See a Kotex ad advertising this booklet.
Read a Personal Products booklet for older girls from about this time,
The Periodic Cycle (1938). See similar
booklets on this site.
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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"You're a young lady now" (Kotex puberty & menstruation
booklet,
U.S.A., 1959)
Complete booklet
This booklet for menarcheal girls, which experienced
at least 3 editions (see the 1952 and 1961 versions), continued the unstuffy language possibly begun by the Kotex booklet As One Girl to Another, (1940),
a great departure from Kotex's Marjorie May's
Twelfth Birthday booklets of the 1920s-1930s.
About this time, Kotex went overboard, but pleasingly so, immersing its
ads in slang in the "Are You in the Know?" series. Read more about these booklets; here are the ones on this site.
This version is longer than the 1952 one and the drawings and layout
are different. Parts of the text are different. It's almost identical to
the 1961 edition.
Even though prepubescent girls wore dresses, here
a dress represented puberty. But older girls also wore pants at the time.
Did she wear a dress for the boys? Compare the two covers, below.
(See a Modess booklet from the same year.)
Look at the upper left corner of the back page; someone cut it. Could the owner's name have been there? That's the exact spot the owner of the
earlier edition wrote her name (see below). I wonder if teachers
told students to write their names in the same place - 7 years apart! Maybe
learning that spot is required for teacher certification.
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Below: The covers of the booklet reproduced
in the next several pages.
Left: The top of the back cover of the
previous edition (1952) shows how the name of
the owner (I think) fits in the same spot as the missing chunk in the edition
below, where probably its (shy?) owner put her name.
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Each page measures 5 x 6.75" (12.6 x 17 cm).
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Below: The covers of the 1952 edition, maybe by the same artist, and 1961 version. Again, it shows pants on the prepubescent
girl and a dress on the menarcheal one. The 1961 cover dispenses with showing
change but continues the feminine-appearance theme.
1952
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1961
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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
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