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Meghan Daum
Good Riddance to the Venus Symbol on Maxi Pads
Trans activists pushed Always to rebrand their pads, and it’ll make things less ridiculously cutesy for everyone
A few weeks ago, in the latest spasm of corporate wokeness taken to near-parody — “wokapitalism” as I’ve described it in the past — Proctor & Gamble announced plans to revise the package design for Always feminine hygiene products, as they are so euphemistically called, so that they no longer feature the Venus symbol. This came after Twitter users complained that the symbol felt exclusionary to people who used the products but did not necessarily identify as female — in other words, transgender men and nonbinary people who still menstruate.
As much as I roll my eyes at corporate virtue signaling, I actually applaud this change.
The Venus symbol, which dates from late antiquity, is a circle resting atop a small cross. You sometimes see it and the “Mars” symbol, a circle with an arrow shooting up to the right, used as restroom identifiers in hip establishments, or in black and white photos of Women’s Liberation marches. If you never noticed the Venus symbol on Always packaging, it’s not because you’ve been insufficiently observant. It’s because the symbol appears not on the package…
