Post-Racial “Race Talk” and the Marketing of Tampons

Taunya Lovell Banks

Hi, I’m a believable attractive 18-24 year old female.  You can relate to me because I’m racially ambiguous and I’m in this tampon commercial because market research shows that girls like you love girls like me. Don’t all these angles make me seem dynamic? Now I’m going to tell you to buy something.  Buy the same tampons I use because I am wearing white pants and I have good hair and you wish you could be me.

This is an actual advertisement by Kotex, the sanitary products manufacturer, now airing on television.  If you are like me and seldom watch live TV you probably missed this “spoof” of early tampon ads fast forwarding through commercials on recorded programs.  And yes, she said “racially ambiguous.” 

Welcome to the “post-racial” era where “race” now can be acknowledged without pejorative insinuation, a variation of “colorblindness.”   Previously, race mattered primarily in negative ways.  Now, in some circles, race is discussed in ways that suggest it is no longer a significant factor in American life.  As this century began a group of young black artists announced they were creating “post-black” art, “art about the black experience that attempts to dispel the notion that race matters.”  But is post-black really only the “new black”?

The Kotex ad promoting U Kotex ends with: “Why are tampon ads so obnoxious? Break the cycle.”  U by Kotex targets the youth market (12-21) who it deems media savvy.  To further promote U by Kotex the company has a special website for its Break the Cycle campaign that features women demonstrating how to use the products and encourages visitors to spoof conventional tampon ads.   

Kotex claims to promote this product by turning the “light on themselves” in the name of truthfulness and transparency in advertising.  “Wink, wink,” it says to its savvy young target audience, “we know you’re too smart to be fooled by these ads we’re spoofing, so reward us for acknowledging this fact by buying our product.”  Their audience is seduced by the very racial stereotypes Kotex spoofs, like “good hair” a term that many viewers translate as straight “white” hair, to sell their product.  As one blogger wrote about the model in the U Kotex ad: “She is still white enough to match ‘flesh-tone’ band aids . . ., and that’s probably important.”

So what does the post in post-racial mean today in the United States? Is post-racial merely a new way of talking about race?  Does the reduction of race to phenotype, as in the Kotex ad, or identity, as President Obama declaring he is black or African American on the census, strip the term of its pejorative meaning?  Is the label “racially ambiguous” value neutral, or does it suggest not white, but also not too dark?  You tell me.

Comments

[Danielle]

"Welcome to the 'post-racial' era where 'race' now can be acknowledged without pejorative insinuation, a variation of 'colorblindness.' Previously, race mattered primarily in negative ways. Now, in some circles, race is discussed in ways that suggest it is no longer a significant factor in American life."

Perhaps in the Northeast this is true, and we are entering a new "post-racial" era. Too recently, I lived in the South, where society still regards race as "a signficant factor", and, at times, seems to be just barely wading out of the 1960s. Let's hope that the rest of the country can catch up with the Kotex ads... and soon.

[Penny Andrews]

An interesting place to look might be in South Africa, where the idea of "post-racial" is embedded in the idea of the "rainbow nation" and where some black quite comfortably refer to themselves as "Coloured". The Kotex ad mimics aspects of the Benetton ad - which was about a post-racial/post ethnic global world.