I haven't watched TV in almost thirty years (except for the first five seasons of The X-Files, ahem), but the current crisis has me occasionally checking TV news. Commercials in 2020 are very, very different than commercials in 1990.
I just watched an ad for Tampax tampons, and I was like, holy shit, it just matter-of-factly explains why their tampons are better. In 1990, tampon commercials weren't even about anything. It was all a long string of vague euphemisms and women riding bicycles in white pants and out-of-focus shots of foliage waving in the breeze. If you were a visitor from another planet, you'd think that Tampax was a brand of light athletic activity in pleasant weather. It was so obviously a we-just-don't-talk-about-this topic that when I was a little kid wondering what the fuck tampons were, I knew it wasn't something I should ask my parents about at the dinner table.
Smaller when removal is painful, larger when flow is heavy. Has a little braided string coated with absorbent gel to act as a seal. See how simple that is? Yet within our lifetimes, saying as much was the subject of such a serious cultural taboo that everyone just knew it was taboo without ever having to be told.
So yeah, the world is on fire and the president is a foreign agent working for the Kremlin, but I'll take my progress where I can get it. And that is evidently with a gel-coated pull-string.