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The Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health
vams menstrual tampon
(1948, U.S.A.)
Like an early American tampon, fax,
vams seems to have been written lower case.
Why vams? The closest word to it I could
think of was vamp but the seduction implied
by that word seems out of place. But there is this
possibility. And this: could it have been slang from this era?
Dixie Belle suggests the American South,
appropriate since this is a cotton product; King Cotton traveled the world
before the Civil War and made southern planters rich. I find it interesting
that both words come ultimately from French and maybe therefore from New
Orleans. But the maker of this tampon operated in New York.
The tampon might have avoided conflict with Tampax's patented cardboard
applicator by making the inner
tube much smaller. Many early American tampons
avoided that legal problem by forgetting about an applicator and required
the user to apply her fingers, a solution probably
more agreeable in Europe than in American or Japan,
which had gone to great lengths to shield fingers
from the menstruating vagina.
Procter & Gamble kindly donated the unopened
box.
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Below: The cardboard box measures 5 3/8
x 3 3/8 x 1 3/8" (13.8 x 8.5 x 3.5 cm).
Strange that the number of tampons is not indicated
on the front, only on the ends. But at least
it's
there; some early American tampons gave no number at all!
The opposite sides are identical.
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Below: The long sides.
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Below: The ends.
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