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
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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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