"Ending Women's Greatest Hygienic Mistake": Modernity and the Mortification of

Menstruation in Kotex Advertising, 1921—1926

Author(s): Roseann M. Mandziuk
Source: Women's Studies Quarterly , FALL/WINTER 2010, Vol. 38, No. 3/4, MARKET
(FALL/WINTER 2010), pp. 42-62
Published by: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20799363

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

The Feminist Press at the City University of New York is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,
preserve and extend access to Women's Studies Quarterly

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 "Ending Women's Greatest Hygienic Mistake":
Modernity and the Mortification of Menstruation
in Kotex Advertising, 1921-1926

Roseann M. Mandziuk

Contemporary American discourses about menstruation sustain a fine

balance between the realms of freedom and prohibition, a combination
that constitutes a potent ideological mixture defining women's cultural
membership within limitations defined by their bodily processes.1 As
Dorothy Dinnerstein describes this cultural terrain, the province of the
female becomes that of the "mucky limitations of the flesh" (1976, 133).
Medicine contributes the impression that menstruation renders women
offensive and incomplete; advertising discourses, in turn, offer products
to compensate for this inadequacy, women's perpetual "problem." Both
function to suppress women's ability to control the cultural definition and
meaning of menses, insinuating that menstruation is shameful, a personal
source of mortification that must be hidden, and a force that, because it
conspires against women, must be controlled by the latest technologically
sophisticated product.
To understand the ideological patterns in contemporary cultural dis
course about menstruation, particularly as developed in advertisements
about "feminine hygiene products," it is instructive to examine the histori
cal circumstances in which the intersection of social, medical, and com
mercial interests first manifested itself, specifically in the major American
magazine advertising campaign that introduced Kotex sanitary pads to
American women in 1921. The early years of the Kotex campaign mark a
historical nexus where consumerism merged with medical authority, and
it is these initial ideological appeals that persist in contemporary discourse
about menstruation. By enticing women to enact and reproduce Western
culture's proscriptions against their own bodies, Kotex set into circulation

WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly 3 & 4 (Fall/Winter 2010) ? 2010 by Roseann M. Mandziuk.
All rights reserved.

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Roseann M. Mandziuk 43

a "modern" understanding of menstruation in which women s cultural par

ticipation is encouraged yet circumscribed by their inevitable biological
incapacitation.
This essay critiques the strategies employed in the first five years of
Kotex advertisements by focusing on those published in Good House
keeping magazine from 1921 to 1926. While Kotex advertisements also
ran concurrently in other popular magazines, focusing largely upon this
specific sample allows a close critical scrutiny of how the Kotex campaign
developed its discursive strategies from its beginnings and the ways in
which it directly addressed the one million relatively affluent young home
makers who by 1920 constituted the readership of this magazine (Endress
and Lueck 1995; Nasaw 2000). The complete set of twenty-four differ
ent advertisements published in Good Housekeeping reveals how quickly
the ideological patterns used by Kotex were set, particularly those related
to modernity and the marketplace. By invoking their anxiety in the face
of cultural change, the advertisements functioned to define for women
a distinctly active yet inconsequential social role by reinforcing the con
tradictory expectations that women exhibit their bodies yet cloak their
menstrual processes. The resulting equation of menstruation with public
display, consumer savvy, and shame produced a powerful cultural myth
that continues to constitute our contemporary discourse about menstrua
tion and persists in its disciplinary power over women.

Menstruation and Modernity: Two Brief Histories

Western culture witnessed sweeping social, economic, technological, and

psychological changes in the relatively short period between 1880 and
1930. A number of cultural authorities diminished in importance as the
modern and the new ascended in their place; this left a void soon filled
by advertising and its advocacy of consumerism as a new way of life. For
women, the potential for these new social relations to offer a liberatory path
initially seemed great, yet such demands were deflected into the illusory
cultural participation held out to women via consumption. The powerful
forces of consumer culture, accentuated by the new professionalization of
women's health, conspired to maintain the old social relations precisely as
they were, only now repackaged in shiny "modern" wrappings.
A prominent influence in constructing this modern definition of
"woman" was the emergent medical profession of the nineteenth century,

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
44 "Ending Women's Greatest Hygienic Mistake"

particularly the consolidation of the special area of gynecology, which sug

gested "that women were mentally ill or nervous simply because they were
female" (Theriot 1993, 6). Whereas in the nineteenth century questions
about the body were diminished by an emphasis on spiritual rather than
physical matters, as well as standards of decorum (Brumberg 1998), in
the early-twentieth century, womans biological difference was seen as the
source of her social inferiorities and thus it offered a fruitful ground for the
public articulation of limits regarding her cultural participation.
Medical theories of the body as an economic system or a factory led to
a metaphoric understanding of menstruation as an indication of "the dis
eased factory" or "the machine in disrepair" (Martin 1987,45). Physicians
counseled women to guard against the depletion of their system by setting
aside a rest period of invalidism as menstruation became the outward sign
of women's debilitation and fragility. Yet while medical practitioners saw
menstrual blood as a mark of women's illness, it also contained an indica
tion of women's agency and thus had to be controlled (Martin 1990, 75);
contemporary popular culture discourses also convey this implication
"that all menstruating women (not just those with a diagnosable disorder)
are capable of behaving in an erratic, aggressive manner" (Chrisler 2002,
242). Menses symbolically represent the threat of the unruly, marking
women as different and disruptive.
The insidious genius of consumer culture was in finding a way to turn
the physical sign of woman's potential resistance against her. Through the
embrace of this nineteenth-century understanding of menstruation as an
inevitable limitation for women, and the employment of it to promote a
new line of "feminine hygiene products," consumption and submission
became the only possible ways that women, flawed by their biology, still
could be assured of health and well-being while they took their assigned
place in modernity. This intersection of the interests of medicine, capital
ism, and patriarchy was possible especially because of the intensity of the
cultural upheaval that marked the move toward modernity, as well as the
focus on sanitation and science that followed World War I and the influenza

epidemic that swept the nation during those same years. As Karen Houp
pert observes in regard to the feminine product market, "Always describ
ing their products as sanitary/ asserting that they were made of surgical
cotton and 'hygienically sealed in individual containers,' manufacturers
played to germ paranoia, boasting that millions of modern women were
converts" (1999,6). The discourse of hygiene that was a powerful postwar

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Roseann M. Mandziuk 45

cultural force is evident in the early Kotex advertising, forming an ideo

logical troika with markets and medicine.
The American corporate ideology began to coalesce around this
new, "modern ' celebration of consumerism, self-satisfaction, and science.
Emphases on personal character and the work ethic yielded to the neces
sity for "impression management" in the newly mobile and mechanized
modern world (Lears 1983, 6-17), and only new products and technolo
gies could provide self-fulfillment and insulation from the consequences
of the cultural rift. Advertisers stepped in as the "apostles of modernity"
who would bring their new religion of consumerism to the masses (March
and 1985,1-24), and the advertising profession itself became profoundly
"modern" in its approaches, using therapeutic strategies that pointed away
from the "sober information" about the product itself toward the "thera
peutic promise of a fuller and richer life" (Lears 1983, 18) and taking on
the role of the consumer s personal confidante, the solicitous friend who
held a place of special intimacy with the consumer (Marchand 1985, 13).
These guarantees that the right product could ensure financial security,
personal relationships, and psychic well-being were underscored by fearful
scenarios about the downfall of those who failed to heed the therapeutic
appeals. For a man, fear appeals attached to his role as breadwinner, while
for a woman the reconfiguration of her social function was located in the
text of her body and the specific shape and meaning that modernity would
sketch upon it. The cultural penalties for women's transgressions in con
sumer culture were far greater as a result of the entry of product advertis
ing into these bodily realms; such penalties included ostracization, loss of
sexual potency, and even death.
Armed with this new set of strategies, advertisers had created a way
for modernity to both co-opt and control the menstrual mystique. Medi
ating the interests of medicine and capitalism, advertising promoted an
understanding of menstruation that linked women's entry into modernity
to their own recognition of their inherent pathology. Yet the Kotex cam
paign skillfully reverses the message about women's sickness, arguing that
the hazards and embarrassment caused by menstruation in and of itself,
and not the ill health caused by its aberrations, are the source of women's
social and physical inadequacy. The advertisements for Kotex initiated this
discourse by cloaking their appeals in the therapeutic ethos of medicine
and science, communicated via ingratiation and mortification.

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
46 "Ending Women's Greatest Hygienic Mistake"

Decorative Demands, Discursive Manipulations

The commodification of menstruation in American culture drew its disci

plinary force from the combination of modern advertising strategies with

the social and economic circumstances of industrialization and consumer

ism, including the deemphasis on labor skills in favor of the presentation

by women of a "cosmetic self" constituted by an appearance of discipline,
control, and personal savvy (Kaite 1987, 159). Enacting this managed
impression meant adherence both to the current cultural definitions
of femininity and to the new demands to be fully "modern"; hence the
mortification of menstruation within the body of the "modern woman"
was founded upon the intersection of these dual ideological systems. Cer
tainly the Kotex product presented an authentic advance for women over
previous practices such as "birdeye" cloth rags, but as Elizabeth Kissling
observes in regard to merchandising, "Construing menstruation as ? prob
lem creates the possibility of, and perhaps more importantly, a consumer
market for, solutions" (2006, l). Feminine hygiene advertising specifically
co-opts the discourse of high fashion and conspicuous consumption, sell
ing its audience a new self along with the commodity. For women targeted
by Kotex s early ads, the product signified the freedom to gain entry into
the special domain of the modern woman, but this territory was circum
scribed by specific definitions of the female body and rules prescribing the
precise shape of women's cultural participation.
Kotex was manufactured by the Cellucotton Products Company,
which developed the disposable sanitary pad after "cellucotton" success
fully was used as bandages in hospitals during World War I. The advertis
ing campaign was produced by the Lord and Thomas Advertising Agency,
which used the Kotex campaign to herald its own success to its peers,
celebrating its savvy in advertising a product that "admitted no definitive
descriptive words in the headlines" ("Is Advertising" 1927,74). The initial
advertisement in the January 1921 issue of Ladies Home Journal is unique
in explicitly linking the new product to its origins as material for sani
tary bandages in its illustration, depicting three women arrayed around
a man who is seated in a wheelchair, likely a soldier home from the war.
One woman, who is a nurse, touches the mans arm, while the other two
women, fashionably dressed, lean or sit nearby. An earlier prototype of this
ad depicts four soldiers and one nurse and features the caption "To Save
Mens Lives, Science Discovered Kotex," but copywriter Wallace Meyer

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Roseann M. Mandziuk 47

notes that it was rejected because there were too many men for a product
designed for women ("The First Kotex"). Still, the prototype strikingly
illustrates the prominent way that science and Kotex would be intertwined
in later ads, but without as explicit a reference to war in their title phrases.
Indeed, as David Linton notes, "Once Kotex ads moved away from their
earliest connection to men at war, they concentrated relentlessly on the
language of stealth and secrecy" (2007,103).
The first Kotex ad in Good Housekeeping, introduced with the phrase
"Insure poise in the daintiest frocks" (1921), contains the appeals used
to define the "modern woman" and provides clues to the eventual tone
the Kotex campaigns would develop. The product name is spelled out in
large, art deco letters at the top; below, an illustration depicts three women
arranged in an inverted pyramid, dressed in frilly, fashionable summer
dresses, and holding parasols. The women are drawn with softened lines
and diffused shadows, and they avert their glance from the reader. The
main phrase is in bold print beneath the illustration, with the remaining
text in smaller print arranged to the left of a small illustration of a box of
Kotex in the lower-right corner. The visual arrangement and the content in
this first advertisement established the basic look and the strategy of insin
uation that subsequent ads would follow. All feature a single woman or a
group of women in active, yet decorative, poses; only one of the twenty
four advertisements depicts men, who are in the background in that ad.
The main text reads, "Women everywhere have adopted Kotex, the new
sanitary pads, as an essential to summer comfort. Made from Cellucot
ton?the wonderful absorbent which science contributed to war hospital
use?Kotex are lighter and more absorbent than cotton, cooler, hold their
shape and remain lastingly soft. Kotex are cheap enough to throw away
and easy to dispose of?see directions in each package" ("Insure Poise,"
1921). Several themes that are evident here represent the key strategies
of the Kotex campaign: the appeal to join the modern majority, the cel
ebration of the ascendancy of science, and the performative function of
women as "poised" and "dainty." At the bottom of this ad, in still finer print,
comes the fourth dominant theme, evasion and embarrassment: "Or send
us sixty-five cents and we will mail you one box of a dozen Kotex in plain
wrapper." During the first five years of Kotex ads each of these themes was
developed and intensified, constituting the ideological force of the adver
tisements through the objectification of women and the mortification of
menstruation.

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
48 "Ending Women's Greatest Hygienic Mistake"

Visual Signs: Modernity and Femininity

Because the Kotex advertising strategy is oriented toward the definition

of menstruation for the "modern" woman, the appeal to join the majority
and to avoid being left behind becomes the potent rhetoric that grounds
the other themes. Through the style and content of the illustrations, the
Kotex woman is portrayed as someone whose slenderness and active lei
sure echo the very streamlined look and quickened pulse of modernity.
The concept of the "modern" woman by no means belonged exclusively
to Kotex in this campaign; rather, the strategy of appealing to the anxious
desire of women to understand and participate in modernity was invoked
by advertising of the 1920s and 1930s to sell a wide range of products and
services. Although often women were accorded new status outside the
home as the central purchaser for their households in advertising, they
"never achieved sufficient scope or stature to compensate for the unserious
implications of their modernity in fashion. In fact, the more that women
achieved recognition for their modernity in consumption, the less they
qualified for any true equality in the broader quest for modern progress"
(Marchand 1985, 168). The Kotex vision of "modern" women emerges
from the precise ways modernity was defined and portrayed.
The women in the Kotex advertisements visually represent what the
text of the later ads would identify as women "in the better walks of life"
("Every Mother Should Tell," 1925). The dress and accessories arrayed
on the women illustrated throughout the Kotex campaign signified the
1920s-era standards for wealth and fashion, yet these qualities are con
veyed through soft lines and light rather than through the bold lines and
dramatic shadows often used in advertising of the period to portray men.
Further, the "modern" quality of the visual images of Kotex women needs
to be understood in relation to the abstract portrayals of women that
became the norm in advertising of the period. As Marchand observes,
"Women in the [advertising] tableaux, as symbols of modernity, some
times added more than a foot to their everyday heights and stretched their
elongated eyes, fingers, legs, arms, and necks to grotesque proportions ...
Thus, the woman of high fashion?and, by implication, all women of high
social status?appeared in advertising tableaux as physically distinct from
the woman of lower social position" (1985, 181-82). Although the illus
trations of women in the Kotex ads do not quite tend toward this extreme,
the images display several of the characteristics. The women's bodies are

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Roseann M. Mandziuk 49

elongated and thin, and most have the exaggerated long necks and arms
that, in advertising, became the markers of sophistication and class. More
over, the differences in class are distinct in the Kotex campaign, as the thin,
long bodies belong to the "modern" women, the short and round to ser
vants and working-class women. The illustration style thus functions to
attach a visual level of meaning to the verbal description of these women
as being representatives of the "better walks of life."
This elongation of the female body in early advertising to signify both
fashion and social class also must be seen as the precursor for the ideal
body type that has become so desired of women in contemporary culture.
Slender bodies equate with many cultural meanings, among them the illu
sion that a thin woman is in control of her body, and that such control
translates into social, economic, and romantic success. As Susan Bordo
argues, the modern obsession with slenderness "may function as one of
the most powerful normalizing' strategies of our century" (1990,85). The
equation of thinness and style in newly "modern" advertisements trans
formed women's bodies into objects onto which are inscribed the social
rules for women's conduct. To be fully modern, women would have to
reshape their bodies as well as their desires, finding expression for both
solely in the realm of fashion and outward appearance.
Further, the location of these modern bodies in the ads conveys the
acceptable stance and attitude of women, as well as their social function.
The Kotex women lean slightly forward and toward each other, or are
tilted slightly backward, and never direct their glance toward the reader. In
explaining such off-kilter portrayals, Erving Goffman argues that women in
advertising who appear in such poses signify social subordination because
they are "canted," off balance and tentative, compared with depictions of
men (1979, 45-47). In advertising illustrations of the 1920s and 1930s,
this canted female body, coupled with the elongated features, portrayed
women as aesthetic and passive when contrasted with the more solid and
proportional images of men. Representations of the "modern" woman as
slender and canted conveyed the limited sense in which women would be
able to participate in modernity.
The most extreme cases of these thin, canted poses can be seen in
a 1924 Kotex advertisement, "Charming, Immaculate, Exquisite," and
two 1926 advertisements, "Your Sheerest, Gayest Gowns" and "What
the World Expects of Women Today." The illustration in "Charming" is
enclosed by a border that suggests a portrait frame. The woman in the

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 50 "Ending Women's Greatest Hygienic Mistake"

foreground is much larger than the women shown in the background, an

effect that is heightened by the former s elongated body and white gown.
She leans slightly backward, with only one foot visible beneath her. The
angled, decorative effect is intensified in contrast especially with the three
men in the background. In "Your Sheerest, Gayest" the backward lean
and elongated body again are illustrated; here the woman looks at her
self in a mirror, while to her left and behind her a maid, smaller in stat
ure and less defined, also looks in the direction of the mirror. "What the
World Expects" depicts three women standing near a car. The woman in
the center of the illustration, canted backward, is the object of the gaze of
the women standing behind her. These three ads represent the most pro
nounced examples of the signification of "modernity" in the Kotex ads, yet
nearly all the illustrations in the 1921-26 sample from Good Housekeeping
draw upon these same visual strategies to communicate the objectification
and limited functional role of the "modern" woman.

The canted poses and the presence of men in some of the Kotex ads
in this period raise further critical questions about modernity and agency.
Most do not explicitly feature men, yet the male presence and gaze exert an
implicit cultural force directed toward these "modern women." As David
Linton observes about the ads, "All carry one simple message to women:
your dark and shameful secret can be preserved; no man need ever know
that on a regular basis you have a menstrual period that involves the secre
tion of a fluid that often discomforts men" (2007, 100). Additionally, in
the gaze of the women toward each other there resides some homoerotic
tension, yet this objectification of women by women, read within the con
text of modern anxiety, is better explained as desire that is rooted in com
petition to achieve "modern" status, rather than purely a sexual motive. In
other words, these "modern women" are the subject of the gaze precisely
because they represent the cultural success for which others strive, to be a
modern object desired by men. Yet such "modern women" were vulnera
ble to social sanctions for any offense; the gaze of men as well as of women
is "an invisible force whose implied presence dictated that women's men
strual management be ever discrete and circumspect" (2007, 111).
In the first five years of Kotex advertisements in Good Housekeeping,
only three ads provide illustrations that are exceptions to the "modern,"
decorative portrayal of women. Two depict schoolgirls ("Meets the Most
Exacting Needs," 1922; "One Problem Less," 1922). The third illustrates
a conversation between a daughter and a mother ("Every Mother Should

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Roseann M. Mandziuk 51

Tell," 1925). All three exceptions can be explained by considering the

parameters of the "modern" woman portrayed in the rest of the advertise
ments. In contrast to the image of the sophisticated, slender "modern"
woman, the mother s image suggests the soft focus of the domestic space
rather than the slick style of her fashionable counterpart; the schoolgirls
also lack the characteristics that qualify for modernity. With their being
too young to be sophisticated, and still identified with the domestic and
motherly model, the implication of the ads is that the use of Kotex will
become the key purchase for them in their subsequent refinement into
aesthetic objects as adult women.
The ideological limits of the meaning of modernity for women are fur
ther conveyed by the settings and activities that provide the backdrop and
context for these images. Although the accompanying text of some of the
ads identifies "business" among the realms in which the Kotex woman is
found, none of the advertisements in Good Housekeeping actually depicts
this context. One work setting is found in a Kotex ad in Ladies' Home Jour
nal ("Ask for Them," 1921) that illustrates two women separated by a desk,
but this visual representation was not the norm. Among the twenty-four
ads in the sample, fifteen depict women conversing in leisure settings; they
are seen in restaurants; at social clubs; in the garden; in the doorway of a
home; and in the street, beside a major symbol of recreation, an automo
bile. Other activities feature women shopping, gazing into mirrors, and
packing a trunk of vacation clothes. The message is that "modern women"
are affluent, fashionable, and decorative. When coupled with the verbal
circumlocutions in reference to menstruation, the result is an ideological
circle in which Kotex promises women membership in the key consump
tion group wherein "the modern woman lives every day of her life . . .
unhandicapped" ("Have These Women Solved," 1925), so long as that life
remains within the circumscribed parameters of modernity.

Mortifying Menstruation

The Kotex advertising campaign contains both the therapeutic and ingrati
ation strategies characteristic of advertising of the 1920s and 1930s. In the
written texts of these advertisements menstruation is defined by implica
tion, insinuation, and scare copy, and the specific reasons for the product s
use and the potential hazards to those who forego it are made explicit. The
message is that womens bodies inherently are their enemy, not only rob

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
52 "Ending Women's Greatest Hygienic Mistake"

bing them of health, beauty, and precious hours, but also causing embar
rassment and shame. The therapeutic promise of Kotex is to free women
from their bodies, yet the ideological equations in the ads insinuate that
woman is the prisoner of her biology.
The appeals to the public embarrassment associated with discourse
about menstruation are featured in the earlier ads in 1921-22, while the
therapeutic messages are added in the later years, 1923-26. Thus, the pro
hibition against public acknowledgment of menstruation initiates and
underlies the entire campaign, locating the need for the product in the
realm ofpublic scrutiny and judgments. The necessity for indirect discourse
about menstruation is reinforced in these ads in various ways. Initially, the
product name itself is presented as a means of avoiding embarrassment.
For example, in the January 1922 ad, "Meets the Most Exacting Needs," in
small print the last sentence states: "Easy to buy. All embarrassing counter
conversation is avoided by saying, box of Kotex please/" The next ad,
from March 1922, expands this message about avoidance into the full text
and context, beginning with the heading "Oh, yes?and a Box of Kotex,
Too." The illustration depicts a fashionable modern woman, dressed in
furs, at a store counter where a stack of Kotex is visible. Below the heading
the text explains, "It is now as easy to buy sanitary pads without counter
conversation as to buy hair nets or face powder. The one word 'Kotex' has
made it so." The subsequent ads in July, October, and December also con
trast the embarrassment of discourse about "sanitary pads" versus the ease
of invoking the product name ("Inexpensive, Easy," 1922; "Traveling or at
Home," 1922; "One Problem Less," 1922). In encouraging the substitu
tion of Kotex, the brand name, for discourse about the whole category of
product, these advertisements functioned to perpetuate the cultural ner
vousness about menstruation. Direct communication regarding menstru
ation was to be suppressed in favor of preserving the new "modern" sense
of ease and delicacy. The initial Kotex ads reinforced the myth that menses
are a shameful problem for women, fit only for coded public discussion.
While rescuing women from public embarrassment, the Kotex adver
tisements also promised to provide significant therapeutic benefits, mes
sages that were powerful precisely because of their foundation in the
therapeutic ethos employed by advertising of the era. Kotex exploited the
cultural changes under way for women and the promise of a new sense of
freedom that appeared to be inherent in modern society. Co-opting the
rhetoric of liberation, Kotex offered to restore wholeness to women by giv

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Roseann M. Mandziuk 53

ing back to them the postponed public appearances, the lost hours, and
the ill health that menstruation, supposedly, had taken from them. Such
therapeutic appeals, coupled with the limited meaning of modernity for
women, diffused women's demands for political change "into quests for
psychic satisfaction through high-style consumption' (Lears 1983,27). In
exchange for their purchase, Kotex would provide women with a weapon
to win the war against their offensive bodies. However, the spoils won by
the victorious woman were a new freedom to move out into the public, but
only in a replication of the traditional patriarchal role for them: a continu
ously available, pleasing, and decorative object that, in the language of the
ads, was "unhandicapped" by physical processes or bodily functions (e.g.,
"Have These Women Solved," 1925; "This Will Make," 1925).
The therapeutic dimensions of the Kotex campaign reached further,
constructing an even finer web of signification that ultimately equated the
product with the ruling cultural definition of femininity. The ads implied
that use of the product magically transferred to a woman traits such as
piety, purity, and virtue, thereby shaping her into the very embodiment
of ideal womanhood promoted in nineteenth-century culture (Burstyn
1984; Ehrenreich and English 1978; Welter 1976). The Kotex campaign
succeeded in reinserting these traditional expectations for women into a
twentieth-century milieu, however, by linking ideal womanhood to the
pursuits of the "modern" woman. This relationship between modernity and
traditional womanhood was achieved by the juxtaposition of three terms as
the advertising campaign progressed: "confidence," "charm," and "immacu
lateness." For example, an ad from 1923 is the first to proclaim, "Priceless
to women is sense of well-being, of self-confidence and poise" ("Con
fidence"). A later text shifts the meaning of the term slightly by stating,
"Social demands are met in confidence. One lives every day ... unhandi
capped" ("Only 2 Women," 1926). Athird promises, "This newwayinsures
charm, immaculacy, and exquisiteness under the most trying conditions"
("In the Lives," 1926). A dual meaning underlies these phrases, where men
struation not only robs women of their identity as women, but modernity's
"social demands" and "trying conditions" will magnify this lack. "Immacu
lacy" also invites associations with purity on the highest level via its reli
gious significations. Thus, the woman of modernity can move decorously
out into the public sphere, but because her body is her enemy, she must
remain constantly vigilant that her inherent physical flaw does not inhibit
her ability to present a pleasing, even beatified, front to the modern world.

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
54 "Ending Women's Greatest Hygienic Mistake"

The ideological potency of these signs also can be understood in rela

tionship to their implied opposites. Since "confidence" has a double mean
ing, as both self-assurance and inclusion/secrets shared, its oppositional
term can be read as both fear and ostracism/ignorance. The woman who
uses Kotex first is granted "confidence" in the sense that she receives the
certainty that her menstruation is not detectable (and thereby not offen
sive), preserving her as "immaculate" as opposed to filthy, unsanitary, and
demonic. More important, because she has met the demands of modernity
by keeping her menses "in confidence," she also is afforded entry into the
secrets of womanhood itself, how to "charm" and be charming. Presum
ably, without Kotex, women are damned to lose sexual potency as well.
These therapeutic appeals draw their ideological force from the invo
cation of the discourses of science and medical authority. Characteristic
of 1920s and 1930s advertising, science was heralded as the new source
of truth and the foundation of modern attitudes, behaviors, and material
satisfactions (Ewen 1976; Lears 1983; Marchand 1985; Pope 1983). In
the discursive universe of modern advertising, a scientific endorsement
was proof of the absolute superiority of the product. As a corollary to this
principle, anything not deemed scientific was old-fashioned, obsolete, and
even dangerous. To not purchase Kotex was to risk continued ill health,
private mortification, and public shame; in effect, women without Kotex
were missing out on modernity.
Scientific and medical endorsement in the Kotex advertisements is

both implied and explicit. In the earlier ads the product was identified as
"the wonderful absorbent which science contributed to war hospital use"
("Insure Poise," 1921) or endorsed by "nurses in France [who] first sug
gested their manufacture for universal use" ("Oh, yes," 1922). Later ads
more emphatically trumpeted the product as a scientific development that
triumphed over what the text insinuated were women's previously foolish
and hazardous ways. For example, the ad "Charming, Immaculate, Exqui
site" (1924) proposes:

The modern woman lives every day of her life. Fills every day with activ
ity, unmarred by what still remains a serious problem to thousands of
women less sophisticated. Dances, clubs, bridge, the demands of busi
ness?all of these are met confidently, surely?for it was unfair, under
old conditions, that the average woman should spend at least one sixth of
her time minus self-confidence; often in fear. With the coming of Kotex
these hazards to one s peace of mind passed on. The habits of women

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Roseann M. Mandziuk 55

were changed. Modern scientific protection succeeded makeshift meth

ods. Today, you need lose never a single precious hour. (Emphasis in
the original.)

This passage illustrates how the Kotex campaign strategically uses

the authority of science to define the social implications of menstruation.
"Less sophisticated" is equated with "hazards" and "makeshift methods,"
implying that women who do not use the product are doomed to suffer ill
health by their self-destructive ways. The ad implies that pre-Kotex times
were a dark age when women trembled in fear for their lives and their pub
lic reputations, and it implies that those without it deserve to remain con
fined in fear for their ignorance of modern consumer ways. Alternatively,
the Kotex woman is whole, filling "every day" with her modern pursuits,
thanks to science and the "secret advantages" it gives to women.
The authoritativeness of Kotex s scientific claims was bolstered sig
nificantly in 1924 when "Ellen J. Buckland, Graduate Nurse" was added
as their author. This attribution to a specific medical professional lent
credibility and also exemplified the common advertising strategy of per
sonalization through ingratiation. Buckland, who actually was employed
as "supervisor of women of the cellucotton division" of Kimberly-Clark
in 1922 ("Nurse Buckland," 2010), became in the ads the character who
would forestall the embarrassment of menstruation by providing trial
offers, booklets, and a specific person to write to for confidential infor
mation. The texts attributed to her evince a personal tone through direct
address, establishing the legitimacy of Kotex via the discourses of public
health campaigns and Buckland s role as the woman consumer s personal
confidante. She not only endorsed Kotex for its medical superiority, but
as a woman she also entreated her readers to "just address me" to secure a
product that "will make a great difference in your viewpoint, in your peace
of mind and your health" ("What the World," 1926).
Later advertisements, especially those attributed to Nurse Buckland,
proclaimed Kotex to be a scientific and medical salvation in character
izations such as "the scientifically correct way approved by Doctors and
Nurses" ("Every Mother," 1925), "Sciences solution to women's oldest
problem" ("When 5,000,000 Women," 1925), and a modern scientific
discovery that provides a "simple solution of the greatest hygienic handi
caps" ("In the Lives," 1926). In light of such amazing advances, the ads
argue, it is no wonder that "mothers everywhere" have found a reason to

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 56 "Ending Women's Greatest Hygienic Mistake"

"give thanks their daughters need never know the old fashioned make
shifts?unhygienic, dangerous to health that this new way supplanted"
("Every Mother," 1925). Whether or not she was actually the author of
these statements, Buckland embodied the scientific and medical authority
that was ready to embrace women, but only if they admitted to the wrongs
wrought by their bodies and instead stepped onto consumption s pathway
to modernity.
Taken together, the verbal strategies of containment in the advertise
ments exemplify and give meaning to the visual. The textual emphasis on
daintiness, security, and confidence further underscore the public and
social dimensions of menstruation. The strategic combination of avoid
ance of embarrassment and engagement in leisure activity produces an
insidiously passive role for the modern woman. Not only should she look
pleasing, free of any flaws that detract from her decorative function, but
she also must also confess her former ignorance in the face of modern sci
entific progress. Consequently, menstruation should not be talked about
among women except with code words and circumlocutions, and it cannot
ever be a factor that intervenes in any of the modern woman's activities.
Ultimately, the ads underscore the idea that discourse about menstruation
is best left to those with superior knowledge, the scientist and the medical
professional, who will give to women the only acceptable words for such
speech.

Conclusions

In each historical period, the meaning of the female body is inscribed into
"an ideological construction of community emblematic of the period"
(Bordo 1993,168), such that it becomes the repository for and reflection
of gendered power relationships. In the early twentieth-century transfor
mation that led to a modern culture of consumption, the use of women's
bodies as the site for the "normalization" of female behaviors accelerated,
with advertising as the primary mechanism for the institutionalization
of power relationships that turned women against themselves. The first
five years of Kotex advertising illustrates the formation of such discursive
rules. These texts demonstrate that in the intersection of consumer culture,
patriarchy, and women's legitimate desires for economic and emotional
benefits from modernity, women are not so much duped by ideology as
they are contained through their quest to achieve what culture defines as

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Roseann M. Mandziuk 57

"normal" for them. In the case of menstruation, modernity demanded of

women a slender and passive outer form, with an internal admission of
guilt, and ultimate confession, about the horrors of their bodies. While the
products did provide women with a new freedom and mobility, the cost
was their ability to truly participate in the shaping of modernity.
To construct this ideology, the Kotex advertisements strategically
opposed the new against the old, the modern against the obsolete; such
appeals "were designed to repudiate antique beliefs which had no place in
the social style of modern industrial life" (Ewen 1976,43). The invalidation
of the former practices thus served an important ideological function in the
solidification of modernity. In relation to the cultural meaning of menstru
ation, Kotex s scientific verification of what it heralded as a new, delicate,
inoffensive, and safe method effectively forced women to now perceive of
their former practices, and themselves, as inherently dirty, offensive, and
unsafe, even if they were not understood as such previously.
By 1926, Kotex could assert with authority that they were "throwing
the light of scientific frankness on woman's oldest problem" by vanquish
ing the "many ills ... traced to the use of unsafe or unsanitary makeshift
methods" ("Throwing the Light," 1926). Rather than a natural process,
menstruation was a problem, mistake, and hazard, something so horrible
that modern sensibilities could not tolerate its direct discussion. For those
who did not enact the modern discourse about menstruation, the ads
made the penalties clear: remain outside modernity, never to accompany
those "8 in 10 women in the better walks of life"; suffer the consequences
of the "hazardous hygienic methods of yesterday"; and make the "mistake"
that will cost you your femininity and your health. By banishing frank dis
course about menstruation to the closed doors of doctors' offices or the

pristine pages of medical pamphlets, the advertisements effectively posi

tioned menses as a cultural taboo.

The ideological patterns underlying our contemporary discourse

regarding menstruation continue to recycle the ideological strategies from
this first public campaign to use women's bodies as a site of modern con
sumerism, and it is among these contemporary discursive practices that
the significance of Kotex's campaign also must be read. Menstruation
continues to be used to mark women as "cursed," and therefore justifi
ably objectified and ostracized. From Kotex's initial marketing of a single
product specifically for menstruation, the "feminine hygiene" market has
expanded vastly to include not only a variety of products, but also vigor

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 58 "Ending Women's Greatest Hygienic Mistake"

ous multimedia campaigns in addition to print. With the explosion of

this discourse has come a further solidification of the ideological equa
tions revealed in the early Kotex campaign, particularly the mortification
of women's bodies and the need for constant vigilance. Just as Foucault
proposes in his "repressive hypothesis" in regard to sexuality, that as dis
course increases so does containment (1980, 3-35), so I argue that it also
is in the explosion of discourse about menstruation that social control and
power is exercised. Product lines include a range of categories, while the
product names, such as Stayfree, Carefree, and New Freedom, even more
explicitly co-opt the rhetoric of liberation in the service of repression. In
the discourse of consumer culture today, women are incapacitated by their
bodies not just once a month, but every single day. A woman's body has
now been mortified as the enemy against which she needs constant "pro
tection."
The success of the early Kotex campaign indicates the potency of the
intersection of ideologies of gender and consumption, such that in the
cultural marketplace, a woman's natural biological processes are rendered
antithetical to modern femininity. Menstruation, the sign of women's
bodily threat to patriarchy, became resituated in discourse as the very
thing that robs women of their female identity and self-worth. These texts
achieved what Joan Cocks refers to as "the strait-jacketing by the word of
that which is fluid, unspeakable, excessive" (1991,144). Because the initial
Kotex ads mark the point of the expansion and acceleration of discourse
about menstruation, they provide significant insight into how the nexus
of commercial and medical interests at the turn of the century set a funda
mental paradox in motion for women: either relinquish claims to defining
the meaning of the female body or remain always outside the enticement
and rewards of modern culture.

Roseann M. Mandziuk is professor of communication studies at Texas State University.

She is the author of several articles about cultural images of women, in advertising,
True Story magazine, and documentary films. She is co-author of Sojourner Truth as
Orator: Wit, Story, and Song (Greenwood, 1997). Her current work focuses on women's
museums and public memory.

Note

1. Regarding menstruations cultural meanings, see Birke and Best 1982; Bruns
berg 1998; Buckley and Gottlieb 1988; Chrisler 2002; Delaney Lupton, and

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Roseann M. Mandziuk 59

Toth 1976; Houppert 1999; Kissling 2006; Martin 1990; Merskin 1999; and
Shuttleworth 1990. On medical and scientific views of women, see Birke
1986; Hubbard, Henifin, and Fried 1982; Jacobus, Keller, and Shuttleworth
1990; Mano and Fosket 2009; Martin 1987; Shuttleworth 1990; Theriot,
1993.

Works Cited

Birke, Lynda. 1986. Women, Feminism, and Biology: The Feminist Challenge. New
York: Methuen.

Birke, Lynda, and Sandy Best. 1982. "Changing Minds: Women, Biology, and
the Menstrual Cycle." In Biological Woman: The Convenient Myth, ed. Ruth
Hubbard, Mary Sue Henifin, and Barbara Fried, 161-84. Cambridge:
Schenkman.

Bordo, Susan. 1990. "Reading the Slender Body." In Body/Politics: Women and
the Discourses of Science, ed. Mary Jacobus, Evelyn Fox Keller, and Sally
Shuttleworth, 83-112. New York: Routledge.
-. 1993. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Brumberg. Joan Jacobs. 1998. The Body Project: An Intimate History of American
Girls. New York: Vintage.
Buckley, Thomas, and Alma Gottlieb. 1988. Blood Magic: The Anthropology of
Menstruation. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Burstyn, Joan N. 1984. Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood. New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Chrisler, Joan C. 2002. "Hormone Hostages: The Cultural Legacy of PMS as a
Legal Defense." In Charting a New Course for Feminist Psychology, ed. Lynn
H. Collins, Michelle R. Dunlap, and Joan C. Chrisler, 238-52. Westport,
CT: Praeger.
Cocks, Joan. 1991. "Augustine, Nietzsche, and Contemporary Body Politics."
Differences 3:144-58.
Delaney, Janice, Mary Jane Lupton, and Emily Toth. 1976. The Curse: A Cultural
History of Menstruation. New York: E. Dutton.
Dinnerstein, Dorothy. 1976. The Mermaid and theMinotar: Sexual Arrangements
and Human Malaise. New York: Harper and Row.
Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Deirdre English. 1978. For Her Own Good: ISO Years of
the Experts'Advice to Women. New York: Anchor.
Endress, Kathleen L., and Theresa Lueck. 1995. Women's Periodicals in the United
States: Consumer Magazines. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Ewen, Stuart. 1976. Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of
the Consumer Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill.

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 60 "Ending Women's Greatest Hygienic Mistake"

"The First Kotex Sanitary Napkin Ad Campaign." Museum of Menstruation.

http : / / www.mum.org/urkotex.htm.
Foucault, Michel. 1980. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. Trans. Robert Hurley.
New York: Vintage.
Goffman, Erving. 1979. Gender Advertisements. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
Houppert, Karen. 1999. The Curse: Confronting the Last Unmentionable Taboo:
Menstruation. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Hubbard, Ruth, Mary Sue Henifin, and Barbara Fried. 1982. Biological Woman:
The Convenient Myth. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman.
"Is Advertising Read?" 1927. Printers Ink, April 21,74-75.
Jacobus, Mary, Evelyn Fox Keller, and Sally Shuttleworth. 1990. Body/Politics:
Women and the Discourses of Science. New York: Routledge.
Kaite, Berkeley. 1987. "The Body and Femininity in Feminine Hygiene
Advertising." In Culture and Communication?Methodology, Behaviour,
Artifacts, and Institutions, ed. Sari Thomas, 159-67. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Kissling, Elizabeth. 2006. Capitalizing on the Curse: The Business of Menstruation.
Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner.
Lears, T.J.Jackson. 1983. "From Salvation to Self Realization: Advertising
and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture, 1880-1930." In The
Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History 1880-1980, ed.
Richard Wightman Fox and T.J.Jackson Lears, 1-38. New York: Pantheon.
Linton, David. 2007. "Men in Menstrual Product Advertising, 1920-1949."
Women and Health 46:99-114.
Mano, Laura, and Jennifer Ruth Fosket. 2009. "Scripting the Body:
Pharmaceuticals and the (Re)making of Menstruation." Signs 34:925-49.
Marchand, Roland. 1985. Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for
Modernity 1920-1940. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press.
Martin, Emily. 1987. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction.
Boston: Beacon Press.

-. 1990. "Science and Women's Bodies: Forms of Anthropological

Knowledge." In Body/Politics: Women and the Discourses of Science, ed. Mary
Jacobus, Evelyn Fox Keller and Sally Shuttleworth, 69-82. New York:
Routledge.
Merskin, Debra L. 1999. "What Every Girl Should Know: An Analysis of
Feminine Hygiene Advertising." In Growing up Girls: Popular Culture and
the Construction of Identity, ed. Sharon Mazzarella and Nora Pecora, 113-32.
New York: Peter Lang.
Nasaw, David. 2000. The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst. New York:
Houghton Mifflin.

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Roseann M. Mandziuk 61

"Nurse Buckland Lived!" 2010. Museum of Menstruation, http://www.mum

.org/kotsmads.htm.
Pope, Daniel. 1983. The Making of Modern Advertising. New York: Basic Books.
Shuttleworth, Sally. 1990. "Female Circulation: Medical Discourse and Popular
Advertising in the Mid-Victorian Era." In Body/Politics: Women and the
Discourses of Science, ed. Mary Jacobus, Evelyn Fox Keller, and Sally
Shuttleworth, 47-68. New York: Routledge.
Theriot, Nancy. 1993. "Women's Voices in Nineteenth-Century Medical
Discourse: A Step Toward Deconstructing Science." Signs 19:1-31.
Welter, Barbara. 1976. Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth
Century. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.

List of Advertisements

"Ask for Them by Name." 1921. Ladies Home Journal, May, http://www.mum.
org/kotmy21 .htm.
"At Stores and Shops That Cater to Women." 1921. Ladies' Home Journal, January.
http : / /www.mum.org/kotexadwords.htm.
"Charming, Immaculate, Exquisite." 1924. Good Housekeeping, February, 223.
"Confidence." 1923. Good Housekeeping, June, 109.
"Every Mother Should Tell Her Daughter This." 1925. Good Housekeeping,
February, 190.
"Have These Women Solved a Hygienic Problem That Still Remains a Serious
One For You?" 1925. Good Housekeeping, September, 127.
"In the Lives of Other Women." 1926. Good Housekeeping, July, 155.
"Inexpensive, Easy to Buy, Easy to Dispose Of." 1922. Good Housekeeping, July,
150.
"Inexpensive, and Very Convenient." 1923. Good Housekeeping, February, 109.
"Insure Poise in the Daintiest Frocks." 1921. Good Housekeeping, August, 123.
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess.BH0230/pg. 1 /.
"Meets the Most Exacting Needs." 1922. Good Housekeeping, January, 123.
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess.BH0232/pg. 1 /.
"Misty Gowns and Filmy Frocks." 1925. Good Housekeeping, August, 168.
"A Most Convenient Vacation Item." 1923. Good Housekeeping, August, 105.
"Oh, Yes?and a Box of Kotex, Too." 1922. Good Housekeeping, March, 160.
"One Problem Less." 1922. Good Housekeeping, December, 150.
Only 2 Women in 10 Today." 1926. Good Housekeeping, May, 191.
"This Gives Back the Days Women Used to Lose." 1926. Good Housekeeping,
January, 183.
"This Is Ending Women's Greatest Hygienic Mistake." 1926. Good Housekeeping,
November, 117.

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
62 "Ending Women's Greatest Hygienic Mistake"

"This Will Make a Great Difference in Your Life." 1925. Good Housekeeping,
December, 135.
"Throwing the Light of Scientific Frankness." 1926. Good Housekeeping,
December, 128.
"Traveling or at Home." 1922. Good Housekeeping, October, 103.
"You Live Every Day?Meet Every Day?Unhandicapped." 1926. Good
Housekeeping, August, 112.
"You Never Lose a Single Moment s Precious Charm." 1925. Good Housekeeping,
October, 107.
"Your Sheerest, Gayest Gowns." 1926. Good Housekeeping, September, 173.
"What the World Expects of Women Today." 1926. Good Housekeeping, October,
215. http : //library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess.BH0255/pg. 1 /.
"When 5,000,000 Women." 1925. Good Housekeeping, April, 249.

This content downloaded from

66.163.28.139 on Wed, 17 May 2023 20:13:56 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms