More Kotex
booklets for girls:
Are you in
the know? Great
BOOKLET
collection of the etiquette ads
Kotex ran for decades
(U.S.A., Kotex napkins and belts, 1956)
Becoming
Aware Educational Kit (Complete kit,
Kotex, 1992?) Contains booklets for girls
and their mothers & sample pads and
tampons. Donation from kind site visitor!
Many more
booklets from Kotex and other
companies around the world
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The Museum of Menstruation
and Women's Health
Ad
for the Kotex booklet for girls
As One Girl To Another
Box
insert?, early 1940s, U.S.A.
Kotex
pioneered popular booklets
teaching girls the ropes of
growing up, especially the rope of
menstruation, with its stuffy Marjorie May series. But its
lessons loosened up with As
One Girl To Another (read
it), as the speech
in this ad might indicate.
"Swell," and "Ixnay," pig Latin
for nix ("no," emphasized by the
ending "nay," meaning no; pig
Latin tacks "ay" onto its words
after shifting the initial
consonant to the end. Um, huh?),
and the hairdos and clothes date
the girls to the 1940s. The words
"new booklet" nail it down since
Kotex published it in 1940.
I quibble: the booklet they're
discussing features two girls on
the cover - after all, this is one
girl to another (girl). But the ad
shows one, two, three
girls.
And, tell me, would girls be
cheerfully discussing menstruation
while eating a sundae and drinking
two something-elses at what is
probably a drug store
lunch counter? Ixnay!
I
thank the donor of the ad!
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Below:
The beat-up piece of paper
measures 6 x 7.5" (15.1 x 19 cm).
Women and girls might
have found it in a box of
something they were buying -
Kotex? - because of its exact
dimensions and lack of the edge
irregularity scissors and tearing
might have produced.
The folds you see divide the paper
precisely, as if an all-knowing
company planned them,
unlike the crummy way collectors
would fold it.
And on the other side
they saw an ad
for Quest, a powder women
sprinkled on their menstrual
pads,
exactly filling the
same space.
And
the same artist, Irving
Nurick, drew both.
His signature decorates the other
side; compare the drawing
styles.
AND, ... well, that should
convince you it was an insert. It
doesn't?
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© 2011 Harry Finley. It is illegal
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