Kotex ad emphasizing shame,
1992
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
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Kotex menstrual pad ad, U.S.A., March 19, 1927
Detail
The blue of the Kotex box was famous
- read here
- and the many blank sides allowed the
woman to store it easily, not letting
anyone know what it was at a glance -
except those who knew Kotex blue.
"[I]nsecure 'sanitary pads' of
yesteryear" refers to washable pads,
usually homemade, common around the
world in the very early 20th century
and before and still used today in
America and elsewhere (India, for
example). Women would wash them,
sometimes after soaking overnight in a
bucket of water. An African-American
photographer for the Chicago Tribune
who visited the museum in my house in
the 1990s told me he saw washed "rags"
hanging on clotheslines in black
sections of Chicago in the 1950s. And
Kotex was not cheap in the 1920s; the
women in the illustration seem to be
from "the better walks of life" Ms.
Buckland mentions.
"[P]ersonal service cabinets in
rest-rooms" (lower left corner) refers
to the Kotex
vending machine; see a pad from
these machines dating from the 1930s.
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See the entire ad, small drawings, and
the main illustration.
Kotex ad emphasizing shame,
1992
See ads
for menarche-education booklets: Marjorie
May's Twelfth Birthday (Kotex,
1933), Tampax
tampons (1970, with Susan Dey), Personal Products
(1955, with Carol Lynley), and German
o.b. tampons
(lower ad, 1981)
See also the booklets
How shall I
tell my daughter? (Modess,
various dates), Growing
up and liking it (Modess,
various dates), and Marjorie May's
Twelfth Birthday (Kotex, 1928).
And read Lynn Peril's series
about these and similar booklets!
See another ad
for As One Girl to Another (1942), and
the booklet
itself.
© 2004 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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