See an ad for this booklet.
Read a Personal Products booklet for older girls from about this time,
The Periodic Cycle (1938). See similar
booklets on this site.
Booklets menstrual hygiene companies made
for girls, women and teachers - patent medicine
- a list of books and articles about menstruation
- videos
See a Kotex ad advertising a Marjorie May
booklet.
See many more similar booklets.
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!
Read the full text of the 1935 Canadian edition
of Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday, probably identical to the American edition.
More ads for teens (see also introductory
page for teenage advertising): Are you in the know? (Kotex napkins and Quest napkin powder, 1948, U.S.A.),
Are you in the know? (Kotex
napkins and belts, 1949, U.S.A.)Are you in
the know? (Kotex napkins, 1953, U.S.A.),
Are you in the know? (Kotex
napkins and belts, 1964, U.S.A.), Freedom
(1990, Germany), Kotex (1992, U.S.A.), Pursettes (1974, U.S.A.), Pursettes (1974, U.S.A.), Saba (1975, Denmark)
See early tampons and a list of tampon on this site - at least the ones I've cataloged.
 
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"Die Menstruation"
excerpts from the o.b. tampon, menstruation & puberty booklet for girls,
1977, Germany
No other menarche booklet that I know of features such bold and "artsy"
photographs as this one from the company that sold the o.b. tampon before
the American Johnson & Johnson bought the brand in the 1970s. The reportedly
highest paid photographer in the world at the time, the Englishman David
Hamilton, took many and perhaps all of the photographs, one of which I include
and which you can see here (I've omitted some
of the explicit pictures). He was (and is) famous for his photographs of
girls but here he includes a boy to illustrate the section on anatomy.
Like most menarche booklets the text can be poetic in places, matching
some of the romantic Hamilton photos. And like all of them the booklet pitches
the company's products, here, tampons with no applicators.
This booklet could not have appeared in the 1930s and maybe not even
the 40s or 50s because it encouraged young girls - meaning virgins - to
use tampons, which the Catholic Church and other groups early opposed. Tampax
faced these problems in the 1930s and later (see the Tampax ad "Are you sure I'll still be a virgin?").
I first saw this booklet in the window of an Apotheke
(pharmacy) in Heidelberg in the 1970s, not to see it again until decades
later when a contributor in Europe generously sent me scans of it.
See an ad for this booklet. And see a later Dutch
booklet that is about as explicit but using drawings.
A Dutchman kindly sent these scans.
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Above, cover: The title translates
as
"Menstruation.
"A theme out of which many others issue"
Upper right, inside front cover:
At top: "This little booklet belongs to:"
The last line indicates the fourth edition and the number of copies printed
- a lot, 7-8 million.
Right, page1:
"The Themes:
"The girl.
"The boy.
"The sexual organs and their function.
"The physical, mental and spiritual development.
"menstruation.
"Menstrual hygiene."
I somehow chopped off the bottom of the cover but no text was lost.
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© 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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