Why Honesty Became the Most Disruptive Idea in Women's Health Advertising

Battling bias in the age of AI

Treatments for women’s health have existed for thousands of years, dating back to Ancient Egypt. Modern, science-based advances accelerated in the 20th century, especially during the 1960s and ’70s. However, women weren’t required to be included in U.S. clinical research until 1993. This meant many health advertisements were based on research that excluded the very people they aimed to treat. The result? Sanitized, euphemistic and emotionally flat creative. Period blood was blue. “Down there” emerged as code for the vulva/vagina. And even women in extreme pain were shown smiling in commercials. So, how exactly did one of the most human categories become one of the least honest?

I recently read Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart, a historical novel based on the “American Plan.” Until 1945, this provision allowed authorities to detain and imprison women—often without due process—under the guise of protecting soldiers (i.e. men) from venereal disease. Women could be targeted simply for being unmarried, then subjected to hard labor, medical experimentation and humiliation in the name of “reform.”

While the book is a powerful read, what struck me most is what it reveals: our systems were built to control and conceal the female body, shaped by shame, cultural discomfort and male-dominated norms around modesty and invisibility. Women were taught to hide their truth—or face consequences. It doesn’t take a leap of faith to see that women’s health wasn’t designed to express the truth, but contain it.

That’s why “Viva La Vulva” by Libresse, launched in 2018, felt like a breakthrough. It didn’t just stand out, it shifted the conversation. Suddenly, women were saying “vulva” out loud and realizing how little we actually understood about our own anatomy. A year later, Dame Products, a female-founded sexual wellness company, sued the MTA for rejecting its subway ads, arguing the policy was discriminatory and unconstitutional. When the case settled in 2021, Dame was allowed to run a softened version of the campaign.

Both moments were celebrated as “disruptive.” But that raises a bigger question: In a category rooted in real human experience, why is honesty still considered disruption, when it should be the standard?

As women, we felt the shift. I remember Cannes Lions 2023 Health & Wellness Jury President Mel Routhier on the Palais stage, joking with the audience that the category should have been renamed “Sexual Health,” given the volume of entries dealing with such issues that year.

It was a signal: Women were finally being seen, and brands were leaning into more honest, shared experiences. But that visibility also exposed the system. Conversations around censorship, platform bias and double standards in male vs. female health came to the surface. Suddenly, honesty didn’t feel refreshing; it felt radical. As Dr. Rachel Rubin, a urologist and sexual medicine specialist, has said, showing vulvas, clitorises, pain and sex shouldn’t be controversial—it’s basic care. The fact that it’s still controversial reveals how normalized it has become to withhold information from women about their own bodies, and patients pay the price.

Ads featuring women’s health topics are still being rejected. Dr. Rubin and others have reported that women are still hesitant to speak honestly with their doctors. Platforms still censor. And as AI grows, those biases may become even more entrenched. As an industry, we strive for more “honest” work. I mean, what brief hasn’t used the word “authentic” a dozen times? Yet we continue operating within systems that resist it.

This isn’t just a creative problem.

Advertising veteran and activist Cindy Gallop has spent years fighting to fund MakeLoveNotPorn, proving how difficult it is to sustain platforms built on unfiltered truth. She says, “The revolutionary part isn’t the sex, it’s the social.” Sex isn’t disruptive; open conversation is. And when truth feels disruptive, it says far more about the system than the message.

As an industry that celebrated “Viva La Vulva” as “brave” eight years ago—and there have been several “good” women’s health campaigns since—we have to ask: Are we pushing hard enough? It’s time to stop romanticizing truth and start recognizing it for what it is—essential. That means redefining what “great” looks like. Cannes Lions added humor categories in 2024 to reward connection and emotion—so why not reward truth? Work grounded in lived experience, medically accurate language, unfiltered representation and patient-authored narratives.

We don’t have to look far for proof. Hit Netflix show Sex Education drew over 40 million viewers in its first season by embedding medically accurate conversations—about consent, pleasure, pain and identity—into human stories, not lectures. And in the Netherlands, where sex education starts early, 96 percent of young people say consent and respect are non-negotiable. The pattern is undeniable. The more a culture normalizes honest conversations about sexual health, the better the outcomes for women.

People don’t suffer from too much honesty; they suffer from the absence of it. Truth doesn’t create risk. Silence does.