See some Kotex first-campaign ads: general
discussion and ad prototype - January
1921 - May 1921 - November
1921
See more Kotex items: First ad (1921) - ad 1928 (Sears
and Roebuck catalog) - Marjorie May's Twelfth
Birthday (booklet for girls, 1928, Australian edition; there are many
links here to Kotex items) - 1920s booklet in Spanish showing disposal
method - box from about 1969 - Preparing
for Womanhood (1920s, booklet for girls) - "Are you in the know?" ads (Kotex) (1949)(1953)(1964)(booklet, 1956) - See
more ads on the Ads for Teenagers main page
 
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Kotex menstrual pad ad, January 1926 (Pictorial review, U.S.A.)
The 1920s through the 1940s were the golden years of American illustration,
and the beautiful ad below is just one example.
Note that the closest the ad copy gets to mentioning menstruation is
the word "sanitary," a word charged
with negative connotations. I wonder when readers
could see the word menstruation for the first
time in advertising?
Birdseye cloth, mentioned more than once,
was a diaper cloth women attached to belts or pinned to their underpants,
which was not close fitting. And they had to wash it. The genius of Kotex
was that, for women who could afford it, it was disposable, although it
was not the first disposable pad.
The ad recommends just asking for Kotex, thus avoiding the words sanitary
pad, towel, or other indelicate terms. But didn't the clerk understand what
Kotex was? The word Kotex was made from COTten-like
TEXture.
Kimberly-Clark, which invented the bandage which transformed itself
into a menstrual pad during World War I, started the Cellucotton Products
Company, which made Kotex, in order to avoid the association with menstruation.
Pictorial Review magazine (U.S.A.) published
this ad in January 1923. An enlargement of the words appears at the bottom.
Long download, large files!
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See some Kotex first-campaign ads: general
discussion and ad prototype - January
1921 - May 1921 - November
1921
© 1998 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
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