How Libra hits the (odd) spot

Words

by Nicola Brayan

Menstruating is an almost entirely terrible experience. Everything — everything — hurts, there’s so much blood, your body looks, and feels, and does things weirdly. Hangovers and illnesses get worse, and on top of all that, your emotions are thrown out of whack. Most people I know who menstruate wish they didn’t. Amongst this agony, though, is a phenomenon that those who do not menstruate may never get the chance to experience: Libra Odd Spots.

These little facts, printed in blue type on shiny liner backs, wing tabs, or pad wrappers, stare up at you as you sit on the toilet, blood clots dripping into the water below.

Odd Spot #71: The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by the Ancient Egyptians in 2000 BC.

After a brief moment of amusement, these trivia-stamped wrappers are crumpled up and stowed in the sanitary bins having served their fleeting purpose. You go about your day, probably in pain and miserable. But at least you know more about crocodile-shit-contraceptives now.

Odd Spots strike a peculiar balance of whimsy, recognisability, and camaraderie. Above all, they’re conceptually bizarre: who decided that, in some of the worst moments of your week, you would want to learn trivia?

In my quest to learn more, I reached out to Libra through several avenues. Most got no response. The only correspondence was from a representative called Jacki, who redirected me to simply Google “Libra Odd Spots”. Weirdly, there is very little content from Libra that addresses them.

An article by New Zealand publisher The Spinoff fact-checks some of these Odd Spots and cites Libra marketing manager Laura Demarchi, claiming that there are over 300 Odd Spots in circulation. There are several fan-run blogs and web pages which chronicle lists of Odd Spots — the oldest I found was a BlogSpot page from 2005. I found another New Zealand article from 2021, in Critic Te Ārohi, whose author had also communicated with a representative named Jacki after they were worried Libra had stopped printing Odd Spots (they had not).

Like that author, I had begun to worry that Libra had stopped making Odd Spots. I bought pads specifically for this article, and there weren’t any Odd Spots on them. However, in a YouTube video posted by Libra in August 2022, ambassador Abbie Chatfield reads out a selection of the “most iconic” facts. In this video, Chatfield suggests the Odd Spots have been around for over twenty years, but doesn’t say anything about them having stopped. This baffled me further. Why is Libra so evasive about an ostensibly well-loved facet of their brand? I’ve never seen a brand so determined to downplay a gimmick that its customers actively enjoy.

The facts themselves are also somewhat mysterious. Some of them sound really implausible. From the various blogs documenting the Odd Spots, I collected a few to fact-check.

#132: Boanthropy is a disease in which a person thinks they’re an ox.

True, weirdly enough.

#65: You are more likely to get attacked by a cow than a shark.

It is true that cows kill more people each year than sharks do, however, data on non-fatal cow attacks is difficult to find, so I can’t guarantee this fact is true.

#23: In the course of an average lifetime, you will, while sleeping, eat 70 assorted insects and 10 spiders.

Thankfully, this is not true, it’s an urban legend.

For those curious about the crocodile dung contraceptives: it’s true that in Ancient Egypt some types of animal faeces were used as a spermicide. However, they aren’t the first recorded contraceptives — condoms have been used since 3000 BC, with the earliest ones being made of animal intestines.

It’s possible that these have been updated since they were posted to the sites I found. Regardless, it seems that Odd Spots fluctuate in their accuracy.

The question remains, then: what’s the point of Odd Spots? If they are intended as a marketing gimmick, they are bafflingly under-advertised. The people I spoke to who like Odd Spots often consider them a fun little surprise when they open up a pad, as opposed to something they actively seek out. Surely, there’s a point beyond marketing.

In the article from The Spinoff, they quote Laura Demarchi as saying that Odd Spots are “a bit of lighthearted entertainment during an otherwise pretty mundane period of the month.” Perhaps Odd Spots are just intended to be a little bit of wholesome fun to make periods easier. Learning is enjoyable, and the facts are whimsical. There is camaraderie in returning from the bathroom with a fun fact to share.

Jacki’s instruction to Google “Odd Spots” initially struck me as pointless, as it did not turn up much official Libra content about them at all. Perhaps, though, the fact that a majority of the results are fan-compiled tributes tells me more about Odd Spots than I initially thought. As far back as 2005, people were excitedly compiling lists to share with each other. There is a longstanding community built around these fun facts. Maybe that’s the point.