As One Girl to Another (complete
booklet, 1940, Kotex, U.S.A.)
now you are 10 (complete
booklet, 1958, Kotex, U.S.A.)
MANY MORE booklets
menstrual hygiene companies made for girls, women and teachers - patent medicine - a list of
books and articles about menstruation - videos
What did women do about menstruation in the
past?
 
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Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health
Becoming Aware Educational Kit
Puberty kit for girls & their mothers (Kotex,
1992?, U.S.A.)
Box contains booklets for mothers (Parent's Guide) & their daughters
(Sarah's Story),
and sample menstrual pads & tampons
Explains menstruation, adolescence, tampons, girls' growth, menstrual pads
Puberty kits and booklets for menarcheal girls are nothing new; Kotex
itself came out with booklets in the 1920s. Not
only pad and tampon companies produced material,
so did menstrual belt makers and non-affiliated
persons.
The illustrations for these two booklets, Parent's
Guide but especially Sarah's Story,
resemble the style of Bernie Fuchs, who died
in 2009 after a hugely influential career. In his obituary in the New York
Times on 21 September, 2009, Steven Heller wrote
In the 1960s and '70s, Mr. Fuchs's alluring illustrations for fiction
and nonfiction articles on themes of romance, adventure and sports, typically
capturing clean-cut men and women of the middle and
upper-middle classes in candid and naturalistic poses, established
a stylistic standard for editorial and advertising art of the day. . .
.
His work was so popular that it was routinely
mimicked by illustrators and students. He was not bothered by creative
pilfering and shared his methods and techniques, first as an instructor
for the Famous Artists School, one of the best-known correspondence courses,
and later as a founder of the Illustrators Workshop. . . .
Later in his career he rejected . . . laborious work for a more modern,
fluidly impressionistic style, which was infused
with light and bordered on the abstract. In this way he was distancing
himself and the field from Norman Rockwell's dominant realist manner. .
. .
Mr. Gangel [art director of Sports Illustrated] once said, "Bernie
paints light better than anyone in the history of art." [That's quite
a claim.]
ILLUSTRATION at right: Bernie
Fuchs's John Kennedy sailing.
SEE two more menstrual products booklets
showing what looks like even stronger Fuchsian
influence:
"Strictly Feminine," 1969 (Modess
menstrual pads & yampons)
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No people of color exist in the two booklets,
Parent's Guide and Sarah's
Story, strange at this late date.
Kotex early on pitched its pads to women with money,
which usually meant white ones.
I thank the recent donor!
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Below: The box the kit arrived in. As my
older brother told me once,
"If something's worth doing it's worth overdoing."
As little siblings often do,
I copied my senior and wiser litter mate - no, that's
not the right phrase - although
he wouldn't have had anything to do with menstruation. I
was on my own on that one.
I fuzzed out the name of the recipient, the donor's mother, who
forgot to give the kit to her
daughter!
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NEXT | Box holding
the kit, two booklets and sample pads and tampons - 1st
BOOKLET: cover & plan of PARENT'S GUIDE
-
1st inside page - middle
inside page - right inside page - left
outside page - middle outside page - 2d
BOOKLET: SARAH'S STORY -
PADS & TAMPON in
the kit
As One Girl to Another (complete
booklet, 1940, Kotex, U.S.A.) - Marjorie May's
Twelfth Birthday (almost complete booklet,
1928, Kotex, Australia)(complete booklet, 1935,
Canada)(cover, mid-1930s, U.S.A.)(complete
booklet, 1938, U.S.A)
MANY MORE booklets
menstrual hygiene companies made for girls, women and teachers - patent medicine -
a list of books and articles about menstruation
Copyright 2009 Harry Finley
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