A menstruação na publicidade: discursos sobre a mulher em anúncios de absorventes nos séculos XX e XXI

Abstract

This research analyzes discourses on women and menstruation conveyed through feminine hygiene product advertising throughout the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century, understanding advertising as a discursive practice embedded in specific historical, social, and cultural contexts, based on campaigns aired between 1930 and 2020. The corpus consists of 17 advertising pieces from the brands Sempre Livre and Modess, owned by the Johnson & Johnson group. The research adopts the Critical Advertising Literacy Protocol proposed by Leonardo Mozdzenski, which enables an integrated analysis of production contexts, aesthetic and narrative elements, persuasive appeals, and the ideological, market-oriented, and ethical dimensions of advertising. The results show that, over the period analyzed, advertising constructed a hegemonic representation of the menstruating woman, young, urban, white, and economically integrated,reinforcing the silencing of menstruation and the naturalization of norms of hygiene and control. Despite discursive shifts, especially in contemporary contexts, erasures related to class, race, and access to rights persist.