The style of the booklet is similar to the 1940 Kotex As One Girl to Another.
Read most of a 1928 Australian edition of Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday. Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday (1935) - Facts About Menstruation that every Woman should know (1936) - Marjorie May, introductory page, 1935 main page
Read Lynn Peril's series about these and similar booklets! And see the covers of the booklets How shall I tell my daughter?, Growing up and liking it, and Personal Digest; read the whole booklet As One Girl to Another (Kotex, 1940).
Marjorie May, three booklets, 1935 main page
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Read 10 years (1996-2006) of articles and Letters to Your MUM on this site.
Leer la versión en español de los siguientes temas: Anticoncepción y religión, Breve reseña - Olor - Religión y menstruación - Seguridad de productos para la menstruación.

That day is here again . . . ,World War II menstruation booklet from
Kotex sanitary napkins, 1944, U.S.A.

World War II transformed America, pulling it out of the Depression, sending record numbers of people to college afterwards, and making women more part of the world outside the home.

Unlike the Iraq war, that war forced Americans to conserve everything from food to steel.

And women filled many jobs that had been left by the soldiers fighting overseas.

"That day is here again . . ." brilliantly shows many of these changes spiraling around rock-steady menstruation, a given in women's lives. That day, of course, is the menstrual period (see more such expressions).

The booklet's illustrator appears to be one of the those for the "Are you in the know?" ads Kotex made then and for years afterwards. The snappy text reflects the ads that give amusing insight into the era's slang. The chisel-point writing enhances the informality. But the concerns addressed are those of women today even though the solutions can be different. (See more Kotex war-theme ads: 1943, 1944 and here.)

One of the booklet's predecessors, As One Girl to Another (1940), probably pioneered the casual, upbeat tone characteristic of the ads, replacing the stiff Margaret May series of booklets for girls.

After the war Walt Disney made a film, The Story of Menstruation, for schools, maybe the first of its kind.

You see only white people here, a phenomenon lasting till almost today in America (this booklet was possibly one of the first with nonwhites). Part of the reason may have been money; blacks in general earned less than whites, and probably were more likely to use washable rags than the fairly expensive Kotex. This was towards the end of the Depression.

I thank the Dutch contributor of many items to this site for these scans and his comments!


Below: Back (at left) and front covers. Each page measures 13.6 x 19.5 centimeters (about 5 3/8 x 7 3/4").
Note the ONE staple holding the booklet together. The Dutch contributor suggests, I'm sure correctly, that this was to save metal that could be used more directly for the war. The Kotex booklet from 1940, before America entered the war, had two staples.
At right, EVERY MINUTE COUNTS happens to be the name of a film from the year of this booklet. "This film was produced to heighten productivity in civilian home front industries during World War II. Aimed at employers and workers alike, it shows problems faced by some workers (especially working women) in balancing home and family duties against the necessity to report to work on time and work regular hours," writes Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/details/EveryMin1944), where you can see it.
The contrast is huge between the extraordinary public effort (encouraged by the government) in World War II and what is required of the average American today with the war in Iraq: zero.
Below: Inside front cover and facing page.
Readers today might be amazed at the language and appeal to patriotism as well as the push to do a good job in replacing the absent men and women at war. Especially the men, "Johnny Doughboy," which sounds like a World War I expression. This war, World War II, created the conditions for women to massively enter the work force in America by replacing the missing men. It also helped sell tampons, which were less cumbersome than pads. Kotex made both - see here - but the victor was probably Tampax, the most famous tampon even today.

Next pages | covers & inside front cover pp. 1-4 5-8 9-12 13-16 17-20 21-24
1940 Kotex As One Girl to Another - Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday (1935) - Facts About Menstruation that every Woman should know (1936) - Marjorie May, introductory page, 1935 main page
 
Copyright 2007 Harry Finley