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!
 
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The Kotex puberty & menstruation booklet
Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday, 1929
Next page (cover,
pages 4, 11, 12-13, 14-15)
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What language! I don't know of any child
- or any adult! - who would speak so formally and correctly, especially
to a parent. Among other things, this probably indicates the class of people
expected to read this booklet in the 1920s, upper-middle
class and above, because Kotex was not cheap
(see some advertisements later), and it elevates the tone of a "dirty"
topic, menstruation. There is also a kind of stage English once thought
appropriate for writing; perhaps this reflects that. Maybe also it's just
not written well!
By the way, you'll never read the word menstruation
in this booklet, nor in any Kotex ad from the 1920s. It
would be a valuable project for someone to find the first mention of this
word in advertising. (A
Kotex ad for the booklet "As One Girl To Another" uses
the word in 1942, the earliest mention I know of.)
Not that we have progressed so far today. I don't believe you'll hear
that word on television advertising in the U.S.A.
This copy of Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday is in the collection
of the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia, and is reproduced here with
the kind permission of the Curator of Health and Medicine at that museum.
© 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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