New this week: German o.b. tampon ads showing nudity (1978 and 1981) - Modess, because . . . ad (1964) - Menstrual humor - DIRECTORY OF ALL TOPICS - newest news


Call Your Congressman About the Proposed Tampon Safety and Research Act! Here's How and Why.


Click to Ask Questions About Menstruation in English and German!

A German woman at the University of Berlin mailed:

Hi,

I set up a personal homepage concerning menstruation. It is still under construction and I also set a link to your great page. Maybe you could set one too. I would really be proud.

http://members.aol.com/juliahome1/welcome.html


Ask Your Oldest Relatives What They Used For Menstruation!

An American e-mailer asked me who used what for menstrual protection in the 1920s and 1930s. In her reply to my response, she wrote:

Thank you so much for the information.

I spoke to my mother yesterday. She is 86 years old. She began her first menstrual period in 1925, and she, her mother and her sister all used rags pinned to their underwear with safety pins. The rags were from old bed sheets or scraps left over from sewing. They washed out the rags after they were saturated.

[Advertising in magazines for Kotex, the first widely successful disposable pad in the U.S.A., began in 1921, but the pad was expensive, and the advertising was meant for upper-middle class whites; I wonder when the first non-Caucasian appeared in an American menstrual hygiene ad?

[I'd bet the majority of American women used rags until the 1940s. American commercial tampons appeared in the early 1930s - Tampax in 1936 - but didn't really catch on until after World War II.The American Leona Chalmers patented the menstrual cup in 1937, but it and its descendants have never been widely used. The most recent one, Instead, just failed financially.]

I asked my mother how she purchased sanitary pads when they became available. She said that they were available in the drug store. There were no special dispensing machines, you just bought them off the shelf. My mother was raised in [a large American city], which was very cosmopolitan. My mother lived on skid row where she and her mother ran a rooming house. They were not dependent on Sears catalogues for merchandise.

Good luck with your project and I greatly appreciate your answer to my question.

Both women's history and the history of everyday life are underreported; very little is known, for example, of menstrual culture before the 19th century.

If you can muster up the courage, why not ask older relatives what they knew about menstruation when they were young? And why not ask men, too? That'll be tough!


Get Menopause Information on Public Broadcasting

Dan Horowitz asked me to tell you to click on http://www.pbs.org/healthweek/menopause.htm because

Beginning June 19th, a HealthWeek special focusing on menopause will air nationally for one week. The program objectively explores the range of options (both traditional and alternative) that are available to women for managing.menopause. It features Dr.Susan Love, author of the best-selling Dr. Susan Love's Hormone Book [she spoke at the last conference of The Society for Menstrual Cycle Research] and Dr. Marianne Legato, Director of the Partnership for Women's Health at Columbia University. It also details the personal stories of five women.

Healthweek is a weekly PBS consumer health magazine.


And menopause is the topic of a lecture and discussion in Baltimore, Maryland (U.S.A.), on Friday, 26 June 1998. Read more!


Do You Have Irregular Menses?

If so, you may have polycystic ovary syndrome.

Jane Newman, Clinical Research Coordinator at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard University School of Medicine, asked me to tell you that

Irregular menses identify women at high risk for polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which exists in 6-10% of women of reproductive age. PCOS is a major cause of infertility and is linked to diabetes.

Learn more about current research on PCOS at Brigham and Women's Hospital, the University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania State University - or contact Jane Newman..

If you have fewer than six periods a year, you may be eligible to participate in the study!

See more medical and scientific information about menstruation.


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New this week: German o.b. tampon ads showing nudity (1978 and 1981) - Modess, because . . . ad (1964) - Menstrual humor - DIRECTORY OF ALL TOPICS

 

Take a short tour of MUM! (and on Web video!) - FAQ - Future of this museum - Tampon Safety Act - Visit or contact the actual museum - Board of Directors - Norwegian menstruation exhibit - The media and the MUM - Menstrual odor - Prof. Mack C. Padd: Fat Cat - The science and medicine of menstruation - Early tampons - Books about menstruation - Menstrual cups: history, comments - A Note from Germany/Neues aus Deutschland und Europa - Letters - Links

© 1998 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