See more Kotex items: First ad (1921; scroll to bottom of page) - ad, 1928 (Sears and Roebuck catalog) - Lee Miller ads (first real person in a menstrual hygiene ad, 1928) - Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday (booklet for girls, 1928, Australian edition; there are many links here to Kotex items) - Preparing for Womanhood (1920s, booklet for girls; Australian edition) - 1920s booklet in Spanish showing disposal method - box from about 1969 - "Are you in the know?" ads (Kotex) (1949)(1953)(1964)(booklet, 1956) - See more ads on the Ads for Teenagers main pageThe first Kotex magazine ad campaignCONTRIBUTE to Humor, Words and expressions about menstruation
and Would you stop menstruating if you could?
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"To guard against
emergencies"
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| What would
YOU do if your period started during
this picnic and you forgot your rag
attached to a belt? Next
question: Where would you keep the wet
rag until you could take it home for your maid to wash? In the
picnic basket? Kotex was not the first commercial product to solve these riddles but became the most famous. Actually, it eliminated washing and thought it answered the elimination dilemma, a problem persisting today. The first
Kotex magazine ad campaign.
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| Below: The
full-page black-and-white ad
measures 11 x 14" (27.9 x 35.6 cm). Did you notice that "Kotex" If I'm reading this conversion engine right, $0.60 in 1921 is worth from $6.26 to $135.00 in 2013 dollars, about 50 cents a pad at the cheapest. Even at the low end no wonder these ads pitched Kotex to the rich-looking ladies nibbling sandwiches below or lounging about doing nothing or floating down a staircase or chastising a maid. (But maybe those were exactly the people who read The Ladies Home Journal.) About 14 years later an early commercial tampon, B-ettes, cost 25 cents for 12, around $4.24 in 2013 dollars, maybe 35 cents a 'pon. |
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| Below:
Am I wasting your
time by examining her sandwich? I spent too much time looking at the sandwich and her mouth - it's my lunch time, too - to not ask, Is the white area below her upper lip her teeth or a reflection off her lower lip? And, she ate the upper corner off the poorly cut sandwich; the lower end of the diagonal slice at right should have angled more toward her fingernail. Maybe an inexperienced picnic participant cut it when the cook had the morning off. But it's a beautiful drawing. |
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See more Kotex items: First ad
(1921; scroll to bottom of page) - ad, 1928 (Sears and Roebuck
catalog) -
Lee Miller ads
(first real person in a menstrual hygiene ad,
1928)