Canadian Police Officer Tries 'Period Pain' Simulator And 'Gives Up' Halfway Through The Pain Levels
It's not as easy as some men might think.
@getsomedays / TikTok At the 2023 Calgary Stampede — a rodeo/exhibition/festival held every July in Calgary, Alberta, Canada — male, Canadian police officers wandered around to a booth that was promoting period pain relief under the company Somedays.
In order to promote this period pain relief (which comes in the form of creams, teas, and heating pads), the people at Somedays set up a period pain simulator. Many women gathered around to see how much pain one Canadian police officer could withstand before giving up, and the answer was: not a lot.
The Canadian Police Officer ‘gave up’ halfway through the period pain simulator pain levels.
The text overlay in the video, which has been viewed over 55 million times, reads “cop tried period pain simulator and it goes exactly how you think it would.” Once the officer was strapped in, another one of his buddies even asked, “Do you need to hold hands?” and grabbed hold of his hand for a moment before letting go.
The presenter explained how things would go and what exactly he had gotten himself into, saying ,“We all tried it on, so we did a gauge. We tried to check for accuracy and figure out which number correlates with our pain.”
She explained that she has endometriosis and, according to the Mayo Clinic, women who suffer from endometriosis are also prone to far more severe period pains. “I’m a ten,” she said. “Cass is a five, and Charlie is a seven. So we’ll walk you all the way up and you can stop at any time — we’ll see how far you get.”
The officer joked (maybe not so jokingly) that he didn't know if they needed to give him 10, but he was ready to get started low. Between levels 1-3, things were going okay, and although he could feel it, he wasn't too jostled quite yet. At around level four, he revealed that he felt it going all the way down his legs and that he started sweating.
Around level 6, the officer claimed that he wouldn’t want to do anything with that pain.
He seemed to shrug off level five pretty easily, but once it got to six, you could tell by his body language and his face that was really starting to feel it. He began wincing, started bouncing his leg, and exaggerated his breathing.
“Would you want to be on duty with this sort of pain?” the woman controlling the simulation asked. “Walking around, going to school?” The police officer confidently said no, no way. “I definitely wouldn’t come in,” he said, referring to going to work.
“You would call in sick?” the woman replied incredulously. “He’s a six and he’s going to call in sick to work, folks. I’ve got bad news, your boss doesn’t give a f--k that you have period pain,” and she’s... kind of right?
According to a recent study conducted by Womanizer, “52% percent of menstruators surveyed reported feeling that it is not socially [acceptable] to call in sick as a result of period pain.” A whopping 97% claimed that they’ve never heard “menstrual leave” be discussed at their place of work. Women just keep on working.
By pain level eight, the officer was audibly in pain. “Can we get a stand-up?” she asked, followed by a prompt, “Nope!” from the officer. “Yeah come on, you got s--t to do! You gotta stand up,” she egged him on, but he wasn't kidding, saying, “I can’t stand up.”
Photo: TikTok / @getsomedays
He eventually did stand up, but his body language did him no favors, as the contractions he felt caused him to double over and close his abdomen off. At 10, she asked him for a “yee-haw,” which he painfully let out after a little bit of time, and finally, the presentation was over and the simulation ended.
“You want some cramp cream?” she asked, to which the officer replied, “Cramp cream? I need it now,” as the camera showed off the large group of women who watched the presentation in joy, laughing along the whole way as they watched a man experience the pain they have to suffer each month.
Women in the comments called for the normalization of ‘menstrual leave.’
“Should be mandatory for all male bosses, normalize using sick time for period cramps. Even some women I know need to know endometriosis is painful!” one of the top comments read, with nearly 38,000 likes.
The woman who claimed to have endometriosis said her pain was at a 10, but even at the levels that the other women felt, it was too much for the police officer. Someone in the comments joked, “You forgot to tell him how much prettier he is when he smiles,” mocking men who say things like that to women who “don’t smile enough” or “should smile more.”
“I love how she included that we still have to live our regular lives through all of this,” another woman wrote, and she’s right.
We as men don’t know how good we have it, and one woman even added, “He handled it better than most men I've seen do this,” so if that’s any indicator, it’s probably much worse than we could imagine — and this is every month, for days at a time.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.