August CEO Nadya Okamoto, 25, appeared on CBS This Morning to discuss her product and why they are not just marketing it towards women.

The brand is currently being sold at Target and online.

Okamoto was highlighted during a “Changing the Game” segment, which showcases women who are “making a difference.”

The company CEO said that they were trying to fight “transphobia” with their “inclusive” messaging.

“We’re also wanting a period-positive, gender-inclusive brand,” Okamoto said. “We are August; on the pack it says ‘we’re here for everyone who menstruates.’ And I think especially in this age of transphobia it really means a lot to us to be a proudly gender-inclusive brand.”

”History and society has built up the stigma that makes menstruators feel so ashamed, yeah, it makes us feel like there’s something wrong with our bodies,” Okamoto said. “We’re taught that period blood is this contaminable, like disgusting thing.”

“It always breaks my heart to hear so many stories every day of young menstruators who get their period and have never heard about it, right? Because suddenly you think you’re bleeding out,” Okamoto continued. “A lot of people think that they pooped themselves because yeah blood can be brown and they don’t know that, and period blood isn’t just liquid, too, it can clot, so we hear stories regularly of people thinking that like a piece of their heart came out.”

Okamoto added, “It’s just, it can be so scary if you don’t know the details of it.”

The New York Post pointed out that “in 2020, period activist Ileri Jaiyeoba called out Okamoto for allegedly ‘lying about her history of housing insecurity and exploiting an untrue experience of homelessness to boost her platform under the term ‘legal homelessness.'”

Okamoto, who is Harvard educated, replied in a statement posted to Twitter, claiming that “I avoided using the term ‘homeless’ after I realized people assumed I lived in shelters…. So I now more appropriately talk about my past experience as a period of housing instability.”

The brand’s website claims that it is “period care for everyone who menstruates” and features a woman holding tampons with hands covered in orange goop.