Abstract

The paper is devoted to female sanitary napkin advertisements, focusing on how they face the menstrual taboo and the related gender stigmas and gaps. The research consists of the analysis of some Lines and Nuvenia commercials issued between the late 1970s and 2020. The aim of the study is to reconstruct continuities and variations within and between brands with respect to some closely related research questions: how these texts have narrated and figured this product and the related practices and consumers; what point of view on women and of women these narratives imply; how these discourses have evolved in reaction to social and value transformations that any relatively long-lived brand has experienced.