When ‘that time of the month’ was finally called ‘period’ on American TV

“Feeling cleaner is more comfortable. It can actually change the way you feel about your period,” says Cox

Features

The year 1985 is probably the first time in media history that the word period was first used.

“Feeling cleaner is more comfortable. It can actually change the way you feel about your period,” reaffirms a young Courtney Cox, donning spandex, in a 1985 advertisement issued by Tampax, an American tampon-manufacturing company.

And in that moment American television, and probably the world, got its mass media utterance of the word ‘period’, in a tampon advertisement, according to The Telegraph.

Submerged under numerous euphemisms, ranging from ‘that time of the month’ to ‘crimson wave’, the word first was non-existent. God forbid even if you use the word, you were slapped with long pauses and stares. Alas, from hiding sanitary pads in newspapers to openly tweeting about bleeding, we have come a long way, since the commercial was aired in the mid-eighties.

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