HOMEPAGE
KOTEX (and Kotex & other ads & products):
Early newspaper articles
about Kotex and Cellucotton
Ads, 1920s, featuring Kotex spokeswomen, living and maybe fictional
Putting Kotex on the counter to sell it (drawing)
Small b&w ad, 1920s
Ads, 1921: January, May, July, November
1920s: skating and small ad
Ad, 15 November 1922
Ad, March 1922
Ad, January 1923
Ad on side of train, 1920s
ad, July 1923, with proof
Car ad, Nov. 1923
Ad, March 1926
"Woman's Greatest Hygienic Handicap" ad, 1927
Ad, January, 1927
Disposing of early pads: Spanish-language booklet & in an English booklet (1928)
Fastening & disposing of 1920s Kotex pads (instructions, 2 sheets)
ad for Kotex dispensers, 1920s
First American menstrual ad with real person: Lee Miller, July 1928
Second real person in a menstrual products ad? October 1928
CONTRIBUTE to Humor, Words and expressions about menstruation and Would you stop menstruating if you could?
Some MUM site links:
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Religión y menstruación |
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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.


MUSEUM OF MENSTRUATION AND WOMEN'S HEALTH

Kotex ad, magazine unknown, 1927
"Hygienic Freedom Such As Women Never Knew Before"
with horse & borzoi
Woodbury soap ad (reverse side of page)
"At the Most Fashionable Resorts"

And raised pinkies


Rich ladies give two everyday items - soap and menstrual pads - class in these two huge ads in the years right before America collapsed into the Great Depression. The ads, on heavy coated paper, probably came from an expensive magazine.

A third ad, again for Kotex, pictures ordinary Americans in "Woman's Home Companion," a magazine for a broader market.

When this appeared Kotex had been in stores less than 10 years although other disposable brands had appeared earlier. Some women still needed an explanation for why the old-fashioned washable rags were not adequate. A maid washed the rags of a rich women. Kotex, which women could toss away after use, solved the problem for the rich but it was too expensive for most women.

A photographer who accompanied a reporter for the Chicago Tribune visiting the museum in my house told me that as a kid in the 1950s he saw many drying washable menstrual rags hanging on clothes lines in the black Chicago neighborhood where he grew up. Rags are probably used by millions of women around the world today.

I thank the donor of many items, including this ad!

Below: The horse, Russian wolfhound (today called a borzoi from the Russian word for swift),
clothing and gestures identify the women as rich, the best market for the expensive Kotex.
Many Kotex ads targeted the wealthy.
The ad measures 10 1/2 x 13 3/4" (26.8 x 35.2 cm),
reflecting the huge, delicious magazines of the day.
They shrunk with the oil crisis of the 1970s.
 
Below: The splayed fingers signal high class!
More classy fingers and a not-so-classy middle finger here.
Below: In a stroke of fortune, more elegant ladies lie about on the
back of the above Kotex ad in an ad for Woodbury soap. The arrow points to their wandering fingers,
a sign of the hoity-toity. I wonder when in iconography that started. (The ancient Greeks
thought that a second toe longer than the big toe (the first toe) was a sign
of beauty
and statuary through Western art has often shown that.)
Look above and below for confirmation of that certain kind of woman's face in
American popular art and advertising in the 1920s and 30s.
Below: In contrast, the hands of the conversationalists in an earlier
Kotex ad (next page) don't try to impress viewers.
NEXT | 1925 Kotex ad & 1927 Woodbury soap ad.
"Woman's Greatest Hygienic Handicap" ad, 1927
Kotex ad, January, 1927
Disposing of early pads: Spanish-language booklet & in an English booklet (1928)
Fastening & disposing of 1920s Kotex pads (instructions, 2 sheets)
Ad for Kotex dispensers, 1920s

© 2011 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
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