And, of course, the first Tampax AND - special
for you! - the American fax tampon,
from the early 1930s, which also came in bags.
See a Modess True or
False? ad in The American Girl magazine,
January 1947, and actress Carol
Lynley in "How Shall I Tell My Daughter"
booklet ad (1955) - Modess
. . . . because ads (many dates).
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An immigrant
shows tampons to Americans
The Reno
Evening Gazette, October 10,
1935,
and
The Oakland
[Cal.] Tribune, June 10, 1934
advertised Wix menstrual tampons
Wix and its contemporary Tampax
tampons sent representatives to talk
with women about trying their tampons.
Tampons were new,
menstrual cups
hardly known and women had belted up with
huge pads
- or homemade
pads, or nothing
- for who knows how long.
Two newspaper ads, below, alert
women to the arrival of Wix ladies.
They might have shown this card to
explain what in the world tampons were
and that they were easy to insert and
would not get lost.
The generous and energetic genealogy
researcher who sent these scans traced
Goldie Erickson,
the Wix "graduate nurse" in the first
ad, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, using
the 1930 census. Mrs. Erickson was at
the time of the ad 37 years old, had emigrated from
Norway in 1916, was married
(at least in 1930, with two sons aged
nine and six), spoke English (good!),
was in 1930 not naturalized and at
that time had no occupation (housewife
was not a choice, I guess; her
immigrant husband worked in a foundry
as a "moulder"). So she traveled to
Reno, Nevada, quite a way, to tell
women the good news about a tampon.
Was she still married? And she hadn't
traveled far to get her Wix education:
the company had its headquarters in
the very city she lived in,
Minneapolis.
As for the bottom
ad, the year before, I wonder
if Mrs. Erickson was the "woman
thoroughly versed in feminine hygiene"
who visited Kahn's, Notion Department,
First Floor.
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Above:
Read about Goldie
Erickson, an immigrant from
Norway, at the top of this page.
Below:
Was the "woman thoroughly versed in
feminine hygiene" also Mrs. Erickson?
She might have used this card to
instruct potential customers. Tampax
also had customer advisors, and a
booth at the 1939 World's Fair. Other
tampons also featured women in bathing
suits, like fax,
pads not being suited to them.
(Newspaper ad from the Oakland [Cal.]
Tribune, Sunday, June 10, 1934, bottom
right of page 28[?])
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© 2006 Harry Finley. It is
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