Compare the "Silent
Purchase" Modess ad (June 1928), the
American "Modess . . . .
because" ads, a Modess ad from 1931, the French Modess, and
the German "Freedom"
(Kimberly-Clark) for teens.
See a prototype of
the first Kotex ad.
See more Kotex items: 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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The Museum of Menstruation and Women's
Health
Modess menstrual pad ad, U.S.A.
November, 1928
Good Housekeeping magazine
Want to reconsider an ad that I
posted years ago? No? Well,
let's do it anyway.
Was it a mistake to feature a woman
in a fur coat in Good Housekeeping
magazine? How many readers could
identify with her? The word "housekeeping"
does not evoke cheering on the team
(or horse?) wearing a calf-length
expensive dead animal.
But "the average American
in the 1920s became more enamored of
wealth and everyday luxuries," as
Wiki puts
it. America was about
to trip into the Great Depression -
about to but not
yet.
So the middle-class (or less)
woman could dream of wearing a fur
coat to a football game, binoculars
in hand. Or a gown
to a ball. (Later, Modess did
not give up on balls even as
it could not mention the
unmentionable.)
As you know - don't
you? - competitor Kotex also created
ads showing that the wealthy
needed the humble menstrual
pad. Menstruation levels
women.
Modess appeared about 1926 (see some
ads from about a year
later), in America, and for a
long time was the main competitor of
Kotex. Eventually it was reduced to a
"hospital" pad (not sold everywhere),
one aimed at women, often right after
having a child, who often wear a belt and pad,
an outmoded technique now in most
situations although recently small
companies have made washable
pads with belts.
Modess's maker Johnson & Johnson
introduced an early American
disposable pad, in 1896,
Lister's Towels. European
commercial disposables
appeared about this time. Curads
and Kotex
advertised their disposables about 20
years later.
See Kotex
ads from the same year.
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Below:
The ad measures about 8 1/4 x 11 1/4"
(about 21 x 28.6 cm).
Dirt covers "try" in the subhead
and the middle of the text.
Glaring through binoculars, is she cheering
on her husband's
mistress as she whacks him on
the head? Money brings
responsibilities.
See
what the company might have sent a woman
asking
for the free Modess mentioned in
the ad. Note the same red
cross on black and the words "so
infinitely finer." Was it sticking
its tongue out at Kotex, which also used a
cross,
maybe
because of its origin as a bandage
in World War I?
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Below:
What are those green things?
Leaping porpoises as brooches? I
ask that as a male unschooled in
women's get-up.
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Below:
Was the artist unhappy with the
first try so she (more likely he)
tried again? I searched for a
candidate but couldn't find the
ad's painter.
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See a Modess ad from 1931, the French Modess, and
the German "Freedom"
(Kimberly-Clark) for teens.
© 1998, 2015 Harry Finley. It is illegal to
reproduce or distribute 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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