See how a woman wore a belt in a Dutch ad.
See a classy 1920s ad for a belt and the first
ad (1891) MUM has for a belt.
See how women wore a belt (and in a Swedish
ad). See a modern belt
for a washable pad and a page from the 1946-47 Sears catalog showing a great variety.
More ads for napkin belts: Sears,
1928 - modern belts - modern washable
- Modess, 1960s
Actual belts in the
museum
And, of course, the first Tampax AND - special
for you! - the American fax tampon,
from the early 1930s, which also came in bags.
See a Modess True or False? ad in The American
Girl magazine, January 1947, and actress Carol Lynley
in "How Shall I Tell My Daughter" booklet ad (1955) - Modess . . . . because ads (many dates).
 
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MUSEUM OF MENSTRUATION AND WOMEN'S HEALTH
Just Between Us . . . (Beltx, 1961, U.S.A.)
Booklet for girls about menstrual products
Front cover & inside front cover
WHOA! What company would actually use RED in discussing menstruation?
In America, very few. It might remind women of, um, menstruation, rather
than little birdies, flowers, daintiness, and smelling like a rose rather
than - well, we dare not mention that. (Smelling like menstruation
was actually a way to snare men in
at least one factory in England. And Americans think women would never
dare bleed into their clothing. So, what causes
menstrual odor?)
Betty Kay - that's her on the cover, below - must have the
nuttiest eyes in menstrual products! And she's smiling! This has
to be the boldest attempt ever to combine cheerfulness - very American,
smiling at everything - with PMS/menstruation. (The naturalized American
artist Saul Steinberg said Americans look serious only when looking at art
and when conversing about, or in the presence of, the dead. Americans wear
masks, he said, and he made masks for every occasion - and wore them! But
I can testify that even at viewings of bodies in funeral homes Americans
will doggedly smile.) The Dutch contributor wrote about the eyes:
The girl on these pages has very strange eyes, as if they were
blinded by a flash, maybe the result of the atomic era with the trials
of A- and H-bombs? :). Or was that the look of the sixties?
Women wore commercial belts at least from the latter part of the nineteenth
century (the earliest ad the museum has is an American one dated 1891). Because self-adhesive pads became available only
in the early 1970s, if women used pads, they had to wear belts, suspenders, "sanitary panties,"
(underpants with hooks or tabs or something else to hold the pad in place)
- or invent some way of getting the pad to stay in place.
Companies sold probably hundreds of varieties of belts in the past hundred
years, but the industry almost disappeared in the
early 1970s with the advent of pads with adhesive (Stayfree
and New Freedom).
See the complete 1950 edition.
I thank again the Dutch contributor of many, many items to MUM for
scans of this booklet!
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Below: The Dutch contributor writes that
the booklet measures 13 x 18.5 centimeters, about 5 1/8" x 7 5/16".
The lady's nutty eyes perfectly match the use of red
just as her smile matches the butterfly and flowers: menstruation versus
concealment (of feeling as well as menstruation itself).
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Below: The inside front cover. Putting
quotes around grown-up is the first of many such violations of one
of Strunk and White's Elements of Style rules, that of overuse of
quotation marks. They emphasize cutsiness and fit right in with the flowers
and birdies and butterflies in trying to conceal unpleasant aspects of menstruation
- for most women, anyway. Girls see through this pretty quickly. But
see a flower used
not to euphemize menstruation but to announce it!
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NEXT pages 11 12 13 14
15 inside back cover
- See the complete 1950 edition.
Many actual belts
- Menstrual pad suspenders! See how women wore a belt (and in a Swedish ad).
See a modern belt for a washable
pad and a page from the 1946-47 Sears catalog
showing a great variety.
Menstrual panties.
© 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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