See the fax tampon and the almost identical tampon Nunap sold probably
about the same time, both probably made of Cellucotton, the component of
Kotex.
See other marketing devices: Ad-design
contest for menstrual products in the United
Kingdom; B-ettes tampon counter-display box and
proposal to dealers, with contract; (U.S.A., donated by Procter & Gamble,
2001); "Your Image is Your Fortune!,"
Modess sales-hints booklet for stores, 1967 (U.S.A., donated by Tambrands,
1997)
See a Modess True or False? ad in The American
Girl magazine, January 1947, and actress Carol Lynley
in "How Shall I Tell My Daughter" booklet ad (1955) - Modess . . . . because ads (many dates).
 
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THE MUSEUM OF MENSTRUATION AND WOMEN'S HEALTH
Cutting to the chase: Another reason I started the museum
On March 23 and 1 April, 2007, a neighbor killed two cats and threw
them into my yard. He had injected poison into one, my cat, Wix,
and cut open the throat and stomach of a stray. I cried and cried. Although
the police know this, and more, I'm not safe. I decided to tell you a story
from my teenage years in case I don't have the opportunity again. The story
sheds light on why I started this museum.
When I was 15 I cut my arms and torso over a hundred times with a razor
blade and piece of glass (photo at the bottom of this page). In the several
months before I had poured acid down my back and on my hand - I still have
faint scars, 50 years later - as well as swallowed dozens of aspirins and
overdosed on barbiturates.
I was desperately trying to escape a family where I felt trapped by
a brother dying with muscular dystrophy, and by his beleaguered caretakers,
our parents (photos below). An ironically titled book brilliantly describes
this situation: Dr. Jeanne Safer's The Normal One: Life with a Difficult
or Damaged Sibling. The Normal One was not-so-normal me. As she writes,
Dr. Safer was also - is? - not so normal.
Cutting myself (which required 31 stitches) propelled me out of the
family and sophomore year in high school and into the Army's psychiatric
ward on Okinawa, the Japanese island where my father was in charge of military
construction. After a couple weeks in a locked ward I spent a few more in
the Army's locked psychiatric ward in Tokyo. From there I flew to Hawaii
(for only three days, unfortunately!) and finished my locked ward career
with two months in San Francisco, in the now closed Letterman Army Hospital.
After a month I graduated from its locked to, yes, an unlocked ward.
For the first time in my life I felt free. But it took me decades to
somewhat overcome my shyness, the desire to be always agreeable, and my
goody-goody-ness, which Safer lists as characteristics of the Normal One:
Children don't want to give suffering parents and the sick child even more
grief. Until I opened this museum in my house in 1994 (here)
I had never rebelled, a word a museum visitor used that had never occurred
to me. But she was right. And I still would not have done it had my parents
been alive. It was not so rebellious an act as it might seem.
What was it like in the psychiatric wards? I was always the youngest,
surrounded by sick soldiers and their sick spouses. I never felt mistreated.
I drew a pencil portrait of a bent-over GI who had shot himself in the stomach
with a rifle (he pulled the trigger with his toe); he did one of me that
turned out to be Mickey Mouse. At night I sometimes heard screams from the
padded cell of a friendly and funny fellow who cycled into and out of sanity.
And once at breakfast I remember a woman sitting stiffly, staring straight
ahead, with an ear-to-ear scar across her throat. A gay soldier unsuccessfully
tried to convince my mother to let me visit him after he was released -
he told me (but not my mother!) he had a bed that sloped toward the center.
Only later did I realize what that meant; I was naive and anyway not of
that persuasion - er, genetic disposition. Looking through that ward's windows
I drew some scenes of Tokyo and some still lifes in the ward in San Francisco,
prefiguring my life as a artist later on. Life was not bad.
In the San Francisco hospital I tried to catch up with school by getting
geometry and English books out of the hospital's library. I asked my psychiatrist
for help with geometry problems. He would stare at the page, puff on his
pipe and ask the psychiatric social worker. Both looked baffled by theorems
and triangles.
The social worker, an Army lieutenant colonel, once called me into his
office and asked, "Do you masturbate?" "No," I said,
even though I wasn't sure what he meant. He said, "Ninety-nine out
of a hundred boys say they masturbate and the other one's a liar!"
He later asked the same question and got mad when I gave him the same answer.
After I got out - the doctors advised against it but I wanted to get
back into regular life - I returned to school, having missed the first half
of my sophomore year but somehow was never required to make it up. The next
year I had the highest grades of the junior class - and the highest in geometry
the second semester of my sophomore year. I was on a decades-long difficult
trek to recovery.
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Above: Colonel Joyce and his family, one
of my father's employees, lived in the house at top center. It was identical
to ours; you see our patio wall in the foreground. Houses had to be flat
to endure the several typhoons - hurricanes - that thumped the island every
year. Okinawa has more people one hundred years old and older per capita
than any other "country" in spite of the wind and heat and humidity.
(Photo: Harry Finley with a Ricohflex camera my parents gave me for Christmas.)
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Above: Eight months after I got out of
the hospital and back into school someone, maybe my father, took this picture
in our house at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia. Jim, my brother with muscular dystrophy,
sits at left. He had trouble walking because of the disease. Then you see
my older brother, George, Jr.; me; and our mother. My father had a weakness
for Currier & Ives prints, on the wall. I have no idea what the Life-Like
Landscape Mat was, or why I was squinting (maybe I was anticipating the
camera flash). Mom's head was not really that big; she was just 4'11"
tall. And the photographer might have had one too many, listing to one side.
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Above: Eight years later Jim is much worse
and in a wheelchair. Look at his arms. He couldn't straighten his legs.
He would die three years later of a heart attack (while my father was giving
him a bath), typical for muscular dystrophy sufferers, at 21. My mother,
second from right, followed him five years later, from grief. A doctor told
her she had passed the faulty muscular dystrophy gene to her son, as in
"It's your fault." That's my brother George, Jr., second from
left (he does have pupils); me; and my father - Pop - at far right. The
picture shows a room in our house in Satellite Beach, Florida, when Pop
was in charge of construction at the Cape Canaveral launch site for NASA.
Jim was intelligent, funny, and seemed cheerful to the end. I never talked
about his illness with him - isn't that incredible? - and I doubt that my
brother had. (Photographer unknown)
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These cuts and others landed me a three months' stay in four hospitals
and ruined Pop's Army career. He had to give up his best job to accompany
his family back to the States. This is how my left arm looked in 2007. I
was so ashamed of having cut myself that I told the doctors and my family
that some unknown person had done it. But the direction of the cuts told
them it was me. After I left the hospital my family and I never discussed
the incident or its cause. (Photo: Harry Finley)
Go to a short bio or see some of my art and the museum in my house.
Cats of this museum and feline felicities.
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© 2007 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute
work on this Web site in any manner or medium without
written permission of the author. Please report suspected
violations to hfinley@mum.org
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