The Milk Board is known for its catchy ad campaigns. When I was a kid, the commercials told us, “Milk does a body good: pass it on.” Then came the ever-popular “Got milk?” ads that featured celebrities posing with milk mustaches and touting the benefits of drinking milk. The Milk Board’s latest, however, is a bit … different.
The new campaign — based on a 2000 study showing a link between calcium and relief of PMS symptoms — is housed at EverythingIDoIsWrong.org, “your home for PMS management.” Playing on the oh-so-fresh idea that PMSing women are she-beasts that poor men are terrified of, the website is a cornucopia of offensive stereotypes framed as humor.
The interactive site includes a “Global PMS Level” — similar to the U.S. terrorism color code — featuring a man’s face looking increasingly scared as the color goes from green (“All is calm. Just like right before a storm.”) to red (“Look out! Everything is wrong and it’s all your fault.”) My favorite, though, is orange: “Be on high alert for verbal traps and questions about weight.” Charming. The site also features a “sensitivity vocabulator” (“instead of ‘irrational,’ try ‘passionate’ ”) and an “emergency milk locator map” where you can find the nearest grocery store. Site users can even download ads that show cowed-looking men offering up cartons of milk with slogans like, “I’m sorry I listened to what you said and not what you meant.”
Got sexism?
If the Milk Board wants more women to buy milk to help with their PMS symptoms, I’m not so sure a campaign that’s geared toward men, that mocks women’s health issues and that trots out hackneyed notions about women on the rag is really the way to go. And it’s not just ineffective — this sort of campaign has been done before. Making fun of women’s menstruation and PMS is hardly a revolutionary concept in advertising.
American Greetings, for example, has an e-card that is suspiciously similar to the Milk Board’s ad. The card’s voiceover says ominously, “The threat is real, in homes across the world, at any moment, without warning, renegade hormones can attack. That’s why the Homelife Security PMS advisory system was developed. The Homelife Security PMS advisory system designed to help often complacent males recognize the PMS warning signs and become better prepared in the event of an attack.” The card then tells the user to — you guessed it! — click on a color to view the level of risk.
Or there’s the PMS Buddy (pmsbuddy.com), a web service created to warn men when the women in their lives are nearing their period: “PMSBuddy [was] created with a single goal in mind: to keep you aware of when your wife, girlfriend, mother, sister, daughter, or any other women in your life are closing in on ‘that time of the month’ — when things can get intense for what may seem to be no reason at all. For women, this is a great way to give people in your life a heads-up of when you might be feeling a bit irritable without having an awkward conversation.” Because goodness knows an email notification about your period isn’t awkward at all. There’s even an iPad app by which men can track women’s periods, called — of course — Code Red.
Midol had a short-lived “Reverse the Curse” campaign, and the PMS medication Sarafem — actually just Prozac renamed something lady-friendly — ran commercials of terrifying women snapping at their husbands and children. We get it, enough already.
I’m not suggesting that PMS symptoms aren’t real or shouldn’t be addressed. When I spoke to Dr. Susan Thys-Jacobs, author of the study that the Milk Board used to launch this campaign, she noted that many women suffer terribly from PMS. “A number of women don’t realize the symptoms they’re having is PMS … and there’s a huge stigma around [the syndrome],” she said. Thys-Jacobs also said it appeared the Milk Board was “capitalizing on the fact there’s a stigma.”
So yes, PMS exists. But really, is a little dignity too much to ask? And the sad fact is, myths about PMS and menstruation have long been part of the sexism that excludes women from public life (female presidents will declare war when their hormones are raging!) or that dismisses female anger (don’t mind her, she’s just riding the crimson wave).
Women are tired of the menstrual myths and the sexism. It’s annoying, it’s condescending and it’s just plain tired. So if you’re looking to alleviate any PMS symptoms, skip the milk — take a calcium supplement instead.
The new campaign — based on a 2000 study showing a link between calcium and relief of PMS symptoms — is housed at EverythingIDoIsWrong.org, “your home for PMS management.” Playing on the oh-so-fresh idea that PMSing women are she-beasts that poor men are terrified of, the website is a cornucopia of offensive stereotypes framed as humor.
The interactive site includes a “Global PMS Level” — similar to the U.S. terrorism color code — featuring a man’s face looking increasingly scared as the color goes from green (“All is calm. Just like right before a storm.”) to red (“Look out! Everything is wrong and it’s all your fault.”) My favorite, though, is orange: “Be on high alert for verbal traps and questions about weight.” Charming. The site also features a “sensitivity vocabulator” (“instead of ‘irrational,’ try ‘passionate’ ”) and an “emergency milk locator map” where you can find the nearest grocery store. Site users can even download ads that show cowed-looking men offering up cartons of milk with slogans like, “I’m sorry I listened to what you said and not what you meant.”
Got sexism?
If the Milk Board wants more women to buy milk to help with their PMS symptoms, I’m not so sure a campaign that’s geared toward men, that mocks women’s health issues and that trots out hackneyed notions about women on the rag is really the way to go. And it’s not just ineffective — this sort of campaign has been done before. Making fun of women’s menstruation and PMS is hardly a revolutionary concept in advertising.
American Greetings, for example, has an e-card that is suspiciously similar to the Milk Board’s ad. The card’s voiceover says ominously, “The threat is real, in homes across the world, at any moment, without warning, renegade hormones can attack. That’s why the Homelife Security PMS advisory system was developed. The Homelife Security PMS advisory system designed to help often complacent males recognize the PMS warning signs and become better prepared in the event of an attack.” The card then tells the user to — you guessed it! — click on a color to view the level of risk.
Or there’s the PMS Buddy (pmsbuddy.com), a web service created to warn men when the women in their lives are nearing their period: “PMSBuddy [was] created with a single goal in mind: to keep you aware of when your wife, girlfriend, mother, sister, daughter, or any other women in your life are closing in on ‘that time of the month’ — when things can get intense for what may seem to be no reason at all. For women, this is a great way to give people in your life a heads-up of when you might be feeling a bit irritable without having an awkward conversation.” Because goodness knows an email notification about your period isn’t awkward at all. There’s even an iPad app by which men can track women’s periods, called — of course — Code Red.
Midol had a short-lived “Reverse the Curse” campaign, and the PMS medication Sarafem — actually just Prozac renamed something lady-friendly — ran commercials of terrifying women snapping at their husbands and children. We get it, enough already.
I’m not suggesting that PMS symptoms aren’t real or shouldn’t be addressed. When I spoke to Dr. Susan Thys-Jacobs, author of the study that the Milk Board used to launch this campaign, she noted that many women suffer terribly from PMS. “A number of women don’t realize the symptoms they’re having is PMS … and there’s a huge stigma around [the syndrome],” she said. Thys-Jacobs also said it appeared the Milk Board was “capitalizing on the fact there’s a stigma.”
So yes, PMS exists. But really, is a little dignity too much to ask? And the sad fact is, myths about PMS and menstruation have long been part of the sexism that excludes women from public life (female presidents will declare war when their hormones are raging!) or that dismisses female anger (don’t mind her, she’s just riding the crimson wave).
Women are tired of the menstrual myths and the sexism. It’s annoying, it’s condescending and it’s just plain tired. So if you’re looking to alleviate any PMS symptoms, skip the milk — take a calcium supplement instead.
