See the pad & box from 1967, and its booklet for girls, World of a girl.
See some pad dispensers and ads for pads that come with pouches: New Freedom and Whenever, from the U.S.A., and Camelia, from Germany.
Look at disposal bags found in public toilets around the world.
See how women wore a belt (and in a Swedish ad).
See a modern belt for a washable pad and a page from the 1946-47 Sears catalog showing a great variety - ad for Hickory belts, 1920s? - Modess belts in Personal Digest (1966) - drawing for a proposed German belt and pad, 1894 - ads for early 20th-century Japanese belts - belts and washable pads from the 1902 and 1908 Sears, Roebuck catalogs
HOMEPAGE
CONTRIBUTE to Humor, Words and expressions about menstruation and Would you stop menstruating if you could?
Some MUM site links:
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MUM address & What does MUM mean? |
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Underpants & panties directory |
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Words and expressions about menstruation |
Would you stop menstruating if you could? |
What did women do about menstruation in the past? |
Washable pads |
Read 10 years (1996-2006) of articles and Letters to Your MUM on this site.
Leer la versión en español de los siguientes temas: Anticoncepción y religión, Breve reseña - Olor - Religión y menstruación - Seguridad de productos para la menstruación.

Ad for Confidets: the first contoured menstrual pads? The first pad sold with disposal bags? (1961, U.S.A., Scott Paper Company)

Confidets was the latest in scores - hundreds? - of companies claiming their pads and tampons were accident proof. Well, it couldn't write that it prevented most accidents or was fairly good. The competition would jump on that.

Anyway, Consumer Reports magazine wrote that American women preferred Confidets to all other pads in 1978, according to Nancy Friedman in her book Everything You Must Know About Tampons (Berkley Books, New York 1980; Ms. Friedman praised this museum), shoving aside the more famous Kotex and Modess. The reason might have been the tapered shape - women have more room at the front of the vulva for a pad - and the disposal bags (see other disposal bags ); both might have been firsts in the industry.

See a diagram showing a similar anatomical problem, that of why the tabs on pads using belts (like this one; it would be years before the familiar stick-in-panties pads appeared, like Stayfree) had to be longer in the back.

Scott Paper Company brought the brand out in 1961 but discontinued it in the 1980s.

See a Confidets pad and box from 1967 and its booklet for girls, World of a girl.

See some pad dispensers and ads for pads that come with pouches: New Freedom and Whenever, from the U.S.A., and Camelia, from Germany.
Look at disposal bags found in public toilets around the world.

The ad measures 10.25 x 13.25" (26 x 33.6 cm), symbolic of the era of large, great ads killed by the oil embargo of the early 1970s.

Below: enlargement of the text at lower right.

See a Confidets pad and box from 1967 and its booklet for girls, World of a girl. - See some pad dispensers and ads for pads that come with pouches: New Freedom and Whenever, from the U.S.A., and Camelia, from Germany. Look at disposal bags found in public toilets around the world.

See ads for menarche-education booklets: Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday (Kotex, 1933), Tampax tampons (1970, with Susan Dey), Personal Products (1955, with Carol Lynley), and German o.b. tampons (lower ad, 1981)
See also the booklets How shall I tell my daughter? (Modess, various dates), Growing up and liking it (Modess, various dates), and Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday (Kotex, 1928).
And read Lynn Peril's series about these and similar booklets!
See another ad for As One Girl to Another (1942), and the booklet itself.
© 2000 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute any of the work on this Web site in any manner or medium without written permission of the author. Please report suspected violations to hfinley@mum.org