See a prototype
of the first Kotex ad.
See more Kotex items: Ad 1928 (Sears and Roebuck
catalog) - Marjorie
May's Twelfth Birthday (booklet for
girls, 1928, Australian edition; there are
many links here to Kotex items) - 1920s
booklet in Spanish showing disposal method
- box from about
1969 - Preparing
for Womanhood (1920s, booklet for
girls) - "Are you in the
know?" ads (Kotex) (1949)(1953)(1964)(booklet, 1956) -
See more ads on the Ads
for Teenagers main page
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Society sanitary napkins (American?
1920s-1930s?)
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The first Kotex pad and this
Society pads have identical
dimensions, probably
necessary to fit contemporary
belts (and see some from
the Sears,
Roebuck catalog).
As far as I know, American
women's underpants
at this time were loose leg,
meaning there was no way for them
to hold a pad against the vulva in
order to absorb the menstrual
blood. And of course many
underpants had no crotch at all
at the turn of the century and
before, being essentially two
loose tubes around the thighs
joined at the waist. To the best
of my knowledge, briefs for
everyday wear - see the first
in the Sears, Roebuck catalog -
appeared first in America in the
mid-1930s. But pads without belts
didn't appear until the early
1970s. I do not know why they took
such a long time. Perhaps the
technology wasn't available. A Swedish ad
from the 1970s shows the
difference.
The gauze
covering, below, is coarse and
probably uncomfortable.
It could have rubbed and injured
the vulva and thighs, a common
problem the pad companies
addressed in decades of
advertising. (See a medical
report mentioning this and
other problems with pads - among
others, that doctors were worried
that women would be sexually
aroused by a pad's moving around.
Heavens to Betsy!).
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Below:
The absorbent pad, with
a gauze "tail" on each end (folded
across the pad in this picture,
and thus hard to see, just as they
appeared in the box).
Self-adhesive pads appeared in the
early 1970s. They could be smaller
because of better material and the
lack of tails.
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Below:
Women pinned this gauze "tail,"
one of two per pad, to a belt,
front and back. The pad is the
white object at the bottom.
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© 1999 Harry
Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or
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