The Period Song explaining menstruation will air on the same children’s public service channel that broadcast cartoon genitals earlier this year

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A Swedish children’s TV show that aired a video earlier this year featuring animated dancing genitals has launched a new clip of singing tampons to teach youngsters about menstruation.

The Period Song will air on Friday on the Barnkanalen children’s channel, part of the public service broadcaster SVT. The broadcaster said it hoped the video would help to destigmatise the subject and explain menstruation to children.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Period Song features tampons dancing like marionettes.

One of the channel’s young hosts, Alex Hermansson, sings with teenagers and pulls on the tampons’ strings to make them dance like marionettes before submerging them in a glass of red-coloured water.

Translated into English, the first verse says:

It’s a thing that happens to girls sometimes

They don’t want to talk about it

Maybe they’re a bit ashamed

They don’t want us to know anything at all

But we know, that it, it’s something totally normal

We just need to be a little extra nice to them

Show a little patience

It’s just a little blood

It continues:

Period, period, hip hip hooray for period!

The body’s working as it should

And that is really, really good – hooray!

Hermansson told the daily newspaper Expressen that menstruation “is a sign that as of now the body can create a life”.

Swedish children’s TV dancing genitals cartoon sparks parental outcry Read more

Another clip produced and aired by SVT in January featured animated male and female genitals, called Snoppen och Snippan in Swedish and translated into English as Willie and Twinkle. It has been viewed on YouTube more than 6.4m times.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Snoppen och Snippan, or Willie and Twinkle in English.

That clip was intended as an educational tool, and was made after the word “snippan” was created by a group of women who were dismayed by the lack of an acceptable slang term for vagina.

The clip divided opinion due to the realistic representation of the sexual organs.