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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The Museum of Menstruation
and Women's Health
Kotex menstrual pad ad
January 1926, Pictorial review, U.S.A.
The 1920s through the 1940s were the
golden years of American illustration,
and the beautiful ad below is just one
example.
Note that the closest the ad copy
gets to mentioning menstruation is the
word "sanitary,"
a word charged with negative
connotations. I wonder when
readers could see the word menstruation
for the first time in advertising?
Birdseye
cloth, mentioned more than once,
was a diaper cloth women attached to
belts or pinned to their underpants,
which was not close fitting. And they
had to wash it. The genius of Kotex
was that, for women who could afford
it, it was disposable, although it was
not the first
disposable pad.
The ad recommends just asking for
Kotex, thus avoiding the words
sanitary pad, towel, or other
indelicate terms. But didn't the clerk
understand what Kotex was? The word
Kotex was made from COTten-like TEXture.
Kimberly-Clark, which invented the
bandage which transformed itself into
a menstrual pad during World War I,
started the Cellucotton Products
Company, which made Kotex, in order to
avoid the association with
menstruation.
Pictorial
Review magazine (U.S.A.)
published this ad in January 1923. An
enlargement of the words appears at
the bottom.
Long
download, large files!
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See some Kotex first-campaign ads: general discussion and
ad prototype - January
1921 - May 1921 - November 1921
© 1998 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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