See
more Tampax items: American ad from
August 1965 -
nudity in an ad: May
1992 (United Kingdom) - a sign advertising
Tampax during World War II - the original patent - an instruction sheet
from the 1930s
See a Modess True
or False? ad in The American Girl
magazine, January 1947, and actress Carol Lynley in
"How Shall I Tell My Daughter" booklet ad
(1955) - Modess . . .
. because ads (many dates).
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"Are
you sure I'll still be a
virgin?" (Tampax ad,
February 1990, magazine unknown,
U.S.A.)
Yes,
you'll still be a virgin. No,
we won't laugh at questions
like that.
(Tampax
ad, May 1991, Seventeen
magazine, U.S.A.)
Six months after the caller
asked the question in the top ad a
smug-looking Tampax lady answered
in the second one. No, I'm sure
she answered right away. This was–is–a big
deal.
Right from the beginning, in
1936, the second Tampax tampon
producers that became Tambrands
worried about the reluctance of
unmarried women - at that date
most unmarried women were thought
to be virgins - to use tampons,
which, of course, penetrated the
vagina, possibly opening the hymen
wider than was decent. Did that
make them no longer a virgin? Were
they fallen women? No company
wanted to be responsible for the
mass deflowering of
American women!
Religious authorities and
doctors chimed in with similar
concerns. Tampax responded
to these in bulletins in
the early Fifties.
In 1945, the Dickinson
Report gave a boost to the
tampon industry, which by then had
expanded to many companies besides
Tampax. (See more early
tampons from the U.S.A.)
The top ad below is one of the
latest to discuss this concern,
which I'm sure is still on the
minds of many girls, especially in
America and
Latin countries, where
unmarried women still prefer
menstrual pads.
See a letter
a mother wrote to her daughter's
doctor about tampons and hymens.
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Below:
The ad measures 8 x 10 3/4" (20.3 x
27.3 cm). Another Tampax ad had the
same format with a different
message: "I
hate pads - they're like wearing
diapers."
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Below:
The ad measures 8 x 10 3/4" (20.3 x
27.3 cm). This woman seems to
appear in a similar ad headed, "No,
the tampon can't get lost. All you
can lose is those diapers."
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See a second ad in this series, "Are they hard to put
in?" - American ad from August 1965 -
nudity in an ad: May
1992 (United Kingdom) -
a sign
advertising Tampax
during World War II - the original patent - an instruction sheet
from the 1930s
© 1998, 2016 Harry Finley. It is illegal
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