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Museum of Menstruation and Women's
health
Pursettes menstrual tampon ads,
In many magazines, U.S.A., September 1963,
during the reform of
civil rights in America
Pursettes
tampons had lubricant on the
rounded tips and no applicators.
The early American Dale
tampon also had a lubricated tip
and no applicator. But of course
most of the early
tampons - Tampax
was a huge exception - had no
applicators, like
o.b. today.
(See a
verbose testimonial
ad for
Pursettes, but also a more
appealing cartoon ad, one of many.)
I thank Tambrands, the former
maker of Tampax, for donating a
file folder, label below (I
fuzzed out the name), of dozens
of Pursettes and Modess ads to
this museum!
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Below:
Somebody at the Tampax company, whose
successor Tambrands donated these ads
to MUM, typed the magazine and date
and might have underlined (using a
ruler) passages she/he felt important
to the business.
I retained part of the article "New
Dawn in Medicine" to show how Ebony,
a magazine aimed
at African Americans (ebony
is a black wood), treated important
issues: it used the word "Negroes,"
for example, and mentions Meharry
Medical College, in Tennessee.
Interesting, isn't it, that the
historically African-American Howard
University College of Medicine, in
Washington, D.C., accepted white
students while the also historically
African-American Meharry did not? Both
institutions bear the names of white
men.
Apart from showing an
African-American woman, I don't see
anything designed just for a
black audience,
which would accord with my
comments in the following
paragraph. Compare the text of the
ads in Glamour,
Redbook, Good
Housekeeping, Family Circle,
RN,
and Teen Screen
magazines. Another Ebony ad MUM
has (July 1963) has no special
text for blacks - it even shows
what looks like a white woman's
hands holding a box of Pursettes
in a photo reminiscent but not
identical to the RN ad.
Flowers accompany the RN ad as
they do in some others here. Flowers
have often kept close company with
menstrual products (menstrual cups
even look like tulips).
The Pursettes company could tell which
magazine the sender of the order
coupon (below) had read by noting the
box letters and numbers in the
return address. In this case,
the "E" in "Box E-19" means "Ebony."
(OK, wise guy, what does "19" mean?)
And look, see how the type face
on "E-19" differs from the rest of the
address? And "E-19" is a little lower
with a big space after it?
That's because the layout person
spliced "E-19" into an ad designed for
many publications. Each magazine could
then tie the ad to itself. Pursettes
could determine which publication had
better returns.
Hands
placed next to the Pursettes box
dominate these ads, the
exceptions being white clothing,
which relieve women's fears about the
flow staining clothing. Hands show the
reader how small
Pursettes are - and can easily fit in a purse; Tampax
with its applicator was a clunker.
But undoubtedly most American women
didn't want to stick their fingers
into their vaginas.
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© 2013 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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