It's not very often that I receive e-mails from my mother-in-law with the subject line "Best Tampon Commercial Ever," so naturally I needed to drop everything I was doing and immediately watch. Within an hour, the Hello Flo commercial was trending, half of my Facebook friends had reposted it (guys and gals) and it was making headlines. It's a commercial about periods and it's funny!
If you haven't watched it yet, (see below) the ad features a young camper and her rise and fall as her summer camp's tampon Nazi. She becomes the big boss of her sleep away by hoarding and distributing ladies' monthly necessities; until one day her reign of power comes to an abrupt end due to Hello Flo. Hello Flo is like a Birchbox for your monthly shame, and if you don't know what Birchbox is, that's because you are not a girl and this product is not targeted toward you anyway.
I love this commercial. It's a little girl talking about periods, which is already a rarity, but she talks about them in the most candid way. She uses the word "vag" multiple times. It got me wishing for more tongue-and-cheek ad campaigns for feminine products. Why should we pretend that what goes on down there isn't sort of hilarious in a miserable way? Because it really is. And we all go through it, so why not celebrate it with a good laugh? Seriously, sometimes it is so miserable that if we don't poke fun, we'll kill ourselves or you, Mister. Actually we'd rather kill you; now go get us those chips and put on Basketball Wives and go the 'eff away (they are stereotypes because they are true).
I dug around and was pleasantly surprised to find that other lady-centric companies also have a sense of humor and some of it is really disgusting. I hope this Hello Flo ad starts a new trend in tampon commercials, but for now here are 10 that I found to be pretty great.
TampaxIn light of the recent Sharknado craze, I would rerelease this commercial. The gist of it is that sharks smell blood and without Tampax you are leaking all over the place, hence you will probably be eaten by a shark. It's pretty revolting if you think about it for more than a minute.
BodyformA few years ago this guy Richard Neill angrily posted on Facebook that he was upset that he and all other men had been lied to for years by happy-go-lucky maxipad advertisements featuring women with huge smiles, just absolutely overjoyed with the fact that each month they are lucky enough to get a visit from Aunt Flo. Neill called BS on the industry as a whole and got 80,000 Facebook likes.
Taking advantage of this viral post, Bodyform, a British company, addressed the misconception in an amazing commercial. The head of Bodyform (played by an actress) apologizes for misleading men for all of these years into thinking that women actually enjoy their period, when in reality it is a the most horrific time of the month. It's all very sarcastic and witty; any guy who's ever dated a woman for more than four weeks knows that the time of the month is when they should go into hiding.
"I think it's time we came clean," says the CEO of Bodyform in the ad. "We lied to you, Richard, and I want to say sorry. ... Sorry."
Milk PMSApparently, milk helps ease PMS. I had no idea and I think I may be better off knowing that. Do you think almond milk works the same way though?