A good boyfriend should be a little extra nice to his girlfriend when she has her period. Maybe he makes her a snack, lets her pick the movie or runs to Walgreens if she runs out of tampons. After all, she’s surely just as caring for him when he’s not feeling well. But no one needs to make a goddamn performance about it. Some couples on TikTok, however, are showing off the lengths the man in the relationship goes when his girl is dealing with her period, and it’s as corny as it sounds.
“My girlfriend gets really bad cramps during her period,” a video from @nickandcarrie says. He then shows himself coddling his grumpy, in-pain girlfriend, going to the store to buy her various pads and pain medications and getting into bed to hold her. None of this behavior is too outlandish, and it’s certainly nice that he cares so much for her — except, of course, that he happens to be filming it all, capturing these sweet moments with a carefully propped-up phone camera that he’ll surely need to get out of bed to turn off.
Other TikToks are even more incredulous. “Things my fiance does for me on my period,” one by @carobiparada begins. “I love that he knows I need a day pad and a night pad… towards the end of the day, he puts my Always Ultra night pad in the bathroom,” she continues, showing a pad in its wrapper with “your night pad” written upon a sticky note with a heart. The brand Always is, unsurprisingly, tagged in the caption.
There are dozens more videos from TikTok couple accounts that stage periods for public consumption in much the same way. Based on the comments, many viewers are as suspicious of this as I am. “Ma’am, you know you wrote that,” one woman commented in reference to the sticky note. But even the less extreme ones, where, for example, a girl just films her boyfriend handing her a tampon, rely on this bizarre trope that men who are sympathetic to periods — or unafraid of their related objects — ought to be put on a pedestal. Perhaps when we consider how many men can’t find the clit, this is fair. Still, it only highlights how low the bar truly is for some.
Moreover, these videos aren’t meant to educate anyone. Instead, they’re meant to sell women on a relationship fantasy for the sake of TikTok views. Or, in the case of the Always clip, they’re literally meant to sell pads. So there’s really only one lesson here: Whatever it is you and your girlfriend like to do on her period, please spare us from using it for clout.
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
