THE PEDAGOGY OF THE CLEAN BODY: GENDER AND THE ADVERTISING CONSTRUCTION OF MENSTRUATION IN ADVERTISING (1980–2011)

Abstract

This study proposes a critical analysis of representations of menstruation in televised sanitary pad advertisements broadcast in Brazil between the 1980s and the 2011s, examining the aesthetic, symbolic, and subjective implications of these discourses. The selected time frame is justified by the consolidation of television as the primary mass communication medium during this period and by the central role advertising assumed in the production of social imaginaries, particularly regarding the construction of gender norms and corporeality. This historical interval also precedes the rise of digital social media, when television exercised strong pedagogical power over ways of being, feeling, and experiencing the body. The research corpus consists of advertisements from widely disseminated brands in the Brazilian market, such as Modess, Sempre Livre, Ela, Carefree, and Naturella. These campaigns allow for the observation of both continuities and transformations in how menstrual experience was represented over three decades. The analysis reveals recurring strategies that articulate technology, aesthetics, and pedagogy, transforming the menstruating body into an object of management and surveillance. One of the central elements of these strategies is the systematic absence of terms such as “menstruation” and “blood,” replaced by euphemisms (e.g., “those days”) or by the visual metaphor of blue liquid. The substitution of red with blue operates as a mechanism of symbolic hygienization, neutralizing the lived bodily experience and distancing it from its biological, emotional, and social dimensions, thereby re-signifying menstruation as a technical problem to be controlled. This chromatic operation is not merely an aesthetic choice but functions as an ideological device that regulates bodily visibility and reinforces normative standards of femininity associated with cleanliness, dryness, and freshness. The analyzed advertisements predominantly feature cisgender, white, and slim women, producing a homogeneous ideal of femininity while rendering invisible trans men and non-binary people who menstruate, thus revealing the cisnormative and exclusionary nature of these representations. The body is portrayed not as a vital potency but as a surface to be hygienized and normalized, subjected to consumer devices that promise safety. This symbolic construction directly affects the subjectivity of menstruating individuals, fostering feelings of inadequacy, surveillance, and embarrassment toward menstrual blood. Ultimately, the study questions whether the safety promised by advertising seeks to protect against physical leakage or against the very visibility of the menstruating body, revealing a broader attempt to control not only blood but also the meanings and narratives surrounding menstrual experience.

Keywors: Body. Gender. Menstruation. Advertising. Subjectivity.