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MUSEUM OF MENSTRUATION AND WOMEN'S
HEALTH
Kotex ad, Woman's Home Companion
magazine, 1925
"Every mother should tell her
daughter this"
Woodbury soap ad
(reverse side of 1927
Kotex ad)
"At the Most Fashionable Resorts"
I thank
the donor of many items,
including this ad!
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Below:
A conversation between
people not
trying to impress each
other - mother
and daughter - unlike
the women in the later
Kotex ad and in
the soap
ad below.
Mother explains the old-fashioned
rags that she used
for menstruation and why
Kotex is better.
Read more about Ellen
Buckland, nurse,
quoted in the ad.
The ad measures 10 1/2
x 13 3/4" (26.8 x 35.2
cm).
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SEE
THE COLUMN AT RIGHT! |
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Below:
Does the young woman in
the ad look like the one below,
the daughter of the
attorney general of
Kansas? The
public knew her.
This is the American movie
actress Louise
Brooks, famous
for two German silent
films the director G. W.
Pabst made in 1928. I saw
one of them ("Das Tagebuch
einer Verlorenen," "Diary
of a Lost Girl") in a
German theater in Franfurt
decades later; I heard gasps
from the audience
when she made her
entrance; I bought a
reproduction of the 1928
movie poster in the lobby.
That
face! For years a
fellow in England sold me
postcards, old movie
magazines and other
ephemera featuring her. I
was in love. Look at
those eyebrows!
"The Girl in the
Black Helmet" Kenneth
Tynan entitled his famous
New Yorker article that
gave me my first glimpse
of her; the magazine had
abandoned its venerable
policy of never using
editorial photos in order
to shock
readers with her
grinning face.
I'm still breathing hard.
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Directly
above: From a,
um, er, OK, so it's on a French
postcard. So
what! No, I wasn't
the only one in love with
her. Tynan quotes Henri
Langlois, the director of
the Cinémathèque
Française: "Those
who have seen her can
never forget her.
. . . Her art is so pure
it becomes invisible."
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Directly
above: Famous
photographer Edward
Steichen took
this picture for Vanity
Fair. He also took one
of a woman soon to be
famous who debuted as the
- what else? - first real
Kotex model.
(The bottom 3 photos
come from Barry Paris's
packed book "Louise
Brooks.")
Louise
Brooks said (from
Paris's book),
"To paraphrase Proust: how
often do we change the
whole course of our lives
in pursuit of a love that
we will have forgotten
within a few months. . . .
I . . . am unwilling to
write the sexual truth
that would make my life
worth reading. I cannot
unbuckle the Bible Belt.
[She was
born in Kansas.]
That is why I will never
write my memoirs."
At the beginning of her
acting career, the year
this ad appeared,
the New York Daily Mirror
newspaper ran an article
on the scandal Brooks
caused when nude
pictures of her
surfaced. She said she
posed to get in the
movies. This hinted at the
wild life to come, which
took a steep dive to
department store clerk, to
call girl and then rose to
immoral-, er, immortality.
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Below:
Well, let's wash our hands - er,
face - of the Brooks affair.
This ad appears on the reverse
of this
Kotex ad and shows the same
rich folks
Woodbury hoped would buy his soap.
(How would YOU like to spend your
life lying about in expensive
magazines?)
Look closely
at the lounging ladies at right
wiggling their fingers and
pearls at the gentleman assessing
the skin Woodbury facial soap has
moistened.
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Below:
That out-of-control
Dr. Woodbury had arranged
that HIS face would rub over
ladies' faces - and maybe
elsewhere!
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See an ad
featuring the rich
during America's Great Depression.
Speaking of Louise Brooks, I
like painting
faces.
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© 2011 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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