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The Museum of Menstruation and Women's
Health
vams
menstrual tampon
(1948, U.S.A.)
Like an early American tampon, fax,
vams seems to have been written lower case.
Why vams?
The closest word to it I could
think of was vamp but
the seduction implied by that word
seems out of place. But there is this
possibility. And this: could
it have been slang from this era?
Dixie Belle suggests the American South,
appropriate since this is a cotton
product; King Cotton traveled the
world before the Civil War and
made southern planters rich. I
find it interesting that both
words come ultimately from French
and maybe therefore from New
Orleans. But the maker of this
tampon operated in New York.
The tampon might have avoided
conflict with Tampax's patented
cardboard applicator by making the inner tube much
smaller. Many early American
tampons avoided that legal
problem by forgetting about an
applicator and required the user
to apply her
fingers, a solution
probably more agreeable in Europe
than in American or Japan, which
had gone to great
lengths to shield fingers
from the menstruating vagina.
Procter
& Gamble kindly donated
the unopened box.
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Below:
The cardboard box measures 5 3/8 x
3 3/8 x 1 3/8" (13.8 x 8.5 x 3.5
cm).
Strange that the number of
tampons is not indicated
on the front, only on the ends. But
at least it's
there; some
early American tampons gave no number at all!
The
opposite sides are identical.
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Below:
The long sides.
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Below:
The ends.
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