A TV Presenter is Absent from the Screen in Serviceplan France Campaign Highlighting Work of Regles Elementaires

Jun. 22, 2020

For the first time in the history of French television, a TV presenter is absent from the screen during her scheduled weather forecast, an absence designed to highlight the work of French organisation Règles Élémentaires, who help women suffering from menstrual precariousness. The 3 TVCs created for  Règles Élémentaires and its agency Serviceplan France is supported by the French TV channels Canal + and France Ô.

The work of Règles Élémentaires helps some of the 1.7 million women in France who are victims of menstrual precariousness (source: IFOP, 2019). Because these women do not have the financial means to buy intimate hygiene products - or not in sufficient quantity – it is difficult for some of them to continue with normal day to day life with dignity when menstruating. For some, the solution lies in absence, with these women preferring not to show up at their place of study or work during their period.

It was in order to make this embarrassing and little-known reality known to as many people as possible that Tara Heuzé-Sarmini created Règles Élémentaires in 2015 as the first association to combat menstrual precariousness. This association has given itself a double mission: to collect intimate hygiene products intended for women in need and to obtain from government authorities free intimate hygiene products for women in precarious situations.

In order to raise public awareness, the agency Serviceplan France imagined this unprecedented shock operation: removing Weather presenters from the screens when presenting their program, for a reason never invoked in our society in which the subject of mensturation remains a real taboo.

The operation will be repeated many times between June 1 and June 30 on 6 channels of the Canal group: Comedies, Planet AE, Info Sport, Planet CI, Planet and Polar + as well as on France Ô.