Why we need to make more ads about balls, bums, breasts and bleeding (because nobody should ever die of embarrassment)

Originally published by The Drum, August 2023

If there’s one word likely to make you gag in disgust as if you’d found a four month old takeaway in the back of the fridge enveloped in a furry mold blanket, it’s ‘clot’.

Nobody likes to hear about clots. They bring to mind a montage of nauseating images, each more medicinal and grotesque than the last. If I heard it mentioned in the same sentence as ‘moist’ I’d likely pass ou….dgdvhnyn32qwdjkgc&&&*()<<

Yep, there you go.

However one fashion brand decided in April that instead of avoiding a word capable of ostracising a significant proportion of the population, they’d embrace it, featuring clots front and centre in their ad campaign.

Which was fair enough — since the brand in question, WUKA Period Pants, makes underwear specifically designed to mitigate blood from extricating itself onto women’s clothing as they go about their daily business. WUKA (which rather awesomely stands for ‘Wake Up, Kick Ass’) also featured a woman wearing a sanitary pad under her WUKA pants, as well as showing a used tampon being chucked in the bin. All in all, they scored at least a couple of ‘firsts’ in British…