Michael Ross and Bernie West were story editors for “All in the Family”. This is an excerpt from a New York Times article from 1974:
“A lot of mail on that one, too,” says West. The script that got the most mail of all, however, was “The Battle of the Month” last season. This episode featured Gloria, in the midst of her menstrual period, having a serious quarrel with, of all people, Edith. “People wrote in saying things like, ‘How can you mention menstruation?’ We never expected that, but we were inundated with letters,” recalls Ross.
From the same article:
Nor did we do the menstrual episode for shock value. We needed Gloria irritated to the point where she would blow up at Edith. In fact, we got the idea from Sally Struthers herself. When she has her menstrual period, forget it. She can’t work, she’s headachy, she’s irritable ‐‐— we took it from her. And it worked.”
mmm
I found a thesis titled The Good, the Bad, and the Bloody: Images of Menstruation in
Television and in Menstrual Activism that flatly states the All in the Family “broadcast the first representation of menstruation on the small screen.” (FTR, Gloria referred to it as “that time of the month again.”)
However, I found other cites that advertisements for the euphemistically titled “feminine hygiene products” were aired before then, and I still don’t believe TV stations would broadcast the commercials if the subject hadn’t been broached on a program somewhere.
Maybe it was a talk show. Phil Donohue started his show in 1967, and Barbara Walters had her talk show on in 1971. It would have been easier to slip it in as a woman’s health story.
I vividly remember that episode. Not that I saw it. I was 10 at the time and I was so absolutely embarrassed/devastated at the idea of getting my period. My family watched Roseanne every week, and I must have known what was going to happen to Darlene (probably from commercials for the show) and I got up and hid in the bathroom halfway through the episode. Because I didn’t want to see or hear anything about anyone’s period.
Man, was I freaked out. I still remember it.
Why? Women still had menstruation, whether TV mentioned it or not. They need products, even if they have to be referred to circuitously.
I specifically remember commercials in the 60s and 70s for Midol that spoke of the product’s effectiveness at…whatever it did, which they would pointedly never mention. “It helps with the pain I get before, during, and even two weeks after!” Before, during and after WHAT? The product box used in the ads had nothing other than the name. I was of course completely mystified, but those that cared, those that needed it, knew.
One of my older cousins worked in a drug store as a teenager, probably early 1960s. He later told me that one of his jobs was wrapping all Tampax boxes in brown paper before they went on the shelves.
People knew what they were, but didn’t want even the very discreet original packaging to be visible.
It’s only recently that sanitary pad advertisements on TV (in the UK at least) showed the “proper” colour liquid. It was blue until recently which must have been mystifying to some people! No, we don’t bleed blue!
As a child I used to think women suddenly became incontinent and peed blue once a month because of those comercials!
There was a commercial on (US) cable channels advertising an absorbent panty. The commercial showed dark red stains on the sheets before the person bought the new product. I thought, wow! That’s a bit…real.
I noticed the commercial is no longer being shown.
Same here in Germany, but only in the last two or three years. Before that it was blue, the same color of what went into diapers in ads…
There was a commercial that ran in the US a few years ago, a tween girl desperately wants to get her period, and to keep up with her friends, she paints red nail polish onto a pad and claims she got her period. Her mom wises up to her scheme and … I’ll let you see it.
Those would be some inconvenient commercials.