The Fascinating History of Menstrual Period Products

The invention and legalization of the Pill in the 1960's and 1970's created a revolution in sexual attitudes. Along with the possibility of having heterosexual sex without making babies, people also opened up about almost all aspects of sexuality, except menstruation. However, products that help women manage their periods have greatly improved.

Menstruation, Always an Awkward Conversation

If your grandparents or great-grandparents or maybe even great-great-grandparents were growing up in the 1930's, the conversation about menstruation in school might have started something like this:

"Why is it that when we refer to nature, we always call her Mother Nature? Maybe it's because Mother Nature manages so much of our living quietly that we never realize that there is a woman at work." The message here is, of course, to be a woman, make sure no one knows when you are having your period. Then girls would have to ask their mothers or sisters or friends what to do when their first periods arrived, but one dared not ask in public.

By the 1940's and 1950's, conversations about menstruation were a little more open. A teacher might take all the girls in a classroom into another room and put up black curtains over the windows so none of the boys could peak in. Then she would hold up a picture of a uterus and explain that most of a woman's eggs pass through the fallopian tubes without being fertilized. When this happens there is no use for that built-up tissue in the lining of the uterus and it is expelled as waste. The message was, of course, when you're pregnant, you don't menstruate.

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In much of the world, most women were only able to afford cosmetics after about 1960. An advertisement for a kind of menstruation product that looks something like a cross between garters and an athletic supporter for men might mention the product name but show a woman powdering her nose, with the message reading "It's smart to keep looking smart." The implication was obvious. Just buy the product. Use it. Be very sure to use it.

In one black and white film of the 1960's, a teenage girl asks her mother if it would be OK to go swimming after a picnic. "It's not a good idea to go swimming the first two or three days after your period," the mother says, "You might get chilled and catch a cold. Then the girl calls her friend to say she can't go and adds indignantly, "I don't know why you asked. You knew I was having my curse."

Menstruation Products Very Different in This Century

The kind of "sanitary napkin" used in that era was a curse in itself. It wasn't until about 1975 that there was a new kind of pad that didn't need belts (two in front, two in back), pins, or thick cloth to absorb blood from a woman's period. 

In the twenty-first century both women and men have a basic understanding of menstruation. However, there are still women who from time to time try products more appropriate to another century.

Ten Menstruation Products that Should Be Left in the Museum

An American man named Harry Finley has collected over 5,000 items that for several years he displayed in the basement of his house in New Carrollton, Maryland, in what he called the Museum of Menstruation. (He is attempting to raise funds for a new building, although over the last 18 years he has not raised enough money to begin.) Among the odder products in the museum are:

• One of the most common menstruation products in the US in the 1920's was potentially deadly. Lysol, the sanitizer for bathrooms and kitchens, was quietly recommended as a douche after sex and menstruation, on the theory that it would double as a contraceptive. Most women in the 1920's had no idea of how to avoid having babies after sex. In the United States, even condoms were illegal in some states until about 1975, and many states banned the Pill until the 1970's. Women don't get pregnant while they are having their periods, anyway, so Lysol was useless as contraceptive. Using Lysol or any other product as a douche after sex when a woman was fertile was counterproductive because it flushes sperm into the cervix. Tragically, some women died of poisoning after Lysol leached into their blood streams.
• Almost as toxic as Lysol were "vaginal cones" sold by the Henry K. Wampole Company in the United States in the 1800's. Made of sodium borate, the same chemical used in a famous detergent called 20-Mule Team Borax, the cones were supposed to prevent the transmission of diseases like gonorrhea during a woman's period.  The vaginal cones also contained an additive known as picric acid; in large amounts it is explosive. The product actually increased the risk of transmitting STDs by irritating the vagina and cervix so that blood vessels were directly exposed to germs.
•  Reusable home-made pads. In the nineteenth century women often cut chamois cloth (something similar to the cloth advertised on the famous Sham-Wow commercials for a different purpose) to be used and washed again and again. Johnson & Johnson, the pharmaceutical giant, had designed single-use disposable pads as early as 1896, but could not sell them because they could not be advertised.
• Menstrual aprons were aprons worn under a dress instead of over it. They didn't work very well.
• Fax Tampons began making (and advertising) a tampon with no applicator and no string in the 1920's. They quickly found that they had to explain that their product would not interfere with urination, and rumors abounded that using a tampon would break the hymen and thereby "deflower" women who had not yet had sex.

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• The Kotex sanitary belt, which was used until about 40 years ago, had tabs at each end that were attached to a belt. This was before the advent of self-adhesive pads. Kotex advertised its products with terms such as "fresh," "dainty," and "sanitary," and supported a menstruation expert who offered the opinion that "One must keep menstruation concealed, to present one's carefully constructed front of femininity from becoming damaged by the taint of menstrual pollution."
• By the 1990's, menstruation had become much less of a taboo product. One company even offered a "First Moon Party" kit to celebrate a girl's first period. The kit included a cassette tape of music for the party, an instruction booklet, an audio tape so soccer moms could play instructions on menstruation to their daughters in the car, ribbons, party favors, and invitations.
• In the 1980's, as the new self-adhesive tampons began to dominate the market, some companies began to market "menstrual deodorants." A product called Pristeen became extremely popular in the United States with the slogan "The trickiest deodorant problem a girl has isn't under her pretty little arms." Even at the time, obstetricians and gynecologists recommended using vaginal sprays or deodorants because they can irritate the skin.
• In the 1990's, an American candy maker called Time of the Month, Inc., developed a novelty snack food called Menstrual Crunch for women who had PMS. It is no longer on the market.
• Since 2010, some activists have decried pollution caused by recycling throw-away menstrual products, and have even recommended collecting menstrus in a "menstrual pot" in which water can be added for house plants.

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Menstruation is no longer considered unmentionable, or unmanageable. Modern products fortunately are made with a much better understanding of women's bodies and women's health. Menstruation is a natural function that might not always be celebrated, but no longer has to be feared.