Menstrual pad directory for this site

Tampon directory for this site

How to sell Kotex, a page for trade publications, probably early 1920s, U.S.A., and "Your Image is Your Fortune!," Modess sales-hints booklet for stores, 1967 (U.S.A.).
Selling Playtex tampons to retailers, 1970s.
Kotex: Are you in the know? ads (Kotex napkins and Quest napkin powder, 1948, U.S.A.), booklet Preparing for Womanhood (1920s, for menarcheal girls); see also Directory. Humor in advertising: Dr. White's tampons (1987, United Kingdom); Carefree panty pads for teens (1990, Germany). See Society menstrual pad, and a "silent purchase" ad for Modess, 1928.
Other Modess ads: 1931,"Modess . . . . because" ads, the French Modess, and the German "Freedom" (Kimberly-Clark) for teens.
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
Ads for the Kotex stick tampon (U.S.A., 1970s) - a Japanese stick tampon from the 1970s.
Early commercial tampons - Rely tampon - Meds tampon (Modess)
CONTRIBUTE to Humor, Words and expressions about menstruation and Would you stop menstruating if you could?
Some MUM site links:
homepage | MUM address & What does MUM mean? | e-mail the museum | privacy on this site | who runs this museum?? |
Amazing women! | the art of menstruation | artists (non-menstrual) | asbestos | belts | bidets | founder bio | Bly, Nellie | MUM board | books: menstruation and menopause (and reviews) | cats | company booklets for girls (mostly) directory | contraception and religion | costumes | menstrual cups | cup usage | dispensers | douches, pain, sprays | essay directory | extraction | facts-of-life booklets for girls | famous women in menstrual hygiene ads | FAQ | founder/director biography | gynecological topics by Dr. Soucasaux | humor | huts | links | masturbation | media coverage of MUM | menarche booklets for girls and parents | miscellaneous | museum future | Norwegian menstruation exhibit | odor | olor | pad directory | patent medicine | poetry directory | products, current | puberty booklets for girls and parents | religion | Religión y menstruación | your remedies for menstrual discomfort | menstrual products safety | science | Seguridad de productos para la menstruación | shame | slapping, menstrual | sponges | synchrony | tampon directory | early tampons | teen ads directory | tour of the former museum (video) | underpants & panties directory | videos, films directory | Words and expressions about menstruation | Would you stop menstruating if you could? | What did women do about menstruation in the past? | washable pads
Leer la versión en español de los siguientes temas: Anticoncepción y religión, Breve reseña - Olor - Religión y menstruación - Seguridad de productos para la menstruación.

 
The Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health

Large display map possibly designed to show at a dealers' gathering, U.S.A., Kotex, 1923
"it's KOTEX now to women everywhere"

Advertising men Wallace Meyer and Albert Lasker rocketed Kotex into menstrual stardom right at the beginning of the Roaring Twenties in America. Soon women almost everywhere replaced their washable rags with this first heavily advertised pad - and disposable. The jazz era needed the increase in freedom it provided.

This map shows Kotex's early progress. And reminds me of the Sherwin-Williams globe.

See also How to sell Kotex, a page for trade publications, probably early 1920s, U.S.A., and "Your Image is Your Fortune!," Modess sales-hints booklet for stores similar to the one below, 1967 (U.S.A.).

Menstrual pad directory for this site.

Tampon directory for this site.

The map page below consists of scans of 2 photocopies (not a photo) I ordered and bought from the State Historical Society of Wisconsin of its original document and then scanned in parts and spliced together, thus some poor reproduction.

Below: The 2 black-and-white photocopies (not photos) ordered from the State Historical Society of Wisconsin around 1994 make an entity
measuring about 16 3/8 x 21 3/8" (ca. 41.6 x 54.3 cm), probably close to
the size of the original. I'm guessing that the original  document is
black and white.
What you see below is a composite of scans of the 2 sheets spliced
together horizontally through the middle with smaller corrective
scans dropped in where necessary. Apparently the Society's scanner
was not large enough to make a single copy and mine certainly was/is not.
I slightly trimmed this scan at the margins, damaged in the original.

By the way, every object and ad on this site larger than 8.5 x 11 inches is a stitched-together composite of 2 or more scans because of my small scanner.

Curiosities on the map:
Why did the company pick the cities shown on the map and not others?
Pinehurst: Obscured on the map, below, but not on the original. A village
(2010 pop. 13,124) in North Carolina, known for golf courses
since 1898.
Why would Kotex denote this?
Did the company managers, probably male,
play there?
Golf courses have not been traditionally kind to women and
therefore not to Kotex.
Maybe golfers brought their wives, who could afford Kotex.
Tia Juana (California): "Aunt Jane" in Spanish, Tia Juana is a former
name for Tijuana. Wiki says the common theory among historians is that
it derives
"from the Kumeyaay word Tiwan, meaning by-the-sea"
and does not mean Aunt Jane.

Banff (Alberta, Canada): A tourist destination in 1923 and today although
a small town (pop. 8,421 in 2014). Again, maybe many visitors - travelers -
were women and needed Kotex.
And tourists had money for Kotex.

And a giant curiosity: According to Google maps, the addresses for probably
the world's first commercial tampons - Moderne Woman, Nunap and fax - all lie today within a 9-15 minutes driving distance of each other and of the address
on this ad (at bottom), as was at least one other Chicago Kotex pad address in 1922. The tampon company names on the boxes are not Cellucotton Products Company, Kimberly-Clark or Kotex.
All are within a tight radius in Chicago.

Who - or what - was behind these early tampons?
Undoubtedly innovator Kimberly-Clark.

 
Below: The central text. More about the beginnings of Kotex, the Kotex name, embarrassment, birdseye, cellucotton, and disposing of Kotex.
I've heard many people today say Kotex for any menstrual pad, the way people say Scotch tape for any cellophane tape. It had started already in 1923 because Kotex was the first heavily marketed menstrual pad - and disposable. But there were earlier commercial pads.
Below: Are you yawning? To wake you from your catmatic dogmatic slumber
(as Immanuel Kant said of David Hume; I'm allowed to say that having been a philosophy major),
compare
the two powder puffs below. The Kotex puff reminded me of Beardsley's.
Below: This drawing is part of Aubrey Beardsley's illustration called "The Toilette of Lampito" from "The Lysistrata of Aristophanes," London, 1896. Lampito (that's her behind) worked with Lysistrata to stop Athens's war with Sparta in 5th century B.C. Greece by convincing women to stop having sex with men. It didn't work.

Brian Reade - I'm quoting from the German edition of his book "Beardsley," 1967, where the illustration appears - says that Beardsley possesses "der souveränen Linienführung, in der europäischen Kunstgeschichte ohne Beispiel" - he is the unequaled master of line in European art history. 

I think he is England's greatest artist.


And tuberculosis killed him at 25.

Note the upraised pinkie.

See a more direct Beardsley-menstruation connection with a better example of his line.
















Below
, the arrow points to the similar powder puff in the Kotex sheet at top. I guess powder puffs are powder puffs.

Both are for cheeks. 


These drawings and the Beardsley are examples of the masterful black-and-white drawings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.


How to sell Kotex, a page for trade publications, probably early 1920s, U.S.A., and "Your Image is Your Fortune!," Modess sales-hints booklet for stores, 1967 (U.S.A.). Selling Playtex tampons to retailers, 1970s. Tampon directory for this site
Copyright Harry Finley 2015

More Kotex: Are you in the know? (Kotex napkins and Quest napkin powder, 1948, U.S.A.), Preparing for Womanhood (1920s, for menarcheal girls); see also Directory. Humor in advertising: Dr. White's tampons (1987, United Kingdom); Carefree panty pads for teens (1990, Germany)