Abstract      68 undergraduate female students from a mid-sized state college were recruited through a research participation pool (PIPER) to examine the effects of menstrual taboo on feminist identity and self-objectification. Feminist identity was assessed through a scale referencing the cardinal beliefs of feminists as well as accepting the label of a feminist. Self-objectification was assessed through a scale measuring Body Shame, Body Surveillance, and Appearance Control Beliefs. Although we had a lot of participants accept the cardinal beliefs of a feminist and accept the label there was no significant effect of feminist identity on self-objectification, meaning those who coincided with feminist core beliefs were not less likely to self-objectify due to menstrual taboo. Past literature suggests that feminist identity can contradict taboos against women. Many studies have used similar aged female participants although many previous studies have not examined the effects of menstruation taboo on feminist identity and self-objectification on women. Future research may consider conducting this experiment over a larger population to provide more diversity in the results. HowFeminists View Menstrual Taboo MessagesWhy is a natural aspect of women’s lives assumed to be socially unacceptable? Menstruation is a natural bodily function experienced by many women but for some reason it is constantly tabooed and associated with negative presumptions. Everyday women are faced with this trauma and are ultimately forced to mask an important part of the female identity. Although it should be viewed as a natural and positive experience, society often criticizes it leading to form negative stigmas around the experience which causes women to self-objectify. Unfortunately this seems to be the case world wide, where not only one society is demonizing menstruation but a high majority are. To contradict this idea, there are women who identify as feminists to challenge these taboo ideas associated with menstruation. Due to this, are women who identify as feminists less likely to self-objectify in reference to menstruation? Menstruation is often hidden fromeveryone although it is a natural part of female life both socially andculturally. Women hide menstration physically but also refrain from speakingabout it. This tends to be an unwanted topic of conversation because of the uneasinessand disgust it causes many people. These underlying factors cause the topic tobe something that is rarely spoken about. The taboo associated withmenstruation is more prominent and vigorous than any other taboo linked toother bodily functions experienced by either sex (Roberts and Waters, 2004).Across various societies menstruation is seen as a contaminated process. Oftenwhen women are menstruating they are looked at with disgrace. Similarly to ifone was engaging in something that was toxic to the rest of society. Both menand women perceive menstruating women in this manner.  In some regions of the country women areconsidered to be unclean during their time menstruating. In specific cases,women are unable to take part in daily activities because they aremenstruating. Throughout our society there is acommon lack of knowledge about menstruation. There are also a lack of resourcesneeded for proper hygiene during times of menstruation. These factors lead to alack of understanding about what the menstruation process actually is. Fear isdeveloped over the topic of menstruation because of the various misconceptionsthat surround it. Advertisements and commercials are greatly impacted by thehigh levels of fear and stigma attached to the menstruation. This causes themto lack anything relevant to real life experiences and often encourage secrecyaround menstruating. Ways this is conveyed include, emphasizing no leakage andusing liquids that aren’t red to display blood. With all these social media influences,there is a consistent level of menstruation taboo because people are beingexposed and primed to think that menstruation should be kept secret and theyare often led to believe the opposite of what real life women experience duringmenstruation. The taboo around menstruation continues due to the absense ofeducation, realistic promotion and resources. This leads the level of secrecyto rise around menstruation. This supports the face that in numerous societiesaround the world, menstruation is expected to be dealt with in silenceemphasizing the fact that is it socially unacceptable. Research indicates that thesemenstrual taboos have negative effects on women, specifically their likelihoodto self-objectify. One article looked into the menstrual knowledge and tabooadvertisements and their effects on self-objectification. The researchers foundthat the lower level of menstrual knowledge a woman had the more likely theywere to self objectify. They also found that women with negative attitudes towardmenstruation were more likely to self objectify than those with positiveattitudes (Spadaro et al. 2017). In this study, researchers examined theinfluence of exposing women to commercials that demonstrated menstruation tabooon self-objectification. They moderated the level of menstrual knowledge inthis study. They found their to be cultural differences between Italian andSwedish participants. Italian women were more likely to self-objectify afterbeing exposed to the ads were swedish women were not as likely toself-objectify after being exposed to the advertisements. The taboos surrounding menstruationcan fortunately be contradicted by women who support feminist beliefs. Onestudy on this topic looked into forming a better understanding of the relationshipbetween feminist identification and sexuality by analyzing the attitudes offeminist egalitarian and non feminist women. Researchers also found thatfeminists were significantly more erotophilic than egalitarians and nonfeminists (Bay-Cheng & Zucker,2007). Interpreting this would suggest thatfeminists commonly have more positive feedback toward sexual stimuli and theyare less likely to support traditional sexual double standards. The findings ofthis study suggest that feminists do have counteracting beliefs with standardvalues. Furthermore, feminists responses to sexual stimuli could directlyimpact their responses to the way menstruation is portrayed in the media.Another study examined therelationship between feminism and various clinical outcomes regarding severalvariables where participants responded to an online survey measuring feministself-identification, conformity to feminine norms, objectified bodyconsciousness, etc. Through their study they concluded that feminist identitywas negatively correlated with body shame and surveillance skills from the OBCS(Hurt et al., 2007). This study broke self-objectification down into twocomponents; body same and surveillance skills. An important finding from thisstudy included that rejecting certain feminine norms may decrease the amountone self-objectifies. This directly relates to why we chose feminist identityas our moderator for self-objectification when individuals are exposed to tabooversus non-taboo commercials. This resource assesses the variables which try tolink the gap between feminist identity and self-objectification. This articlehighlights feminist identity along with feminist core beliefs. Myers & Crowther, 2007 analyzed how feminist identitycould be a moderating factor sociocultural pressures, thin-idealinternalization, self-objectification and body dissatisfaction. Similar to ourstudy feminist beliefs were used as the moderator but it this study feministbeliefs were used to moderate the relationship between sociocultural pressureson thin-ideal and body dissatisfaction. 195 female undergraduates completedself-report measures assessing socio cultural influences, feminist beliefs,thin-ideal internalization, self-objectification and body dissatisfaction (Myers & Crowther, 2007). Thefindings of this study are relevant because feminist beliefs did have amoderating effect on the relationship between media awareness and thin-idealinternalization. It was hypothesized that feminist identity can impact the waywomen view advertisements causing them to be less likely to self-objectifywhich is supported by the findings in the study completed by Myers &Crowther, 2007).Feminist identity can be looked at as a powerful resourcecontrasting the negative stereotypes and stigmas surrounding women. Sabik &Tylka, 2006, specifically looked into feminist identify and its effect againstsexist events toward distorted eating. Using hierarchical moderated regression,the study found two types of feminist identity; synthesis and active commitment(Sabik & Tylka, 2006).  These two outof the five feminist identity styles they evaluated were the only ones thataffected the relationship between disordered eating and assumed sexist events.The results found that non-feminist women were impacted greater by sexistevents than feminist women, meaning non-feminist women receied morepsychological distress when faced with sexist events. This is helpful becausefeminist consciousness were proven to be a unique factor that could weaken the relationshipbetween sexist events and psychological distress.  In order to clarify and advance thefindings of previous studies, we will measure Feminist Identity using theFeminist Beliefs and Behavior scale (Zucker, 2004). The scale contains three items about the cardinalbeliefs of feminists answered in a yes/no format followed by one dichotomousquestion to access the participants’ willingness to identify as a feminist.Examples of items include, “Girls and women have not been treated aswell as boys and men in our society” and “Women and men should be paid equallyfor the same work”. Participants will answer to each item in a dichotomous,yes/no format. Based on previous research, we expect out hypothesis, “Women who identifythemselves as feminists or have core beliefs of feminists will be less likelyto self-objectify due to menstrual taboo” to be true.  Every movement made by feminist is to expresstheir confidence and acceptance of oneself. In doing so the disdain and taboosof menstruation will shift, creating confidence in all woman to be able to talkabout periods without feeling embarrassed. Each survey has evidence that showsthe forward thinking and beliefs over non feminist woman when it comes to sex,menstruation and body confidence. Finally, we will be being using a sample ofabout 68 females from a PIPER pool at The College of New Jersey. Many studieshave used similar aged female participants so it will be interesting to compareour results to prior research. There are not too many previous studies thatexamine the effects of menstruation taboo on feminist identity andself-objectification on women.Therefore, this study will clarify how these three variablesinfluence each other in the female population at The College of New Jersey.Method Participants    Thesample consisted of about 400 female undergraduate students from The College ofNew Jersey (M= 19.86 years, SD= 1.251,range = 18-23) who were selected through the PIPER pool to participate inresearch. Participants must be 18 years old and female to participate in thisstudy, if they do not meet this criterion they will not be allowed toparticipant in the study. Participants’ ethnic background were 70.6%  White European American, 11.8% Asian, 0%Native American or Pacific Islander, 7.4% African American, and 0% AmericanIndian or Alaska Native; also 2.9% reported other ethnicity. With regards toyear in college, 6 identified as seniors, 17 as juniors, 18 as sophomores and27 as freshman. All participants received one piper credit for participationlasting up to 30 minutes. MaterialsWe used advertisements to manipulate the independent variable, taboo messages. Participants were shown two different advertisements, all participants saw the water bottle advertisement and then participants saw one of the two menstrual product advertisements. A water bottle advertisement was viewed by participants followed by two randomly assigned tampon advertisements. The purpose of the water bottle advertisement was to avoid deception as the study was listed as an health advertisements on PIPER, the water bottle served as a more neutral advertisement before viewing those concerning menstruation. One of which was a taboo message involving menstruation and one in which was non-taboo. The non-taboo advertisement clearly showed an African American woman and Caucasian man taking sheets off a bed. On the sheets is a large menstrual blood stain. This ads heading was “No Shame” printed boldly at the top center of the page and the caption at the bottom of the ad stated, “Periods are nothing to be ashamed of. They’re natural and period products should be natural too. The taboo advertisement, showed a caucasian man in front of a large bed captioned, “Mother nature please, the room is already paid for”. The bottom smaller caption stated, “Our best wishes for Valentines Day”. Both advertisements were for tampon products and referred to menstruation in different ways, either accepting or rejecting it. Taboo messages were known to provoke prohibiting and restricted attitudes toward menstruation. Taboo messages led to increased state self-objectification for Italian women (Spadaro et al. 2017). After being exposed to a taboo message, those with low menstrual knowledge were more likely to self-objectify than those with higher menstrual knowledge. After viewing advertisements participants were asked to evaluate them with a series of questions that included, “What product is being advertised?” which was answered with a written response. “How likely are you to purchase this product?” which answers ranged from extremely likely to extremely unlikely.  “How would you rate the quality of this product?” with answers ranging from terrible to excellent. “How positive or negative is the message the advertisement conveys?” with answers ranging from extremely negative to extremely positive. “How useful is this product?” with answers ranging from not useful at all to extremely useful. Measures Self-objectificationSelf-objectification is when girlsinternalize an objectifying observer’s perspective on their own bodies causingthem to have negative feelings and thoughts about themselves.Self-objectification was determined based on the scores participants obtainedfrom the Objectified Body Consciousness Scale. This scale consisted of a24-item self-report questionnaire composed of three subscales and eight itemseach, measuring Body Shame, Body Surveillance, and Appearance Control Beliefs.All items were rated on a 7-point Likert scale from 1(strongly disagree) to 7(strongly agree). An example of items asked would include, “I am not thinkingabout how I look right now” and “Right now, I really don’t think I have muchcontrol over how my body looks”. Higher scoresreceived through the questionnaire indicated more state self-objectification.Both Italy (Dakanalis et al. 2015) and Sweden (Lexner 2009) have previousstudies that have shown support for the reliability and validity of OBCS. Menstrual KnowledgeKnowledge of menstruation which wasthe moderator variable for the study, was assessed using five items from theKnowledge of Menstruation questionnaire. Each item is a true-false statementabout menstruation. The five items include, “ Changes in a girl’s routine suchas going on holidays can cause changes in her menstrual cycle”(T); “It isdangerous for a girl to go swimming when she is having her period”(F); “Femaleathletes in heavy training and ballet dancers sometimes stop menstruating” (T);B”Menstruation (periods) cleans the body of dirty blood”(F); “Periods help toflush out an egg every month”(F). For scoring purposes, all correct answerswere added together. Higher scores indicated more accurate knowledge concerningmenstruation, scores range from 0-5. Feminist Identification  People who identify as feminist share a senseof community that accompanies a social movement, which “encompasses those whosee gender as a major category of analysis, who critique female disadvantage,and who work to improve women’s situation” (Rupp & Taylor, 1999, p. 364).Whether or not a participants accept the label of being a feminist and/or holdfeminist beliefs was assessed through the Feminist Beliefs and Behavior scale (Zucker, 2004). Themeasure regarding cardinal beliefs of feminists was created to determineparticipants’ compliance with with the basic feminist principle being, equalitybetween sexes. The scale contains three items about the cardinal beliefs offeminists answered in a dichotomous yes/no format followed by one question to access theparticipants’ willingness to identify as a feminist. The three items include, “Girls and women have not been treated as well as boys and men in oursociety,” “Women and men should be paid equally for the same work,” and“Women’s unpaid work should be more socially valued”. X women, rejected all threebeliefs, X women endorsed one belief, X endorsed two beliefs and X endorsed allthree beliefs. To conclude , participants answer the question, “Do you consideryourself a feminist?” once again in a yes or no format either accepting thelabel of a feminist or not accepting the label of a feminist. Women wereconsidered feminists if they endorsed all three of the cardinal beliefs andaccepted the label of a feminist. Women were considered egalitarians if theyendorsed all three cardinal beliefs of feminists but answered no to acceptingthe label of a feminist. Women were considered non-feminists if they rejectedat least one cardinal belief as well as the label of a feminist. ProcedureThis study is a survey conducted at The College of New Jersey, where a sample of female college students were recruited through the PIPER pool to participate. Participants were tested on their attitudes towards menstrual taboo advertisements. The dependent variable is self-objectification.Whenparticipants arrived to the designated computer lab, they signed their name onthe sign-in sheet and sat down at a computer to begin the survey. There wasabout 15 participants taking the survey in the lab along with two researcherspresent throughout each session.Tobegin, all participants were asked to sign an informed consent form, whichadvised them that the study was being used to test their health beliefs. Thisform recognized all exclusion criterion, potential risks and benefits, and thepurposes of the study. The study was administered in a TCNJ research lab anddid not take longer than 30 minutes to complete.  Next,a water bottle advertisement was viewed by participants followed by tworandomly assigned tampon advertisements. All advertisements and messages wereviewed in the same language, English. After viewing the advertisements, initialreactions of participants were assessed through series questions. Lastly,a separate survey that asked questions about individuals beliefs about theirbodies and their health was completed.Participantsbegan answering questions about the moderator being examined. To assess themoderators, participants completed questions on self-objectification, menstrualknowledge, and feminist identification. Additional moderators that will betested throughout the study include self-esteem, body-image and openness tomenstruation.Upon completion of thesurvey, participants were debriefed regarding the study. They were then awarethat the purpose is to understand the personal factors that can influence womento view menstruation negatively which would ultimately lead women toself-objectify.Results Due to failure of attention checks,three participants’ responses were excluded from analyses, resulting in a finalsample size of 68. Participants’ mean self-objectification scores rangedfrom  2.71 – 5.63 (M = 4.02, SD = .66).There were no significant differences in self- objectification by condition (F > 0.05). Participants’ meanmenstrual knowledge scores ranged from 0.80 (M = 0.7164, SD = 1.4418).  There were no significant differences inmenstrual knowledge by condition (F>0.05).Participants’ attitudes toward mean menstruation scores ranged from   4.13 (M=  4.01, SD = .7075). For this variable, Cronbach’s alpha was greater than0.7 ( ? = .752), and thusreliable.  There were no significantdifferences in attitudes toward menstruation by condition (F>0.05).. Descriptivestatistics among all variables included in the study are shown in Table 1. Atthe bivariate level, it was found that women who displayed greater stateself-objectification had more negative attitudes toward menstruation. The frequencies and percentages forscores on the feminist identity measures are presented in Table 2.  A multivariate linear regression wasconducted to examine the extent to which menstrual knowledge, taboo messages,and attitudes toward menstruation predict state self-objectification (see Table3). Also, to test the moderating effect of knowledge on the relationshipbetween taboo messages and self-objectification. The model accounted for 3.8%of the variance in self-objectification, F(3,60) = 1.832, p >.005 . Significantpredictors were attitudes toward menstruation. Those who had negative attitudestoward menstruation were significantly more likely to self-objectify than thosewho had positive attitudes toward menstruation, ? = 0.285, t = 2.245, p = .029. In addition, those whoreported higher levels of menstrual knowledge did not have a significant effecton self-objectification, ? = -.024, t = -0.192, p = .849. The type of message that was shown (taboo vs non-taboo)did not have a significant effect on self-objectification, ? = .012, t = .095, p = .925.  Finally, we tested the interaction betweencondition and menstrual knowledge on and adding the interaction effect did notsignificantly improve the variance accounted for. Thus, there was notmoderating effect which was inconsistent with our hypothesis.We then examined whether women whoare feminists will be less likely to self-objectify due to menstrual taboo thanwomen who are egalitarians and non-feminists by conducting a 2(condition) X3(feminist identity) factorial ANOVA to examine the effects onself-objectification (see Table 4). Condition included two levels (taboo [N=33] vs non taboo [N=35]) andfeminist identity consisted of three levels (feminist, egalitarian, andnon-feminist).  The ANOVA revealed thatthere was no main effect of condition on self-objectification , F(1,65) = .104, p = .749, suggestingthat women who were in the taboo condition (M= 4.045, SD = .138) did notdiffer in state-self objectification in comparison to the non-taboo condition (M = 3.981, SD = .143).  The ANOVArevealed that there was no main effect of feminist identity onself-objectification, F(2,65)  = .487, p= .617, suggesting that non-feminists (M= 4.161, SD = .204), egalitarians (M = 3.888, SD = .192) and feminists (M =3.990, SD = .105) did not differ onself-objectification. There was also no significant interaction between the twofactors, F(1,65) = .525, p = .757.The nature of this interaction suggested that for non-feminists , taboomessages (M = 4.183, SD = .301) versus non-taboo messages (M = 4.139, SD = .275) did not have an effect on self-objectification. Foregalitarians, taboo messages (M =4.068, SD = .238 ) versus non taboomessages (M = 3.708, SD = .301) did not have an effect onself-objectification. For feminists, taboo messages (M = 3.884, SD = .159)versus non-taboo messages (M = 4.095,SD = .137) similarly did not have aneffect on self-objectification. Table 1. Descriptive statistics and correlations among study variablesTable 2. Frequencies and Percentages for Feminist Identity Moderator.Note. Evaluation 1: Girls and women have not been treated as wellas boys and men in our society; Evaluation 2: Women and men should be paidequally for the same work; Evaluation 3: Women’s unpaid work should be moresocially valued;  Feminist ID: Do you consideryourself a feminist? Table 3. Multivariate Regression for condition, attitudes toward menstruationand menstrual knowledge on self-objectification Table 4. Means and Standard Deviations for Dependent VariableSelf-Objectification. DiscussionResearchers have question what impacts women’s likelihood to self-objectify in relation to menstruation, the present study looked into the following moderators; attitudes toward menstruation, menstrual knowledge and feminist identity. We accounted for differences between the conditions resulting it assuming that women with negative attitudes toward menstruation would be more likely to self-objectify. Another hypothesis we had was that, women with more menstrual knowledge will be less likely to self-objectify due to menstrual taboo than women with less menstrual knowledge. We found these results to be non-significant. Lastly, we hypothesized that, women who are feminists will be less likely to self-objectify specifically, in our study when viewing menstrual advertisements than women who are egalitarians and non-feminists. We found this hypothesis to also be nonsignificant. Due to most of our hypotheses being deemed non-significant we can infer that the attitudes toward menstruation, menstrual knowledge and feminist identity have little/no impact on taboo messages and self-objectification. The results of this study contrasts the assertions of Hurt (2007) that feminist identity was significantly negatively correlated with self-objectification. Previous research shows that conforming to feminist norms makes one less likely to self objectify, however the rejection of certain feminist norms may decrease the extent to which one self-objectifies. Our study found no significance between feminist identity and self-objectification but in comparison to Hurt (2007), this could have been because our studies sample size was substantially smaller. Hurt (2007) had 282 female participants versus our 68 female participants. This study supports the findings ofSpadaro (2017), which supports the findings in our study that attitudes towardmenstruation is significantly associated with self-objectification.  Although Spadaro (2017), used a verydifferent sample then this study being Swedish and Italian participantsresearchers found women with negative attitudes toward menstruation were morelikely to self-objectify.  Moreover, thisstudy indirectly states that the less menstrual knowledge one had the morelikely they were to self-objectify. This contradicts our findings thatmenstrual knowledge had no significant impact on self-objectification.  Our sample size was smallerimpacting the chance that participants could have had very similarcharacteristics leaving them to have similar opinions and views on menstruationaffecting our results greatly due to our very small sample size. These findingsdo however show that the small female population from a smaller college can infact have high levels of menstrual knowledge and accept the feminist label butstill have negative attitudes toward menstruation.  Among the strengths of our study was that, the sample population was easily accessible. We recruited our participants through the PIPER pool at TCNJ which is only includes TCNJ students. Since our study took place on TCNJ’s campus, the students of this college were easily accessible as the location was familiar and in short distance from where they live on or off campus. Our study was time effective in that it took no longer than thirty minutes to complete the survey. Similarly, our study was cost effective because we used Qualtrics to create and conduct our surveys. Due to this, there was no need to purchase any other materials. All in all, this helps make our study easy to replicate because future researchers would not have to spend an excessive amount of time, money, or other resources to obtain results expected. Another strength of our study was the use of the water bottle advertisement  in terms of deception. The use of the water bottle was to relate back to what participants signed up for when they agreed to take part in the study. The study told participants that they would be taking a survey based on Health Advertisements, when they signed up through PIPER. In order to provide more than just articles related to menstruation we provided an article referencing a water bottle because this also is health related. Participants answered the same questions for the water bottle advertisement and the menstruation advertisements providing consistency throughout our survey. Some limitations must be considered in the interpretation of our results. To begin, the choice of our advertisements used as experimental stimuli to test the non-taboo and taboo conditions. Although we tried to select an advertisement that depicted menstruation as taboo, the specific one we had chosen addressed the topic indirectly. With this being said, the advertisement never specifically mentioned menstruation. On the other hand, the non-taboo advertisement we had used did not explicitly state non-taboo words like “blood” although it did show an image of red blood on white sheets. The advertisement instead was limited to mention how “periods are natural” and with the use of the companies organic tampons periods can be easier. The article did emphasize non-taboo phrases such as, “No Shame”. The advertisements chosen could have affected the nonsignificant results on whether or not the type of message shown (taboo vs. non-taboo) affected self-objectification. Another obvious limitation of thisstudy was the sample size. With the limited amount of time we had to collectour data we were faced with an lack of participants, leaving us with only 68participants to interpret results for. Being that the sample size was alreadyvery low the lack of diversity within our sample could have also affected thedifferentiation within our results. The sample of participants were all femalesranging from ages 18 to 23, who were predominately white and all wereundergraduate students at the College of New Jersey. With all of this takeninto consideration, the prestigious university provides students with a very indepth education, leaving students very well-versed and knowledgeable. Thiscould have affected specific moderators specifically, menstrual knowledge.Along with this idea, TCNJ is provides many opportunities for feminists toexpress themselves and even has a women and gender studies major for anyone whois passionate about learning further about feminist topics. This could haveaided to the fact that our results had shown that the majority of ourparticipants accepted the feminist label and agreed with the three cardinalbeliefs of a feminist. Due to the threats of internal validity our selectionbias could have impacted our results heavily, being that participants were verysimilar in age, race, and knowledge background.Our last limitation is that oursample did used we a convenience sample. All of our participants were gatheredthrough the TCNJ PIPER database. With this being said, all of the students whoparticipated in our study are current TCNJ students. Therefore, our sample isnot representative across all undergraduate college campuses. We also limitedour sample to a selection bias of only allowing participants who were femalesto complete the survey. This could have served as a threat to external validitybecause of the lack of variety within our sample. Although many of the studies hypothesis received limited support, we did find significant effects on attitudes toward menstruation and self-objectification. This reminds us that feminist identity and menstrual knowledge may not be efficient measures in examining what causes women to self-objectify. This may have changed if the study was conducted for a longer period of time over a much broader population. The results could have been impacted greatly by a larger sample size over the domain of various universities. With a larger sample, there would have been a greater chance of having more diversity within the participants as they would have accounted for more racial differences, a variety of ages and different backgrounds of education. In continuation, the method could have been altered by adding different or more advertisements to ensure understanding of what was being studied; menstruation. If advertisements were more explicit and straightforward maybe participants would ha