tampons

This past weekend's Saturday Night Live made us laugh out loud with its commercial for G.O.B. Tampons, feminine products designed by the people who know women's bodies best: the "gentlemen of the Republican party." The ad lampoons the recent gaffes of male members of the GOP in regards to women's health, notably Todd Akin's remarks that "legitimate rape" victims can't get pregnant. But as ridiculous as the skit seems, it highlights the fact that the majority of our country's lawmakers making decisions about women's bodies are men — such as when earlier this year, Congress convened a panel on contraception that didn't include a single woman.

So watch the faux commercial now, and let's make sure there never comes a day when 60-plus-year-old conservative men design tampons that insert into our butts.

Bloody hell, it's about time! Always has an ad for its ultra thin pads that features a teeny tiny dot of red blood (no carefree girl in white in sight), and it may be one of the first instances a US feminine hygiene ad has dared to reference real blood, much less show it.

Despite being about periods, tampon and maxi pad advertisements have a long history of pussy-footing around the realities of menstruation with euphemisms, metaphors, and that infamous blue liquid. The closest we've seen to a blood reference are the o.b. and Tampax ads above that use vampires and sharks to get their point across.

Is this a step in the right direction? Do you think we'll ever get to a point when a woman's period and her body are talked about openly and honestly?

"Very rare!" "Unopened." "Brand new." These are words eBay sellers use to describe tampons for sale, but not just any tampons — the beloved O.B. Ultra (the purple box), which Johnson & Johnson discontinued late last year.

Soon all O.B. tampons were reported missing from store shelves, and though they've started to return, many women still can't find them. So, of course, enterprising eBay users are all over this opportunity. O.B. Ultra is going for $50 (seller also has a "cracked" box available for $45) while the same-size box (albeit nondiscontinued absorbencies) sells for under $6 on Soap.com.

The crazy thing is they're probably selling, otherwise so many people wouldn't be offering them. Once women do get their hands on the discontinued tampons they may have an Elaine from Seinfeld-like conundrum (are you sponge-worthy?) on their hands. Is today's flow ultra-worthy or just super?

First there was the Brawny man. Then the Old Spice guy. And now Stayfree wants to bring the Stayfree stud into the public consciousness. In the company's new viral ads, good-looking men (I hope they paid the actors well) invite you into their bachelor pads with hopes of selling you maxi pads.

Brad, Trevor, and Ryan (see above) love Stayfree maxi pads so much that they'll demonstrate how well they work using the blue Kool-Aid liquid and all. Thanks, but no thanks. I want a man who's mature enough to buy me tampons, but there is nothing romantic about feminine products.

Last month Kotex set out to end euphemistic period talk in tampon ads with a new ad campaign. We were impressed. But when I saw it air during a Gossip Girl episode, something was lost. It still had that electric-blue, feminine-hygiene pastiche to it. But Kotex is back on track with its latest ad!

A young woman stands outside a drugstore while hidden cameras roll across the street in New York's West Village. She stops several men and asks them to go in and buy her tampons because she forgot her bike lock. Answers range from the practical ("Can't I just watch your bike?") to the succinct ("No!") to the hilarious ("Can I get you toilet paper?"). Now if only I could see this on TV!

Tampon ads are filled with euphemisms, and feature women in varying shades of white frolicking outdoors. Nobody knows their secret, and really that's all anyone's ever asked of a tampon. But now Kotex is stirring things up with a new campaign called Break the Cycle. It parodies typical feminine-product commercials by talking openly and frankly about periods. Too frankly for TV. The New York Times reports three networks rejected the ad, and only one of those networks accepted it after the word "vagina" was switched out for "down there."

Now that a company is finally trying to challenge the status quo, and maybe peddle what it believes are the finest applicators around, television won't have it. Yet TV shows have been doing a better job talking about periods for years. Here are clips from three shows — Blossom, 7th Heaven, and The Cosby Show — that, despite overuse of the word "woman," do a remarkable job of talking about menstruation.

Watch them after the jump

Dear Fit,
I was at the health-food store and noticed chlorine-free tampons made with organic cotton. They cost $5.99 for a box of 20, and the ones I buy at the grocery store cost $6.99 for 40. Are they worth paying almost twice as much?
—Trying to Save a Buck

With the economy the way it is, I can understand you looking for places to save money. To find out if chlorine-free tampons are worth the splurge keep reading