See Pad-n-all, a similar pad with belt from about the same time.
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Menstrual napkin belts and pads from the 1902 and 1908 Sears, Roebuck catalogs (U.S.A.)
Actual belts in the museum Underpants (directory of all on this site):
CONTRIBUTE to Humor, Words and expressions about menstruation and Would you stop menstruating if you could?
Some MUM site links:
HOMEPAGE |
MUM address & What does MUM mean? |
Email the museum |
Privacy on this site |
Who runs this museum?? |
Amazing women! |
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 |
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Norwegian menstruation exhibit |
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Olor |
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Patent medicine |
Poetry directory |
Products, some current |
Puberty booklets for girls and parents |
Religion |
Religión y menstruación |
Your remedies for menstrual discomfort |
Menstrual products safety |
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Science |
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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.

Delicate, a menstrual pad with belt in a tube, U.S.A., after 1943

I don't have to tell you that women must carry menstrual supplies with them, something hard to do before tampons appeared in the early 1930s (see a very early Tampax). But in the 1940s (or before) a company invented a tampon-size sanitary napkin with belt enclosed in an innocuous-looking tube - the child or purse snatcher or boyfriend might think it's lipstick - just the ticket to conceal that time of the month, a constant effort in American and many other cultures. (But some cultures advertise menstruation by segregating women, parts of India, for example.)

I sure hope the victims, er, users, of this product tried it out before using it outside the house. I can hear the curses now as she struggles to unfurl the darned thing - well, see the next page for details. (I was not able to get a British pad out of a tube!) And older pads (here) dwarf this one, making me wonder if it did the job.

Look at the word Delicate on the front of the box; see the enlarged version at the top of this page in the title head for a better view. The letters have a greenish area in the upper part of the yellow. This is probably caused by a misalignment of the printing plates, common in run-of-the-mill printing jobs.

See a British pad in a tube, Lilia (1930s?) and ads for earlier American pads in tubes in a Tourist Set, a package of menstrual supplies for the traveling woman.

The Procter & Gamble Company kindly donated Delicate to MUM as part of a gift of scores of old menstrual products from its archives.
Harry Finley created the images.

 

 

The box measures 2 7/8" x 2 7/8" x 7/8" (about 7.3 x 7.3 x 2.2 cm)
 

 

Left: The paper came loose in the box, unlike the instructions, below, which wrapped around the tube.
Postal codes started in 1943 (see the address at the bottom of the page); the woman's hairdo and clothing on the next page suggest the 1940s as the date of the product.

Below: The box holds three stiff cardboard tubes, each wrapped in now decaying cellophane. One tube was open when P&G sent it, someone there probably having opened it.
The tubes are about 2 7/8" (3.7 cm) long and a tad less than 1" (ca. 2.5 cm) in diameter.
The user had to break the tube open and pull out the pad and belt - and try to figure out how to use it.
See the results on the next page.

 

 


Next: Instructions from tube, and the pad and belt and an ad, 1953.
See Pad-n-all, a similar pad with belt from about the same time. | See excerpts from the Butler Bros. catalogs, 1916-30 & the Savage catalog, 1930 | Menstrual napkin belts and pads from the 1902 and 1908 Sears, Roebuck catalogs (U.S.A.) - Actual belts in the museum - Underpants (directory of all on this site): Early 20th-century Japanese ads from publications See how women wore a belt (and in a Swedish ad) - many real modern American belts.
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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