Pornhub's 'F your period' encourages female users to practice self-care

For sufferers of menstrual cramps, PMS and other monthly forms of misery, relief is a precious and hard-to-find thing. Options are pretty limited to painkillers and hot water bottles, neither of which are particularly fun.

Pornhub has a better idea. Last week the video streaming platform announced a new way to address period woes: "F Your Period," a campaign inspired by studies showing that orgasms can help alleviate period pain. Women can input information about their cycles’ length and frequency on Pornhub and, every month, get a free week of the ad-free Pornhub Premium service while they wait it out. 

"We wanted to create a female-centric campaign championing the benefits of having a menstrual orgasm," said Pornhub brand manager Alexandra Klein. "Countless articles out there [support] menstrual orgasms’ benefits, but many focused only on the act of having sex with another person, which certainly isn’t always possible or desirable." 

So Pornhub enlisted their longtime agency, Officer & Gentleman, to collaborate on a promotion to reach women who might not think to visit Pornhub during visits from Aunt Flo. The result is a two-minute animated spot with cheeky narration, bright colors and plenty of science to back up the suggestions. "We thought it made the most sense to highlight the many benefits through an educational campaign while also offering the means with which to best execute" the act in question, Klein said. 

"F Your Period" was inspired largely by a 1999 study from the University of Virginia that found women reported more frequent orgasms during their menstrual cycle. Experts also say that, because menstruation increases bloodflow to the pelvic area, it in turn increases sensitivity and can lead to stronger orgasms.

As for men who scoff at period sex, they’re not on Pornhub’s educational radar. "We created this initiative in hopes of encouraging women everywhere to practice self-care during their periods," said Klein, "regardless of how their partners may or may not feel about that time of the month." (A search for "period sex" on Pornhub reveals 17 results.)

This is the first Pornhub campaign focused exclusively on women, whose needs are a growing part of the site’s content. Their 2017 year in review data survey revealed that, while the number of women visiting Pornhub didn’t increase last year, "porn for women" was the top trending search term of the year and increased by over 1,400 percent. "With these insights, it comes as no surprise that we’d want to do an initiative fully centered toward benefiting our female users, and I’m sure this will be the first of many," Klein said. 

Like all of Pornhub’s creative, the campaign is exclusively digital and focused on social; while it’s entirely SFW, it’s not exactly the stuff of broadcast. 

And, said Klein, we should expect more from Pornhub in the coming year that caters to their female viewers.  "We’d like to continue to create campaigns that showcase the ways women can benefit from watching porn," she said, "whether it’s in terms of creating confidence in the bedroom or in their daily lives."