Menstruation is a fact of life. The Last of Us doesn’t shy away from it, showing Ellie both finding Tampax Pearl tampons and being gifted a DivaCup.
Tampons and pads were banned by the National Association of Broadcasters from TV advertisements until 1972 — TV was deemed an unsuitable place to talk about a product essential for all people who menstruate. It took years for people on TV to even talk about what tampons were used for — saying the word “period” — and longer for any major companies to stop using the mysterious blue liquid to demonstrate absorbency. Even that is a new phenomenon: Kotex only switched to red for an ad in 2020.
Half of the population menstruates, and yet there’s a deep discomfort in talking about it — so much that we’re still trying to normalize periods. It’s taboo to talk about, and stigmatized as if it were a problem that must be fixed, something dirty that needs to be purified. It’s rare when someone speaks openly about menstruating, let alone on TV. That’s why it’s so significant that The Last of Us does so in small ways; finding a box of Tampax Pearls — which first hit the market in 2002 — is a celebration for Ellie. (And with good reason: Tampax Pearls were a revelation, and used plastic instead of cardboard for the applicator, which is much more comfortable!) The Last of Us writers take things a step further in episode 6, when Ellie gets a DivaCup. DivaCup was the only major manufacturer of menstrual cups at the time, but they certainly weren’t mainstream. Maria, Tommy’s wife, must have been shopping at crunchy health food stores before the pandemic.
I feel like most people who menstruate have had the thought, How do you handle your period in an apocalypse? It’s rare to see a show mention periods, let alone how to deal with them.
