In my last semester of college I participated in a mentorship class based on the changing norms of femininity and the ways in which gender distinctions have become less defined due to the emergence of the mass media. During our discussion the Tampax Pearl advertisements "against Mother Nature" were brought to my attention. When I was flipping through "Women's Health" magazine (from which this ad was taken) I stumbled across a new version of the ad and felt it was an extremely appropriate focus for this particular project.
The reason I find this advertisement so relevant is that I believe it is teaching women--and girls--to hate their bodies and to view the things that make them feminine as disservices. It seems that the point of the ad is "wouldn't it be so great if your period didn't exist at all?" I disagree with this message wholeheartedly and would much rather see a world where women could embrace the things that make them distinctly themselves instead of attempt to shove them off in order to become more like the masculine. My transformation of this ad was to take it above and beyond the original message. I made the "Mother Nature" character into the devil and blocked off a week on the calendar as "hell week." I think exacerbating this image reveals the actual ridiculousness of what the ad is trying to say.
Lindy S.
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