AMV BBDO creates #wombstories with Bodyform, breaking the culture of silence that reinforces taboos

A campaign by AMVBBDO

The new Bodyform & Libresse campaign, #wombstories, gives a voice to the unseen, unspoken, and unknown truths about our periods, our vulvas, and our wombs.

Their research reveals striking statistics around women’s intimate experiences:      

•  62% of people agree women’s health and intimate experiences are not talked about openly
•  40% of women felt that their mental wellbeing was negatively impacted as a result of not being able to openly share their experiences
•  54% would like to be able to talk more openly about women’s intimate experiences such as miscarriage, endometriosis and menopause 
  

The #wombstories video tells only a few of the many, many, complex, and hidden stories.

The pleasure, the pain, the love, the hate

For #wombstories, Bodyform & Libresse worked with director, writer and producer Nisha Ganatra, a predominantly female crew and an all-women team of animators and illustrators who have imagined the life of wombs.

From the burning down apartment of a perimenopausal women, a monster ripping at an endometriosis sufferer’s uterus, a woman’s ‘flood gate’ moment during her period and an unexpected sneeze, to the woman who has chosen not to have children and the often-turbulent journey of trying to conceive. These few womb stories chronicle the sometimes beautiful, sometimes brutal human side of the biology and physiology they experienced every day. And while only a handful of experiences are shown, they represent the billions of complex experiences - from hysterectomies, postpartum trauma, artificial menopause, being a trans-man, the list is long.

Nisha Ganatra, Golden Globe-winning and Emmy-nominated director, writer and producer, says, “When they’re at their best, our bodies are incredible machines that give us pleasure, and, if we want them to, help us propagate the human race. But they don’t always work. Hell, they don’t often work. Irregular periods. Endometriosis. Miscarriages and infertility. Our bodies can bring joy but also pain and devastation. It’s an emotional rollercoaster that lasts a lifetime.

I feel particularly drawn to this project. The work I feel most passionate about is the work that meaningfully resists outmoded social norms that no longer fit the cultural moment but persist, nonetheless. When my daughter is an adult, it shouldn’t just be acceptable for a woman to have ownership over her body and over her narrative. It shouldn’t just be acceptable for people to be who they want and to love who they want and to choose not to have children if they want. This should be the norm.”

Nicola Coronado UK and Ireland consumer marketing director at Bodyform, comments, "With #wombstories we are starting a movement. We want to boldly go where no other brand has been before; inside women’s bodies and emotions to truly represent their sensations and feelings that we believe are not only invisible but ignored, overlooked or denied. #wombstories reveals the narrative inside and out and we hope to put these topics on the table for all to talk about. We believe that only once we understand women’s bodies and everything they go through; can we care for them with our period and daily intimate care products.”

#wombstories will encourage open conversation so that nobody will have to hide the sometimes difficult, sometimes painful realities of their bodies.

Nadja Lossgott, executive creative director of AMV BBDO and art director on the campaign says, “Periods don’t just exist in isolation. They are connected to this entire ecosystem centred around our wombs, which almost acts as a second seat of power that rules us in such profound ways. We have this intensely complicated relationship with it. And yet this life-long bittersweet journey with our bodies is still considered something to shut up about. By visualising and anthropomorphising our wombs, we can begin to open up an emotional and human way to express these often complicated, contradictory feelings of love and hate, of pain and pleasure, of the mundane and the profound we constantly deal with.”