Read a Personal Products booklet for older girls from about this time,
The Periodic Cycle (1938). See similar
booklets on this site.
Booklets menstrual hygiene companies made
for girls, women and teachers - patent medicine
- a list of books and articles about menstruation
- videos
See a Kotex ad advertising a Marjorie May
booklet.
See many more similar booklets.
See ads for menarche-education booklets:
Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday (Kotex, 1932),
Tampax tampons (1970, with Susan Dey), Personal
Products (1955, with Carol Lynley), and German o.b.
tampons (lower ad, 1981)
And read Lynn Peril's series about these
and similar booklets!
Read the full text of the 1935 Canadian edition
of Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday, probably identical to the American edition.
More ads for teens (see also introductory
page for teenage advertising): Are you in the know? (Kotex napkins and Quest napkin powder, 1948, U.S.A.),
Are you in the know? (Kotex
napkins and belts, 1949, U.S.A.)Are you in
the know? (Kotex napkins, 1953, U.S.A.),
Are you in the know? (Kotex
napkins and belts, 1964, U.S.A.), Freedom
(1990, Germany), Kotex (1992, U.S.A.), Pursettes (1974, U.S.A.), Pursettes (1974, U.S.A.), Saba (1975, Denmark)
See early tampons and a list of tampon on this site - at least the ones I've cataloged.
 
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Tampax menstrual tampon ad, 14 October 1938, France
Marie Claire magazine
Just a few years after Tampax started advertising its tampons in the
America (see an ad from 1936), where its two-tube
model originated (history), French women
could read this one in the French women's magazine Marie Claire, still a
popular publication.
The irony is that these women were about to lose the freedom they claim
in the headline to the invading Germans. As in the Netherlands (1938 ad), I suspect that Tampax stopped its sales until
peace broke out, in 1945.
Ten years before this ad appeared the first photograph of a woman in a menstrual hygiene ad - but she wasn't smiling
- promoted Kotex in the U.S.A. Interestingly enough, she immediately shipped
off to France to escape the fuss she had created.
I have stories somewhere in the museum archives about shortages of menstrual
pads in Germany and the emergence of "menstrual leave"in Japan,
where women were excused from work when menstruating because of the war
shortages. My Japanese source told me labor representatives negotiated this
with many industries and it is still adhered to in a few companies. (See
how to make modern versions of traditional Japanese pads - the pony.)
The same woman, a student recently at an American university, had to
ask friends in Japan to send her pads because the American ones were too
big, reminding me of the Japanese pop singer Tsuji Ayano who plays the ukelele
(and like a guitar) because her tiny hands cannot grasp a guitar.
A Dutchman - the generous contributor of many other
items - kindly sent this scan.
See a very early Tampax ad (1936) - a very
early Tampax box and contents - more early commercial tampons
© 1999 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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