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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Stayfree menstrual panty pad ad, the Netherlands, 1972, in Eva magazine
In the early 1970s the American Stayfree and New
Freedom pads introduced the modern era in sanitary napkins. They no
longer required a belt or complicated underpants (or suspenders!!)
to hold a pad in place but used a sticky strip to fix it to the crotch of
panties.
This European ad for Stayfree contrasts the old belt, which zillions
of women hated, with the new sticky panty pad - in this case, a small pad
for light days, which the ad emphasizes along with the sticky strip. Look
how less bulky the new pad is, at right, compared to the old one. Women
had always complained about how big traditional pads were, as here
in the influential Gilbreth report to Johnson & Johnson (1927).
People would have never seen a woman wear a sanitary napkin belt in
an ad in America - perish the thought! - but they would have in Europe as
we see here (also here in a Swedish ad for panty
pads and here in another Dutch Stayfree panty pad
ad). In the past American ads and catalogs
offered belts by themselves, not worn.
Look at the flowers, which manufacturers often associate with menstruation,
almost as if they want to cover up an imaginary smell. "Flowers"
is an old term used for menses but probably stems from the French, meaning
flow. (See more words and phrases for menstruation.)
See a Dutch Stayfree panty pad ad from 1973.
A Dutchman kindly sent this scan.
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