The Brief: On TikTok, teenage girls are spreading a hoax on TikTok that it's normal to eat used tampons in order to reabsorb lost blood into the body.

Bluesquiggle
DEEP DIVE

No, people are not eating tampons or drinking menstrual blood because of an internet challenge. What is happening, however, is that teenage girls have started an elaborate hoax on TikTok that they eat their tampons to “get back the blood they lost.”

On TikTok, stories about girls eating their tampons started circulating after TikToker @caro.trash posted a video apparently venting about how clueless guys can be about periods, to the extent that they don’t even know that girls “eat their tampon after they’re done with it to like reabsorb all the blood that they just lost.”

Since @caro.trash’s video was posted in June, rumors about girls eating tampons have been circulating online, mostly on TikTok, and mostly by girls in-the-know about this being a joke.

While it’s obvious to anyone who’s ever had a period that it’s not normal to eat tampons or mensural blood, some people appear to have been fooled by this prank. A number of TikTok memes depict boys’ shocked, confused, and often rightly skeptical reactions to being told that eating tampons is a regular and healthy habit for a large portion of the population.

Some videos go as far as using fake blood so that people actually appear to be consuming used tampons, pads, menstrual cups, etc.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to this hoax other than to troll boys and men for their ignorance about menstruation and women’s bodies. The TikTok tampon eating hoax combines shock value, absurdity, and the difficulty of discerning whether or not someone on the internet is being facetious into a perfect storm of jokes, memes, and very confused boys.

It’s possible that this hoax could help people become more comfortable talking about periods, but perhaps only as the butt of a joke…

Tampon Eating Memes And Reactions