Oscars Rejects Postpartum Ad For Being “Too Graphic”
Frida Mom, a company that sells postpartum products for women, shares that ABC and the Academy Awards (Oscars) rejected a 60-second spot; due to being “too graphic” and showing “partial nudity and product demonstration.”
The ad begins with a crying baby, and cuts to an exhausted new mother using the bathroom, in pain, with a swollen stomach, mesh underwear and a thick pad. By video end, the tagline reads, “Postpartum recovery doesn’t have to be this hard.”
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Frida’s CEO Chelsea Hirschhorn says, “[It] felt like a setback. We were really surprised to hear that feminine hygiene was put in the same category as guns, ammunition, sexually suggestive nudity, religion and politics.”
Hirschhorn adds:
“I was surprised, in this day and age, to see that whomever at whatever organizational level at the Academy and at ABC put in writing that they would analogize feminine hygiene to some of those other, more offensive categories of advertising.”
Speaking more on the thought behind the commercial, she continues:
“We created this campaign and wanted to share a raw and honest portrayal of what a woman navigating this physical transformation for the first time goes through. We thought there would be no better outlet or channel than on a night that awards storytelling at the highest level.”
She concludes:
“We wonder, after experiences like these, why women remain so completely unprepared to navigate this very fragile time period. t’s because there are very narrowly defined ways in which we can share information.”
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