Compare the American "Modess
. . . . because" ads, 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
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Nana sanitary napkin ad, France, probably
1980s, magazine?
In 1997 the webmaster of one of the
sites for the Nana pad (and tampon)
company contacted me for a reason I've
forgotten. At the time I
wrote on this MUM site,
[T]he company that makes NANA pads
and tampons conjured up this bon
vivant from the 1980s who still
puzzles me, even though I read
French and a kindly Frenchman has
interpreted it for me ("The more
women are cute [or nice], the more I
love them"). French guys refer to
their girlfriends as being "nana," I
am told by a male representative of
the company, who said the ad is
"very good." He had not seen it
before.
Not that the French are so
sophisticated that menstruation
doesn't faze them; on the contrary,
says my first informant. But somehow
their approach is, well, so French!
By this interpretation I guess the
pad name is "cute" or "nice." Internet
translators call it "chick" or"girl."
But see the end
of this article for a different
interpretation!
So, the text I guess translates as "The more women are
nice [or cute; "chick" (not chic)
doesn't seem to make it here] the
more I love them." I guess
there is no pun on Nana menstrual pad
as such. It all seems so complicated.
Those French.
But hold
on! In the New
York Review of Books for 17 December
2015, Bard College professor Ian
Buruma writes (in a footnote to his
review of Splendours and Miseries:
Images of Prostitution in France,
1850-1910, an exhibition at the Musée
d'Orsay)
Nana,
later the title of a Émile Zola's
famous novel, published in 1880, was
the slang expression for loose women.
And earlier in the article he writes
In 1877, the Salon rejected
Manet's wonderful portrait of Nana,
a high-class cocotte. There
she is, in her silk underwear,
powdering her face, her lacy behind
facing an appreciative male sitting on
a sofa ....
German women today can buy a menstrual
pad named after the flower associated
with a prostitute - Camelia.
Never in America! Torch-bearing mobs
would boycott the company naming a
menstrual product - or any other? -
associated with prostitutes.
See a similar ad
for Nana.
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The ad, a one-pager, measures 9 x
11.62" (22.7 x 29.5 cm], is on one
page and is black and white.
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NEXT:
Dutch ad featuring just a man and his, um, Kotex
panty pad - Malaysian ad
featuring, yes,
just a man, but smirking big time
Compare the American "Modess
. . . . because" ads, and the German "Freedom"
(Kimberly-Clark) for teens.
© 2007 Harry Finley. It is illegal to
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to hfinley@mum.org
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