‘They call him Pad Man’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/09/2023 (1082 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Like Dave Foley of the Kids in the Hall, Scott Burton has a good attitude towards menstruation.

His wife of 21 years, Crystal Burton, is the founder and owner of Tree Hugger Cloth Pads, a Winnipeg business that makes and sells reusable cloth menstrual and postpartum pads and period underwear. Crystal was an early adopter of sustainable menstrual hygiene products; her business has been around since 2008.

Crystal, 43, wanted to get on TikTok to reach a younger demographic, but she wasn’t keen on fronting videos. So Scott, 44, decided that he’d jump in front of the camera.

One of his videos — a 17-second explainer in which he introduces himself and the product — has more than four million views; the second-most popular is at two million.

To understand the virality of a short and rather spartan video, look no further than the comment section. “We love a supportive husband,” “instant follow,” “KING,” “everyone needs a Scott” and “How can I order one? Not talking about the pads” are just a small sampling.

As it turns out, women are extremely here for a man openly talking about periods and pads without making them a punchline.

Which isn’t to say Scott wasn’t nervous about being exactly that.

“I wanted to help, but I’m a guy, right?” he says. “I tried to figure out how to do it in a way that people wouldn’t attack me in the comments.”

That’s a valid concern. Scott didn’t want to be a man mansplaining menstrual hygiene products, and so, for a while, he tried making videos that focused purely on the products (which are available in a ton of fun prints, including, by the way, shark print for Shark Week). But those clips just weren’t connecting with viewers.

“I figured if I was just honest and said, ‘I’m just a guy helping promote his wife’s business,’ that they’d be kind to me,” he says. “And it turned out that they were actually really kind to me.”

And not just online, but IRL, too.

“If (customers) are real close, I’ll go and hand-deliver them,” Scott says. “And I’ll be nervous sometimes putting them in people’s mailboxes, because what if they see me and I don’t know what they’ll say to me. And what do I say to them? Because I don’t want to make them uncomfortable.

“There was one customer, she saw me and she was, like, so excited. She treated me like a celebrity. She got a selfie.”

“They call him Pad Man,” Crystal adds with a laugh. “Like, all of our followers call him Pad Man.”

Scott has been posting five to 18 TikTok videos a day, and Tree Hugger, which currently ships to Canada and the U.S., has been figuring out how to meet the requests for international orders.

Comfort with the subject matter just takes practice, he says. “I grew up as one of three boys and it’s not like our family talked about (menstruation) a lot,” he says.

And yes, Scott is the supportive husband TikTok believes him to be (“This is so cute, I’m sobbing” is another common comment). His support extends beyond making videos, too. Scott quit his job — as, get this, a magician — back in 2013 to join their home-based business full time, handling the shipping/receiving of fabric and supplies, applying all of the snaps to pads — which are all handmade by a network of work-at-home seamstresses — back-end website work and accounting. The couple appeared on Dragon’s Den in 2015.

“I needed to either hire or get help in some way and he actually left his career and joined me and that was the best thing ever,” Crystal says. “We’ve had so much fun. He’s just been 100 per cent supportive since Day 1.”

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com