February 14, 2022

Facebook bans Modibodi’s ad for depictions of red menstrual blood

In an unsurprising yet still extremely disappointing move, Facebook has banned ModiBodi’s  ‘The new way to period’ campaign video, due to period blood being depicted as red.

Facebook reportedly told advertising website Mumbrella that the platform holds a “higher set of standards” for advertisements than organic content.

“Our Community Standards outline what is and isn’t allowed on our free services, however, when it comes to ads on Facebook we have a higher set of standards for what content can be included in an ad. Our Advertising Policies are more restrictive because they take paid distribution to appear in people’s personal News Feeds and clearly state that ads must not contain text or images that may shock or that focuses on someone’s personal attributes, including their physical or mental health condition.”

Broken down, if Facebook have any control over what goes onto their platforms, it’s not going to be a truely normal bodily fluid and definitely not blood coloured.

They state ‘ads must not contain text or images that may shock’, which is a complete cop-out that allows them to stigmatise periods due to the opinions of other people.

No one who has periods, is shocked by periods.

These are the three images Facebook needed to deem it ‘inappropriate’

Similarly to Modibodi, Libra’s #BloodNormal also challenged consumers and the advertising industry by rejecting the trope of demonstrating pad absorbency with blue liquid by using the colour red instead. The ad also presented viewers with the realities of experiencing a period whilst showering, swimming and working, and posed the question ‘Why is it considered unacceptable to show period blood?’

However, #BloodNormal was the industry watchdog Ad Standards’ most complained about ad of 2019. Amongst the 738 complaints the ad received, viewers labelled it ‘degrading’, ‘offensive’, ‘dangerous to young girls’, ‘appealing to pedophiles’ and compared the depiction of period blood to showing faeces in an ad for toilet paper. All complaints were dismissed.

In response to Mumbrella’s request, Ad Standards revealed that, so far, the ad has received less than 30 complaints from its appearances on pay TV and TV on demand. The community panel case is currently in progress, and Ad Standards reported that cases take 42 days on average to turnaround.

“We have not received complaints about the ad on Facebook or Youtube,” the Ad Standards spokesperson said.

ModiBodi so far have refused Facebook’s request for them to change their ad, stating

“It’s the twenty-first century and it’s disappointing Facebook doesn’t want to normalise the conversation around menstruation. We also note that other media platforms have not taken the same direction as Facebook.”