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'I would like you to send me tampons' - Ciara Kelly makes appeal over banned ad

Lunchtime Live host Ciara Kelly is asking people to donate sanitary products as part of a campaig...
Jack Quann
Jack Quann

14.25 31 Jul 2020


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'I would like you to send me tampons' - Ciara Kelly makes appeal over banned ad


Jack Quann
Jack Quann

14.25 31 Jul 2020


Share this article


Lunchtime Live host Ciara Kelly is asking people to donate sanitary products as part of a campaign.

She has called for listeners to donate brand new packs or unopened sanitary products, tampons or pads in protest at the banning of a TV advert.

The Tampax Tampons Pearl Compak ad was banned in its current form by the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI).

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It featured a female host of a fictional talk show and a young girl sitting in a chair waiting to be interviewed.

The two then began to talk about tampons and their correct insertion, which was accompanied by an on-screen demonstration.

"You gotta get 'em up there girls", the host said.

The advert was removed after 84 complaints were received.

Defending the decision, the chief executive of the ASAI Orla Twomey told Ciara Kelly on Thursday: "We're not saying advertising for tampons are not appropriate for teenagers, or that they're inappropriate for the wider audience or the public to see.

"And we're also not saying, I think it's important to say, that we're not saying that educational advertising - where a company seeks to provide more information about use - that in itself that that is a problem.

"It's not a problem, in this particular advertisement it was how they delivered that message is what has caused offence."

Opening her show on Friday, Ciara said: "I would like you to send me tampons.

"Yep, that's what I would like you to do - send me tampons here at Newstalk.

"Our address is Newstalk FM, Marconi House, Digges Lane, Dublin 2 - they will get to me.

"And what I will do is, however many tampons you send, I will bring them to the ASAI and I will show them that this is the protest.

"That people are sending tampons because they are unhappy".

"We'll donate the tampons afterwards to a period poverty charity, we would like to do that and I think that's really good thing to do.

"But we want to do something - we don't want to just sort of say 'Oh that was very annoying and it shouldn't have happened' and then forget about it."

"We will bring them to the ASAI and we will say 'look you made a mistake, that's what happened here'.

"84 complaints is not enough to indicate widespread offence, and equally you have to look at what people are being offended by.

"And if people are being offended by women's bodies, then that's an issue in itself".

The unopened packs of sanitary products, pads or tampons will then be given to Homeless Period Ireland - which donate period products to women in need such as those in homeless outreach, refuges and direct provision.

'I would like you to send me tampons' - Ciara Kelly makes appeal over banned ad

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Main image: A production worker holding tampons in a production hall in Germany. Picture by: Sebastian Kahnert/DPA/PA Images

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Banned Ad Ciara Kelly Homeless Period Ireland Lunchtime Live Tampax Tampons Pearl Compak Tampons

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