Cash Flow: The businesses of menstruation

Abstract

The menstrual product industry has played a large role in shaping the last hundred years of menstrual culture, from technological innovation to creative advertising, education in classrooms and as employers of thousands in factories around the world. How much do we know about this sector and how has it changed in later decades? What constitutes ‘the industry’, who works in it, and how is it adapting to the current menstrual equity movement? Cash Flow provides a new academic study of the menstrual corporate landscape that links its twentieth-century origins to the current ‘menstrual moment’. Drawing on a range of previously unexplored archival materials and interviews with industry insiders, each chapter examines one key company and brand: Saba in Norway, Essity in Sweden, Tambrands in the Soviet Union, Procter & Gamble in Britain and Europe, Kimberly-Clark in North America, and start-ups Clue and Thinx. By engaging with these corporate collections, the book highlights how the industry has survived as its consumers continually change.

Periods of austerity: The emergence of ‘period poverty’ in UK news media

“…6. Although a representational shift recently occurred, as exemplified by Bodyform using red liquid in their advert, rather than blue, marking a change in menstrual advertising (Koskenniemi, 2021;Røstvik, 2022). This change was also discussed in the news coverage in October 2017.…”

“…Yet, while the discussion of menstruation was present through period poverty, the newspaper coverage offered a sanitised view of menstruation. Indeed, like historical representations of menstruation in advertising 6 (see Campbell et al, 2021;Koskenniemi, 2021;Røstvik, 2022) and memes (Tomlinson, 2021), the coverage rendered actual blood absent.…”

“…Campbell et al (2021: 231) note that menstrual advertising changed post-2010 as menstruation became an 'invisible presence', rather than an 'overt threat' as in the 1980s/1990s, or through 'uncontrollability' as in the 2000s. They and others (Haneman, 2021;Koskenniemi, 2021;Røstvik, 2022) link this shift to brands taking on feminist values under 'woke washing' and 'femvertising' (see Sobande, 2019a). Exploring the US context, Haneman (2021: 9) analyses the emergence of 'menstrual capitalism', whereby 'corporate virtue signalling' around period poverty and capitalism combine to form a 'menstruation industrial complex'.…”

How Matters of Concern Invade Technologies

“…The latter scandal strongly contributed to spreading the concern about toxicity among the general public. More generally, it also favoured the broader distrust in menstrual products and their subsequent association with environmental concerns, eco-feminism and menstrual activism (Bobel, 2008), the rejection of single-use disposable products (Hawkins, 2018(Hawkins, , 2020, the criticism of the business of menstruation (Arveda Kissling, 2006;Mørk Røstvik, 2022) and the quest for safer and more sustainable alternatives (Armstrong and Scott, 1992;Bobel, 2006;Costello et al, 1989).…”

Understanding “flow”: A multimodal reading of political economy and capitalist erotics in hip hop

“…To the modern eye, the red blood on the white cloth is reminiscent of menstrual product advertisingin which the blood only relatively recently turned from blue to redas well as Sebastian's inherent glamour and enjoyment in his state, such as in Modess sanitary product adverts from the mid 20th century (Figure 4). (For a full discussion of commerciality in menstrual product advertising see Mørk Rosvik, 2022. ) As it is for St Sebastian, so it is for hip hop.…”