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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