Dutch booklet for menarcheal girls - Early Dutch
Tampax ads - Early Dutch
booklet for Camelia pads - Dutch exhibit about menstruation, 1982
(article) - Dutch Nefa menstrual pad ads, 1938, 1967 - early
brochure for the
German Amira (1950s)
German and
French menstrual
ads using nudity.
 
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MUSEUM OF MENSTRUATION AND WOMEN'S HEALTH
Ad for Amira menstrual tampon (the
Netherlands, August 1979 in the magazine "Mensen" [People])
Imagine an American company showing this ad in
an American magazine. You can't, can you!?
The Dutchman who contributed the scans of this
ad wrote,
Nice to see your recent updates and especial
your mentioning the difference between the U.S. and Europe in advertising.
Your Polivia ad but also the Swedish and Finnish
ads reminds me of a series of single and double-page ads of Amira tampons [in the Netherlands.].
[See also German and French
menstrual ads using nudity.]
The brand was of the well-known company Mølnlycke but is nowadays
non-existent in my country.
The name Amira means princess, see e.g. http://www.thinkbabynames.com/meaning/0/Amira:
"The girl's name Amira \a-mi-ra\ is pronounced ah-MEER-ah. It is of
Arabic and Hebrew origin, and its meaning is "princess; treetop, proverb,
or sheaf of corn. Feminine form of Amir." In the seventies in the
Netherlands I had never heard of this name (except as the brand-name) but
nowadays sometimes you read the name when a girl or a horse is called Amira.
[Maybe even more so because of the large Muslim population of the Netherlands.]
The double-page ad I send you [below] shows a
nude woman from the side. The ad shows the reader how to position the tampon,
including her finger position. So in this ad the position of the woman
is more to the point than in the Polivia ad, I think.
The ad is one of a series of three but they have
all the same layout, the same sort of photos and the same sort of copy
as the one I'm sending you.
This particular ad appeared August 1979 in magazine
"Mensen" [People]. The magazine was not exactly a women's magazine
as [the American] Cosmopolitan but more psychology-oriented. But other
ads of the series were publicized in the Dutch weekly women magazines Libelle
and Margriet.
The title: A tampon sits invisible within your.
That's why you ask yourself: will it do no harm?
The body (no pun intended) text is quite large:
in the seventies many Dutch women had to be assured or to be reassured
that tampons are normal, healthy, etc. [just as in this German ad from 1989]. The same
companies had just made their sanitary napkins more comfortable, etc. (beltless, and the first ultra
thins came on market), so the competition between napkins and tampons was
on.
Toxic shock syndrome was no issue in 1979 (only
P&G was aware internally that problems were ahead I think at that moment),
but the fear of foreign objects in a woman's body is, I think, a constant
problem. [Actually, a supermarket tabloid wrote about other serious problems with Rely in 1975-76,
way before the toxic shock outbreak.]
So the ad mentions it but says it is complete
healthy, see e.g. the first column, page 2, second half: little pieces
are no problem, they go with the flow out of you; the chance of irritation
is lower than with napkins. That is exactly the same argument as in the
Tampax report of
1945!!
But the test on the right-hand page is the same as in many other ads
of that time or nowadays: the blue liquid
did not resemble red blood!
I will try to find time to translate the ad shortly.
I thank again the kind Dutchman who sent these
scans as well as many other items!
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Below: The entire ad runs across two pages;
the enlarged left-hand side is below this image.
The enlarged right-hand page is here.
Large words: "A tampon sits invisible within
you. That's why you ask yourself: will it do no harm?"
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Below: The two photos at top, enlarged.
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NEXT: Facing page of
the ad - Early brochure
for the German Amira (1950s) - Dutch booklet for menarcheal girls - Early Dutch
Tampax ads - Early Dutch
booklet for Camelia pads - Dutch exhibit about menstruation, 1982
(article) - Dutch Nefa menstrual pad ads, 1938, 1967 - The
tampon page - German and French menstrual ads using nudity.
© 2008 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute any
of the work on
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