American Meds tampon and ad, 1967 - American
Meds ad, 1941
And read Lynn Peril's series about these
and similar booklets!
See more Kotex items: First ad
(1921) - ad 1928 (Sears and Roebuck catalog)
- Lee Miller ads (first real person in amenstrual
hygiene ad, 1928) - Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday
(booklet for girls, 1928, Australian edition; there are many links here
to Kotex items) - Preparing for Womanhood (1920s,
booklet for girls; Australian edition) - 1920s booklet in Spanish showing
disposal method - box
from about 1969 - "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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Brilliant packaging for Camelia menstrual pads, in Germany
Mainstream companies that make menstrual products usually avoid red like the plague!
Would you like to see brown on your toilet
paper wrapper?
Dr. Lillian Gilbreth noted as early as 1927 the frequent use of blue
on pad boxes [read much of her fascinating report
for Johnson & Johnson], maybe leading the woman's thoughts to the sky above rather than to blood below.
Recently, though, some manufacturers have been coming to terms with
menstruation, as we see with this Camelia package, below. Actually, the
first Kotex ad campaign, in the early 1920s in America, plastered the Kotex
name on boxcars (here) and trucks as well
as store windows (here), but this boldness disappeared
during the 1920s only to revive with smaller companies in the 1970s and
beyond. Some people were tired of covering up the obvious and encouraging
women's shame.
Austrian high-school student Elvira, from Vienna, who sent me the pictures
(read part of her e-mail, below) wrote that the red flower looks like a
menstrual-blood stain - bold indeed for a major
company that wants to banish that thought at any cost! (See Elvira's menstrual
art here, created after her doctor told her she
had a double uterus, a condition more common than you think.)
Camelia created the first really successful disposable pad in Germany
just after Kotex did in America, although both countries had much earlier
predecessors (Hartmann's in Germany, and Lister's
Towels, from Johnson & Johnson, in America, both from the 1890s).
Germans call the camellia Kamelie, so the company name is a hybrid -
assuming they intended it to mean the flower. That seems obvious.
Manufacturers have long used flowers with menstrual products. "Flowers"
itself is an ancient English term for menstruation, although it means "flowing,"
not the beauties in your garden; read a discussion
about this. But one male writer likens the menstrual odor to marigolds,
and I think the botanical flowers help women feel good things when she muses
about that time of the month - flowers are "feminine," but a dainty
femininity, not like menstruation! It's the opposite of what people usually
think it. Menstrual cups are themselves tulip shaped, and an early seller
exploited that (see here) rather than show the
cup itself.
Look how far the company has come since this early Camelia ad from the 1920s, with Nurse Thekla wagging
her finger at you! Women found a slip of paper in the box that they could
give to a female clerk instead of speaking to her; the slip asked the clerk
to sell her a box of Camelia! And Modess pads used the gimmick at the same
time in America with its "silent purchase" coupon (see it here), women clipping the coupon out of a magazine
ad.
Customers often see New - here, NEU - on menstrual product packaging
and I wonder if it relates to the inability of pads and tampons to satisfy
many women, since periods are often unpredictable. Dissatisfied, she sees
an allegedly new pad in the supermarket: "Maybe this new one will work,"
she says to herself, and buys it.
Hm, the company stole the red dot from the American Kotex magazine campaign!
But not if Kotex owns Camelia, which it does! So two early menstrual pad
companies are now one, as is their advertising. Women in Germany also use
period (Periode) to refer to periods, but say Punkt to mean the dot at the
end of a sentence (look at the bottom picture on this page). I don't know
if that part of the campaign translates.
Thank you, Elvira, for sending the pictures
and your comments! Here's part of her e-mail (my translation follows):
Lieber Harry,
Ich war sehr überrascht als ich die Farbe ROT in dem Regal mit
Damenhygiene auffand, vor allem in so einer Kombination mit weiß,
da die Blume eindeutig wie ein "Fleck" wirkt, wie Sie auf dem
Bild erkennen können.
Auch die verpackung der Binde selber und der "Streifen" auf
der Rückseite der Binde weist rote Konturen von Alltagsgegenständen
auf (z.B. Lippenstift, Handtasche e.t.c.) , welche auch wie rot gefärbte
Flecken wirken. Ich habe einige Bilder von diesem Produkt gemacht denn
ich fand die Verpackung wirklich einzigartig wenn man sie mit anderen Damenhygieneprodukten
vergleicht welche meist türkis oder blau verpackt sind (z.b. "Always").
Dear Harry,
I was very surprised to find the color RED on the [store's] shelf of
feminine hygiene products, and above all in combination with white, because
the flower unequivocally acts as a "stain," as you can see in
the picture.
The packaging of the pad itself and the strips on the back of the pad
have red outlines of everyday things (lipstick, hand bag, etc., that also
appear to be red stains. I've made some pictures of the product because
I found packaging truly unique when compared with other feminine hygiene
products, which mostly have turquoise or blue packaging (for example, Always).
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Lower picture: At lower left you see in
German, above the blood-drop leaves, "He loves, he loves me not - aw,
so what!"
The drop-leaves repeat on the indications of pad absorbency, the red
and hollow drops, at upper right and in the top photo.
"Camelia passt zu mir, Punkt," at bottom right, means "Camelia
fits me, period." But Punkt doesn't convey the message Periode would
- but that's impossible in German.
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© 2003 Harry Finley. It is
illegal to reproduce or distribute any of the work on this Web site in any
manner or medium without written permission of the author. Please report
suspected violations to hfinley@mum.org
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