The brand that couldn't handle the truth.

Last weekend I spent the day with a friend of mine. We don’t get a chance to catch up very often so when we do, we TALK. During the course of the conversation we were reflecting on how much anxiety, shame and embarrassment we felt managing our periods when we were teenagers. Me in the early 90’s, her in the early 80’s. 

It was particularly rough at school. 

We talked about the blinding pain of cramps in the middle of class, the constant anxiety of needing access to the bathroom and desperately hoping it was properly equipped. The dread of swimming carnivals and overnight camps. The heckling from boys who would shout out ‘Are you on your rags?’ if they saw you going into the toilet block with your school bag. The general discomfort of period care at the time – there was a reason they referred to pads as ‘surfboards’.

Not to mention the advertising campaigns. 

I remember the ‘Carefree’ ads the most. Carefree ads sold us the idea that your period should go completely unnoticed. That women should be unbothered, joyful, and hyper-capable every day of the month. The ads featured beautiful teenage girls having a fantastic time, running and swimming whilst wearing wearing white swimsuits. 

The ‘Carefree girl’ didn’t have a care in the world. She wasn’t worried about her period at all.

‘Remember the Carefree girl?’ I asked my friend. ‘I was a Carefree girl!’, she exclaimed. I looked at her in shock. 

In the early 80’s, at 16 years old, my friend was booked as a model for a Carefree advertising campaign. Commercial jobs are a big deal for young models because they pay well. This was exciting. 

Until the day of the shoot.

The campaign creative was a beautiful young model bouncing around the waves in a white bikini, enjoying the sun, surf and sand, without a care in the world. After all, she was the Carefree girl.

The problem was, my friend had her period that day. As she described it, a painful, heavy period.

She was on location, in the surf, wearing a white bikini, in pain and completely terrified that she was going to bleed through the bikini. On top of that she was panicked about access to toilets while on the beach. 

She was so anxious, she couldn’t move freely. She knew they weren’t getting the shots they needed but felt too embarrassed and ashamed to tell anyone what was happening.

At the end of the shoot she went home and cried.

Afterwards, her agent rang her and told her they were going to re-shoot the campaign with a different model. Her agent also added that her ‘boobs looked too big for the bikini’. My friend explained to me that they were swollen due to her period.

Marketing doesn't simply sell a product. It manufactures a fantasy then sells it to us as reality.

Carefree manufactured an imaginary world where young women having their period could run, swim, wear white bikinis and not give it a second thought.  My friend was living the reality - a world where young women felt anxious, embarrassed and ashamed. Not to mention physically debilitated by pain, swelling and bloating.

Women are constantly sold fantasies.

Fantasies manufactured in boardrooms full of people who aren’t interested in addressing our lived experience. Fantasies that make the reality of being a woman feel like a personal failure. 

That feeling of failure, that gap between lived experience and manufactured fantasy, is what keeps us striving. Keeps us spending. Keeps us feeling like we are never enough.

This week’s Embodied Style Practice

This week I want you to meet yourself where you are. Not the fantasy of where you've been told you should be — the reality of where you actually are. Just let yourself exist there.

Take a few slow, deep breaths. As you exhale, let the pressure go. The pressure to look younger, slimmer, fitter. The pressure to have perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect teeth. Let it go. The pressure to have it all worked out. Let it go. Let yourself be enough, even if it’s just for a moment.

Then get dressed from where you are. Choose an outfit that feels good on your body today. Not the body you used to have, not the body you think you should have. The body you have. Whatever you choose, let it be enough for today.

Striving to meet beauty standards, ideals and fantasies is like being a hamster on a wheel. You never arrive, you just stay in a constant state of trying. 

My friend was hired for being beautiful and fired for being human. That’s the thing with fantasy worlds, they only exist as an illusion. Your human-ness is much deeper and more beautiful than anything they can conjure up in a boardroom. It may not always be carefree, but it’s yours.

Julie x