Humans have been menstruating for thousands of years, and yet, period misinformation is still present to this day. In fact, 80% of teenagers in the US affirm learning more about the biology of frogs than the female body in school. This lack of information leads to misconceptions and inaccuracies, reinforcing stigmas around menstruators' bodies. More than half of menstruators are too ashamed to ask questions about their bodies. And now leading AI platforms are perpetuating society’s stigmas toward menstruation. Thinx, the leading period underwear brand in the US, believes only education can finally end stigma. And that menstrual health through body literacy is critical to gender equality as it helps safeguard women and trans men’s autonomy, ultimately contributing to a society where their voices are heard and equally respected. It's about time to break this cycle of gender bias.

Get BodyWise is a comprehensive online educational resource to promote female body literacy. But Thinx’s mission to increase body literacy for all would be futile, without first getting humans to acknowledge our own deep-seated bias. So we held a mirror up to society with the help of the world’s most biased: AI image generators. An integrated campaign revealed the human bias on AI related to menstruation, highlighting how simple prompts like “girl during puberty” or “woman during menopause” on leading AI image generators depict shame, despair, dystopia, or are even banned.

How can you show people that period stigma and bias are not only an unfortunate reality, but are being perpetuated to the future of society? We tapped into the topic driving all conversations right now: Artificial Intelligence. By revealing how Ai image generators are creating images to prompts related to menstruation that depict shame, inaccuracies or dystopia, Thinx not only maximized the reach of a very limited budget but also used creativity to shock and show that unless we stop the cycle now, the same bias that has been haunting us will be baked into defining our futures. With a clear key message that stigma ends when education begins, we launched an integrated campaign with film and social media posts targeting menstruators where they were already engaging in conversations about AI.

An integrated campaign including a 30 second film revealed how simple prompts on leading AI image generators, like “girl during puberty”, “talking about menstruation, “woman during menopause”, ‘a woman with PMs” created images of women depicting shame, despair or dystopia. Since AI image generators often draw from copyrighted material, including from female artists, we hired female illustrators from around the world to recreate the images the AI platforms created, making it possible to both protect the rights of human artists, while also keeping the integrity of the concept. You can see the images created by AI and the artists in the supporting materials.

With a very limited budget of production and media, the campaign had 10 million impressions so far and it was mentioned in high profile media publications, such as Fast Company, AdAge, Campaign US, and also in many health publications. The online platform keeps seeing thousands of new users every week and generated a record-breaking number of social conversations about body literacy.