Valentine’s Day campaign for grassroots organization, Racket. to remove taboos surrounding menstruation.
Description: Classmate and friend, Gustav Ole Dyrhauge, came up with a simple and charming notion for Valentine’s Day — gifting a bouquet of menstrual products rather than the typical bouquet of flowers. Racket founders Caroline Angell and Margo Seibert ran with the idea, collaborating with an incredible cadre of actors to create a videos campaign, released to coincide with this Valentine's Day 2017. Myself and a team of designers help Caroline and Margo see the product through by prototyping and delivering two enormous bouquets, graphic assets, and props for their videos.
The project was also presented at the 2018 Student Showcase, hosted at the School of Visual Arts, featuring student projects from Pratt, Parsons, and Products of Design. The theme was The Future is Female.
Case: Create a way for the men in women’s lives to get more involved with menstruation.
Services: Product Design, Project Management, Final Deliverables
Team: Manako Tamura, Carly Simmons, Alexia Cohen, Bernice Wong, Hannah Rudin, Gustave Ole Dyrhauge, Rhea Bhandari, Ellen Rose, Juho Lee, Smruti Adya, and Andrew Schlesinger
Official Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PHILLIPA SOO, CELIA KEENAN-BOLGER, and DREW GEHLING star in Valentine’s Parody with a Bloody Twist!
It’s only recently become acceptable to talk about periods in public (without referring to them by a funny and mildly offensive euphemism — Shark Week, anyone?) So how to invite half of the population to join in on this conversation they’ve been taught is unmentionable, and historically excluded from? Get ready folks….
Along with some of Broadway’s most dynamic performers, RACKET (www.weracket.com) has created two short videos (linked below), combining Valentine’s Day and periods in a way you never imagined.
Directed by Andrew Keenan-Bolger (Tuck Everlasting) and Kate Wetherhead (Submissions Only) and with cinematography by Kyle Corea, the videos feature Drew Gehling (Waitress), Olli Haaskivi (Mr. Robot) Celia Keenan-Bolger (Glass Menagerie), Margo Seibert (Rocky) and Phillipa Soo (Hamilton) as menstruators and non-menstruators with one thing in common: They love somebody who has a period.
RACKET’s work aims to remove the taboo surrounding menstruation in our culture. The more openly we talk about it, the less room there is for shame to play a role. In these videos, we imagine a world where if you love her, you #KnowTheFlow.
You can help us make a racket: share this video, and use the hashtag to tell us how you/your boyfriend/your gay bestie/your doorman support the menstruators in your lives. Use the hashtag #KnowTheFlow and tag @we_racket.
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ABOUT RACKET
Actress Margo Seibert and novelist Caroline Angell (All the Time in the World, Henry Holt 2016) are old pals from their college days. Together, they co-founded an initiative called RACKET. Their mission: to take shame out of periods.
RACKET thinks that all people deserve a shame-free relationship with their periods regardless of socioeconomic circumstances. We believe that access to menstrual hygiene products is an essential part of building agency for all menstruating people, and are fighting for this access on many different fronts. We regularly partner with arts organizations, businesses, churches, and shelters to collect menstrual hygiene products, and help facilitate their distribution to people with limited access. And we collaborate with journalists and activists to help publicize their work in the field of menstruation and gender equality.
For more information, please visit us at www.weracket.com.
