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See more Kotex items: First ad (1921) - ad 1928 (Sears and Roebuck catalog) - Lee Miller ads (first real person in amenstrual hygiene ad, 1928) - Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday (booklet for girls, 1928, Australian edition; there are many links here to Kotex items) - Preparing for Womanhood (1920s, booklet for girls; Australian edition) - 1920s booklet in Spanish showing disposal method - box from about 1969 - "Are you in the know?" ads (Kotex) (1949)(1953)(1964)(booklet, 1956) - See more ads on the Ads for Teenagers main page

"Wherever nice women gather," ad for Kotex (September 1922, U.S.A.)

Kotex made some of the most beautiful ads for menstrual products, and this is one of them (see some from the first Kotex ad campaign, for example, November 1921). The colored ones glow, as one museum visitor told me after having seen the Kotex ad collection in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, part of the papers of Wallace Meyer, who developed the first Kotex ad campaign (I put a black-and-white close-up of the illustration towards the bottom of this page; the color version was huge).

The Kotex blue of the box, and the word Kotex itself, were widely known by at least the end of the 1920s, as efficient expert Dr. Lillian Gilbreth reported to Johnson & Johnson (read her comments about them at the bottom of this page), which later made Kotex rivals Modess and Nupak.

"Nice" women - who are they? Looking at the picture, I would guess upper-middle class women are nice. What looks like a uniformed attendant helps the ladies before a golf game at probably a country club. Kotex corrects this interpretation by writing, "It solves a difficult laundry problem for nice women - rich and poor alike." (When did you last read an ad referring unironically to "poor" people? It's refreshing to not read a euphemism.) As I read it, a nice woman is one who doesn't wash, or have washed, her menstrual pads, as had probably been the practice of most American women since the Jamestown colony in the early 17th century. This message is more direct in the November 1921 ad, one that still puzzles me.

But I don't think Kotex is being completely honest. There's no price on the page, but in the just-mentioned November ad it's 12 pads for 60 cents, five cents apiece, maybe 25 cents or more each in today's prices. To me that's a lot. After all, a poor woman could wash a rag for almost nothing. Women look well off in early Kotex advertising, but then the magazine that ran this ad was The Ladies' Home Journal, hardly one that poor people would normally buy. The closest to a poor customer I've seen in early menstrual advertising is the waitress in the English Peg's Paper, in an ad for Mene pads, which women can still buy today.

Note that the women facing us look alike (look at the enlargement toward the bottom of the page). The artist probably used the same model for both, a common practice, or simple tended to make people who look alike, another common occurrence. I know it, being an artist and illustrator myself.

Look below for enlargements of the text and illustration.

I think the women are getting ready to play golf, which I deduce from the women in the foreground's taking off what appears to be a dress, rather than golfing clothes. But is the person at right reading the score card? Another ad I can't interpret!

See a 1920s trade ad for the Kotex cabinet - vending machine - mentioned above, (and see a much later ad that Kotex sent Tampax to get Tampax to buy its machine for its employees! Can you imagine??) and a wrapped pad dispensed by a 1930s machine. And see more dispensers.

See more Kotex items: First ad (1921) - ad 1928 (Sears and Roebuck catalog) - Lee Miller ads (first real person in amenstrual hygiene ad, 1928) - Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday (booklet for girls, 1928, Australian edition; there are many links here to Kotex items) - Preparing for Womanhood (1920s, booklet for girls; Australian edition) - 1920s booklet in Spanish showing disposal method - box from about 1969 - "Are you in the know?" ads (Kotex) (1949)(1953)(1964)(booklet, 1956) - See more ads on the Ads for Teenagers main page

news | first page | contact the museum | art of menstruation | artists (non-menstrual) | belts | bidets | Bly, Nellie | MUM board | books (and reviews) | cats | company booklets directory | costumes | cups | cup usage | dispensers | douches, pain, sprays | essay directory | extraction | famous people | FAQ | humor | huts | links | media | miscellaneous | museum future | Norwegian menstruation exhibit | odor | pad directory | patent medicine | poetry directory | products, current | religion | menstrual products safety | science | shame | sponges | synchrony | tampon directory | early tampons | teen ads directory | tour (video) | underpants directory | videos, films directory | washable pads | LIST OF ALL TOPICS

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