See Japanese instructions for making menstrual belts and pads at home in the early 20th century.
More belt topics
Actual belts in the museum
See how women wore a belt (and in a Swedish ad) - many actual 20th-century belts - a modern belt for a washable pad and a page from the 1946-47 Sears catalog showing a great variety - ad for Hickory belts, 1920s? - Modess belts in Personal Digest (1966) - drawing for a proposed German belt and pad, 1894
See Japanese instructions for making menstrual belts and pads at home in the early 20th century.
What did American and European women use in the past for menstruation?
See a prototype of the first Kotex ad.
See more Kotex items: Ad 1928 (Sears and Roebuck catalog) - Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday (booklet for girls, 1928, Australian edition; there are many links here to Kotex items) - 1920s booklet in Spanish showing disposal method - box from about 1969 - Preparing for Womanhood (1920s, booklet for girls) - "Are you in the know?" ads (Kotex) (1949)(1953)(1964)(booklet, 1956) - See more ads on the Ads for Teenagers main page
Ads for the Kotex stick tampon (U.S.A., 1970s) - a Japanese stick tampon from the 1970s.
Early commercial tampons - Rely tampon - Meds tampon (Modess)
CONTRIBUTE to Humor, Words and expressions about menstruation and Would you stop menstruating if you could?
Some MUM site links:
homepageMUM address & What does MUM mean? | e-mail the museum | privacy on this site | who runs this museum?? |
Amazing women! | the art of menstruation | artists (non-menstrual) | asbestos | belts | bidets | founder bio | Bly, Nellie | MUM board | books: menstruation and menopause (and reviews) | cats | company booklets for girls (mostly) directory | contraception and religion | costumes | menstrual cups | cup usage | dispensers | douches, pain, sprays | essay directory | extraction | facts-of-life booklets for girls | famous women in menstrual hygiene ads | FAQ | founder/director biography | gynecological topics by Dr. Soucasaux | humor | huts | links | masturbation | media coverage of MUM | menarche booklets for girls and parents | miscellaneous | museum future | Norwegian menstruation exhibit | odor | olor | pad directory | patent medicine | poetry directory | products, current | puberty booklets for girls and parents | religion | Religión y menstruación | your remedies for menstrual discomfort | menstrual products safety | science | Seguridad de productos para la menstruación | shame | slapping, menstrual | sponges | synchrony | tampon directory | early tampons | teen ads directory | tour of the former museum (video) | underpants & panties directory | videos, films directory | Words and expressions about menstruation | Would you stop menstruating if you could? | What did women do about menstruation in the past? | washable pads
Leer la versión en español de los siguientes temas: Anticoncepción y religión, Breve reseña - Olor - Religión y menstruación - Seguridad de productos para la menstruación.

Ad for Hickory belt for menstrual pads, 1925, U.S.A.
Some details

Read the opening discussion.

Harry Finley annotated the illustrations.

Follow the letters on the reduced size ads, below left, to the corresponding drawings at right.


 
A. Not all women lived glamourous lives in menstrual hygiene ads; some just wore glamourous clothes filing papers.

 

 
B. At right: an almost identical situation shows that she too could type and wear a menstrual belt - 26 years later.

 

From the package for Formont, the "Invisible Sanitary Belt and Protector," 1951
C. The arrow shows the safety pins, subject of much chest puffing from Tampax and other tampons (like here from 1938 and 1953).
Below: what a later (1970s) belt looked like, from a Dutch ad. A clasp probably held the ends of the napkin, not pins.
D. Safety pins on the Hickory held the menstrual pad at either end; the next surface under the pad was the loose crotch of the woman's underpants (here), which did not firmly support the pad at all points if at any (tight-fitting panties apparently didn't appear until the next decade). And what worried many women was that the next surface was the chair seat, sofa cushion - or floor.

Decades later, the silk "carrier," below, of the Formont (1951) supported and gripped the pad, although a belt still wrapped around the women's waist. Beltless pads wouldn't appear for almost another 20 years.

E. Oh, NO! Just one more thing to worry about, below.
 
 

END. See another Hickory belt ad and Japanese instructions for making menstrual belts and pads at home in the early 20th century.
Actual belts in the museum

© 2006 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute work on this Web site in any manner or medium without written permission of the author. Please report suspected violations to hfinley@mum.org