34fe06679c708120/698a049bdb29873713264561/thinx-period-women-tampons.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # My Company Wanted to Show a Tampon String in an Ad. 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Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. by [Maria Molland](https://time.com/author/maria-molland/) ## Maria Molland Oct 21, 2019 3:44 PM UTC  Close-Up Of Woman Hand Holding Tampons Close-Up Of Woman Hand Holding Tampons Isabel Pavia—Getty Images by [Maria Molland](https://time.com/author/maria-molland/) ## Maria Molland Oct 21, 2019 3:44 PM UTC This month, Thinx debuted our first ever national television ad and tried to place it on broadcast networks across the United States. Thinx makes absorbent, washable, reusable underwear that can replace pads, tampons and other disposable period products. For our first TV ad, we wanted to address the taboos that affect our customers and our industry — which partly explains, by the way, the lack of significant innovation in the menstrual hygiene industry since the first menstrual cup patent in 1937\. Periods are stigmatized and, by extension, people with periods are too. So we made a commercial that imagines an answer to this question: “If we _all_ had periods, would we be more comfortable talking about them?” The commercial depicts cisgender men going through all the struggles with which the population of people with periods are all too familiar — trying to conceal tampon packages in our hands, fighting with an empty sanitary pad dispenser and, yes, walking through a locker room with a tampon string dangling from our underwear. About half of the world’s population will experience a period in their lifetime, so what’s wrong with an ad depicting them? If you ask me, nothing. However, multiple major networks refused to air the ad unless we replaced the scene with the tampon string. I first got my period when I was 14 years old, and it wasn’t until I became CEO of Thinx — at age 42 — that it even dawned on me to _not_ be ashamed of menstruating. There’s nothing inherently shameful about menstruation. (The anthropologist Alma Gottlieb has even documented many cultures in which menstruation is celebrated and a girl may be treated “like a queen” when she gets her first period.) Still, in Western culture — which informs too many of the world’s norms — menstruation is just treated as shameful and dirty, something better left unacknowledged. Advertising has long not only abided but fueled this negativity. Think about all the commercials for tampons and pads featuring blue liquid that looks more like window cleaner than the healthy human blood and tissue it’s supposed to represent. Stigma is more than just emotionally burdensome. Stigma has social and economic consequences. School attendance for girls worldwide [drops](https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/menstrual-hygiene-day-education/) precipitously around puberty, and though there are a number of reasons, menstruation is a major factor. For instance, about 1 in 10 girls in Africa miss school every year because of their periods every year, according to UNICEF. Menstrual hygiene, including access to menstrual products, is a vital part of the solution — but stigma is a major barrier to instituting basic hygiene programs and access. The result? In India, approximately 1 in 5 girls drops out of school after starting menstruation. Even here in the U.S., [1 in 5 teens have struggled to afford period products](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0795/1599/files/State-of-the-Period-white-paper%5FThinx%5FPERIOD.pdf?455788) or were not able to purchase them at all, according to a study we commissioned with PERIOD, a nonprofit focused on combating period poverty and stigma. I don’t think a commercial featuring a dangling tampon string is going to solve all this, but I do think it’s time to be honest about menstruation — including providing accurate, shame-free information and resources to people with periods worldwide, and ceasing to disguise this natural process that we’ve been forced to hide for far too long. Instead of continuing to perpetuate the blue liquid of stigma, broadcasters have the opportunity to don the red badge of courage. One tiny tampon string seems like a small step, but it’s one that I’m willing to fight to take. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5706034/thinx-ad-tampon-rejected/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5706034/thinx-ad-tampon-rejected/"},"headline":"My Company Wanted to Show a Tampon String in an Ad. 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