Marjorie May, three booklets, 1935 main page
See a Kotex ad advertising this booklet.
See Kotex items: First ad (1921;
scroll to bottom of page) - ad 1928 (Sears and Roebuck
catalog) - Lee Miller ads (first real person
in a menstrual 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
DIRECTORY of all topics (See also the
SEARCH ENGINE, bottom
of page.)
 
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This one-page excerpt from the 1969 version of the Personal Products
Company booklet How Shall I Tell My Daughter? shows part of what mothers,
if they could bring themselves to do it, were expected to tell their daughters
about menstruation, menstrual pads, tampons and puberty. Read
the complete booklet.
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The reason I show this page is that two
years ago, in 1995, a visitor to this museum, a physician's wife in her
sixties, sat frozen next to some mannequins wearing "sanitary panties."
She had brought her enthusiastic niece to MUM, who was videotaping it for
a college project while we talked.
Steadfastly avoiding the mannequins, the girl's aunt explained that
she had to wear those kind of underpants when she was a girl, and hated
them. She also said that the subject of menstruation,
and indeed the very word, was never mentioned by either her or her internist
husband to each other during their long marriage.
As for the red dot I added above to point
out the sentence next to it: It seems likely that at least a few daughters
would not be delighted to learn about special
panties, or belts, or any other thing about menstruation. See the panties and napkin belts that
Modess offered at about this time.
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© 2007 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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