See also How shall I tell my daughter? and Personal Digest and read the whole booklet As One Girl to Another (Kotex, 1940). Read most of the 1928 Kotex booklet Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday (Australian edition) and the entire 1935 Canadian edition.
HOMEPAGE
CONTRIBUTE to Humor, Words and expressions about menstruation and Would you stop menstruating if you could?
Some MUM site links:
HOMEPAGE |
MUM address & What does MUM mean? |
Email the museum |
Privacy on this site |
Who runs this museum?? |
Amazing women! |
Art of menstruation (and awesome ancient art of menstruation) |
Artists (non-menstrual) |
Asbestos |
Belts |
Bidets |
Birth control and religion |
Birth control drugs, old |
Birth control douche & sponges |
Founder bio |
Bly, Nellie |
MUM board |
Books: menstruation & menopause (& reviews) |
Cats |
Company booklets for girls (mostly) directory |
Contraception and religion |
Contraceptive drugs, old |
Contraceptive douche & sponges |
Costumes |
Menstrual cups |
Cup usage |
Dispensers |
Douches, pain, sprays |
Essay directory |
Examination, gynecological (pelvic) (short history) |
Extraction |
Facts-of-life booklets for girls |
Famous women in menstrual hygiene ads |
FAQ |
Feminine napkin, towel, pad directory |
Founder/director biography |
Gynecological topics by Dr. Soucasaux |
Humor |
Huts |
Links |
Masturbation |
Media coverage of MUM |
Menarche booklets for girls and parents |
Miscellaneous |
Museum future |
Norwegian menstruation exhibit |
Odor |
Olor |
Pad, towel, napkin directory |
Patent medicine |
Poetry directory |
Products, some current |
Puberty booklets for girls and parents|
Religion |
Religión y menstruación |
Your remedies for menstrual discomfort |
Menstrual products safety |
Sanitary napkin, towel, pad directory |
Seguridad de productos para la menstruación |
Science |
Shame |
Slapping, menstrual |
Sponges |
Synchrony |
Tampon directory |
Early tampons |
Teen ads directory |
Tour of the former museum (video) |
Towel, pad, sanitary napkin directory |
Underpants & panties directory |
Videos, films directory |
Words and expressions about menstruation |
Would you stop menstruating if you could? |
What did women do about menstruation in the past? |
Washable pads |
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.

Growing Up and Liking It and Other Menarche Booklets (Modess)
Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health

Several manufacturers of products for menstrual hygiene made, and make, educational booklets for preadolescent and adolescent girls.

(But at least one company, Personal Products, maker of o.b. tampons, and Stayfree, Modess and Carefree menstrual pads, has stopped producing booklets - see below - and has gone to the Web for this information.)

The booklets discuss not only menstruation (and offered their own products as the hygienic solution), but also puberty, the girls' developing bodies, boys, and general questions about growing up. Schools often handed these items out to girls, and companies sometimes sold or gave away "starter kits" of their products (here's one for teachers from the early 1950s). As the tobacco companies know, girls and boys will often stay with the product they start with.

Personal Products Company, (but see note above), which makes Modess menstrual pads and tampons (pronounce Mo as mow, as in "mow the lawn," not as in modest; and put the emphasis on "Mo") and Stayfree menstruation napkins (of gymnast Cathy Rigby fame), made the booklets below.

Tambrands, the former maker of the Tampax tampon, generously donated many of these to MUM as part of a huge gift of material relating to menstrual hygiene dating back to the early 1930s, including 20 booklets of this kind. It's a fantastic gift!
And read Lynn Peril's series about these and similar booklets!
The national traveling exhibit The Changing Face of Women's Health (1999-2001) - the biggest about women's health ever - borrowed several of these booklets from MUM to include digital copies of them in the exhibit.

The relative sizes of the books are incorrect.

 

1944 Read the complete booklet.

 

1949 Read the complete booklet.

 

1951

 

1956 Read the complete booklet.
(left and above) Personal Products also created these booklets, but I do not know if they are part of a series.

 

1956

 

1957 Read the complete booklet.

 

1963 Read the complete booklet.

1964  Read the complete booklet.

 

1970 Read the complete booklet.

 

1972 Read the complete booklet.

1976 Read the complete booklet  

 

1978 Read the complete booklet

1991 Read the complete booklet.

I find the title too aggressive. It's as if it means "like it, or else!" Hm, point well taken!
Read Lynn Peril's series about these and similar booklets! See a teaching kit for teachers (early 1950s).

© 1998 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