See some Kotex first-campaign ads: general
discussion and ad prototype - January
1921 - May 1921 - November
1921
See more Kotex items: First ad (1921) - 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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Newspaper ads
for Kotex menstrual pads, 1920s (U.S.A.)
Nurse Buckland lived! Nurse Maxfield lived, probably.
But Mary Pauline Callender?
(Ads with Jean Maxfield
and newspaper notices and more ads with Ellen Buckland
are here.)
In the 1920s and 30s three "real"women often appeared in Kotex
ads: Ellen J. Buckland, G.N. (graduate nurse) and Jean Maxfield, G.N., below,
and Mary Pauline Callender, allegedly the author of the Marjorie May series
of booklets for Kotex (example).
A genealogy researcher who has generously contributed many ads and information
to this site investigated both women. She writes,
I started looking for Ellen Buckland and I find her working as a nurse
in 1920 at Children's Memorial Hospital, on Fullerton Ave. in Chicago,
Illinois. She is 39 in 1920, from Appleton, Wisconsin, single, and her
parents are Comfort S. (born in Ohio, served in the Union army in the Civil
War) and Katherine L. Buckland (New York). She has a sister, Lucy Reeve,
who is widowed, and a nephew in Wisconsin named John P. Reeve and a niece
Theodora Reeve. In 1930, she is back living at 850 Prospect Street in Appleton,
Wisconsin, and she is still a nurse working for a paper mill. So, that
mill is probably one of Kimberly-Clark's paper mills. . . .
Here is another Kotex nurse in an ad [Jean Maxfield]. The
most interesting thing is she is supposedly an assistant to the invisible,
never making-a-public-appearance society lady, Mary Pauline Callender [alleged
author of the Marjorie May series of pamphlets for pubescent girls]. One problem is this is Jean
Maxfield's married name so she got married between 1930-1935, which means
I don't know her maiden name and records are limited after 1930. I think
her husband is Lorin Maxfield (b. 1915) but I am not positive; I found
a public record from 2002 that indicates he was still living then but she
died 1992 in California. Also, these are the only two ads about her,
1935 and 1938, but the second ad does not refer to Mary Callender, in fact
it doesn't even call MRS. Maxfield a nurse any longer. Hmm? . . .
The following made me wonder if 1926 is when Kotex went from real women
(like Buckland and Lee Miller, the first real
woman in a Kotex ad) to fictional characters like Callender, plus I wonder
who was doing the ads before him [Wallace Meyer; I named the chair
my oldest cat occupies after him] [the following comes from toiletpaperworld.com
- no, that's right]:
[Ad man Albert] Lasker landed the account (Kotex) in 1926. Lasker's
pitch combined a campaign to inform school boards and other organizations
nation-wide about Kotex, and how teachers could perform a valuable service
by telling female students about feminine hygiene. Then he convinced the
editors of Ladies Home Journal to publish an article about menstruation.
Finally he devised a way for women to buy the product without embarrassment.
Newspaper ads told them that "Kotex", in a wrapped package that
gave no clue as to its identity, would be available in shops and did not
even have to be asked for by name. The customer could put 50 cents in a
box near a pile of packages, take one, and walk out.
More evidence he probably invented Callender:
When Lasker discovered Palmolive the soap was an "also ran"
product. Lasker saw opportunity in the green color and palm/olive oil contents.
Lasker took the Palmolive account and insisted that all Palmolive advertising
be focused around the idea of beauty, not cleansing.
This was the beginning of the shift from information to storytelling in
advertising. Lasker joined Palmolive's excellent "beauty story"
with a coupon program which allowed customers to obtain a sample of the
product. Within three years time Palmolive was the world's number one selling
soap (from Mattmanna.com) [Read more about Lasker
here, bottom of page.]
But her search for the likely Ms. Callender failed. Does anyone out
there have any information about her?
Read the commentary between the two ads.
I again thank the industrious and generous genealogy researcher for
these ads!
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Ads with Jean Maxfield
and newspaper notices and more ads with Ellen Buckland
are here.
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Above: from the Syracuse [New York] Herald,
November 25, 1923. The center woman could step out of an Aubrey Beardsley
drawing, England's greatest artist (just my opinion). Isn't the drawing
great? And everyone looks so formal - and rich (except the nurse). (See
a crude Beardsleyesque drawing in a Japanese ad
for menstrual pad belts from the early 20th century.) But rich was a theme
in many early Kotex ads, as in this beautiful one
from 1923 - and read the fourth line in the ad below.
Talk about the war and nurses refers of course to how nurses in World
War I used Kimberly-Clark bandages as menstrual pads. The first
ad says this better.
Below: from the Indianapolis [Indiana]
Daily Star, July 13, 1924. The woman at right looks like the actress Louise
Brooks, a B actress at the time of the ad but in four years she would make
two silent films ("Diary of a Schoolgirl" and "Pandora's
Box") that would cause the French to name her one of the two greatest
actresses of all time (the other one being Maria Falconetti, in "Joan
of Arc.") Those French! Alright, back to menstruation.
This ad offers a booklet- read under "Easy to get KOTEX" -
which might have been similar to this Kotex booklet
from 1933.
And "old-time 'sanitary' makeshifts" means washable
pads, the way probably most women absorbed their menstrual discharge
in the 19th century and before - IF they used anything
at all.
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Ads with Jean Maxfield and
newspaper notices and more ads with Ellen Buckland
are here.
See some Kotex first-campaign ads: general
discussion and ad prototype - January
1921 -
May 1921 - November
1921 - See more newspaper ads for Kotex and other
items
© 2006 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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