Men are being pranked by their partners on TikTok and sent to buy fake period products

By Alma Fabiani

Published Jan 4, 2021 at 11:25 AM

Reading time: 3 minutes

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Image by billie on Unsplash

There’s a new TikTok trend on the block that we felt the need to address—isn’t there always one? Women on TikTok are pranking their boyfriends by sending them into supermarkets looking for fake period products. The trend was started by one half of the famous TikTok couple @aaronxpia after Pia posted a video where she asked her boyfriend Aaron to pick up ‘super jumbo tampons with wings’.

Needless to say, the tampons don’t actually exist. In the video, Aaron returns to their car and tells his girlfriend: “They literally had no idea what I was talking about. They had to call two more people over to see what I was talking about. I looked like an idiot.” Instead, he bought her a Starbucks frappuccino to make up for it. Here’s why this lighthearted trend does more than highlight men’s ignorance when it comes to period products.

Inspired by the original video, TikTok user @aileenchristineee, who’s mostly known on the app for her boyfriend’s wholesome reactions to whatever she asks him to do, decided to try the same with him. In her video, she asks @devenchris—her boyfriend—to buy an item called ‘squeaky clean-a vageena’ for her.

When Rasie returns to their car (empty-handed of course), he tells Christine he’s never trusting her again. “Squeaky clean-a vageena? I knew that wasn’t a thing!” he says as Christine laughs. Rasie then explains that he even asked the salesperson for the fake brand name. “What does it do?” she responded, to which Rasie replied: “I’m like, ‘Well I assume it keeps your vageen-a clean-a!’ And she started laughing. Then she was like, ‘Does your girlfriend have TikTok by any chance?’”

From there, the trend really took off. Another woman, one half of @meetthethorpes, also pranked her boyfriend by sending him to buy ‘magic fwem fwem fresh 2000’. “They looked at me like I was a crackhead,” he complains in the video. “The cashier was like, ‘What? Yo, Tanisha, come and listen to what this idiot is saying’. First of all, I’m not an idiot. Then Tanisha was like, ‘Have we got any more fwem fwem fresh’, and everyone started to laugh.”

TikTok user @kyleandjade_ shared a video where Jade asked her boyfriend Kyle to buy ‘oochie cooch 3000’. “She looked at me like I was stupid,” Kyle tells her when he returns to the car, “then said, ‘Hold up, let me check’. Grabbed the freaking microphone and asked, ‘Guys, does anybody know if we sell the oochie cooch 3000?’ Why did everybody bust out laughing?”

In a way, those videos offer some lighthearted relief at the expense of men—which always feels good. But this trend also highlights the ignorance of men when it comes to period products and probably the female body in general.

In July 2020, a similar trend started on TikTok after users decided to film their partners and male friends while they were debating how menstrual pads work. As a woman, even if you might prefer a tampon or a menstrual cup or some other method, you didn’t have to think twice when using a pad for the first time, right? Well, as the viral trend showed, men found menstrual pads to be an extremely confusing product.

@ariannaromanoo posted a video of a conversation she had with her boyfriend about pads and his reaction after she revealed how they actually work. “How do you pee with the pad on? You can’t. You have to take it off first, obviously. Do you just pee in the pad and let it sit in your vagina?” he asks her.

“What is the pad attached to?” Romano asks him. “Your coochie,” he answers, and she then explains that no, that is not the case. The pad is stuck to underwear, not any part of the body. “Wait a second. Oh, it’s not actually on your vagina?” he says. “So does it just absorb the blood or not?”

And more videos on the same topic can be found on TikTok. @alybreannewhite shared one of her boyfriend’s reaction while @brookemonk_ posted one of her male friends discussing the matter.

And I could go on, I’ve also seen videos of men unboxing menstrual cups and reading their instructions only to be shocked at the fact that women insert it in their vagina. Don’t get me wrong, the three trends mentioned above are funny for sure. But they also highlight how men are strongly lacking knowledge about the female body and periods.

The fact that menstrual squeamishness still exists as a source of comedy clearly shows that cultural stigmas around bleeding are far from gone. Hopefully, with these three trends being disseminated through TikTok, we can only hope that gen Zers (and any other millennial or gen X men who see them on their For You page) will now understand the female body and menstruation just a little bit better.

There is still a long way to go toward education around women’s bleeding, and who knows, maybe TikTok could be the platform we’ve always been waiting for?