Drag-Queen Tampon Ad Pulled for Offending Transgendered

New Zealand spot featured bathroom showdown

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Tampon maker Libra has pulled one of its ads from New Zealand television in response to complaints that it ridiculed the country's transgender community. The ad features a blonde woman and a drag queen competing to see who can be the most girly in a public bathroom, with the girl winning after pulling a tampon out of her purse. The offending implication, apparently, is that transgendered women are not real because they don't menstruate. I feel like drag queens are more the butt of this ad's joke than the transgendered are, but there's a huge knot of privilege and identity at the center of this issue that I don't feel capable of untying.

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