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Pre World War I: What did women use for sanitary products?
newspaper
ragswool
Sea Sponge
Birdseye cloth
knit pad
The Before• Prior to the First World War, there were few
commercially made feminine hygiene products, certainly not disposable
• Women made their own sanitary napkins out of materials available to them at home
• Few domestic or medical manuals had information about the best materials or designs for sanitary napkins
• Knowledge of materials and folding designs was an oral culture, passed from older females to younger females in the family
The Turning Point
• World War I 1914-1918• Was supposed to “be over
by Christmas”• Advances in military
weapons, particularly the machine gun, caused casualties on a scale previously unknown
• Bandages were made from 100% cotton—expensive to make and couldn’t keep up with demand
Kimberly-Clark
• Paper mill company started in 1872 in Wisconsin
• Developed a more absorbent substitute for cotton, called Cellucotton, from wood pulp
• Made bandages cheap enough to throw away
Crafty Nurses !
• American nurses in France begin to use the cellucotton bandages as disposable sanitary napkins
The After:Cellucotton Products
Company• Subsidiary set up by
Kimberly-Clark for the manufacturing of Kotex (from [K]otten-like texture) because they didn’t want to “ruin (the company’s) good reputation” by bringing menstruation to a public forum 1920
I don’t get it…
• K-C had trouble selling product
• Couldn’t get magazines to take their advertising
• Women were reluctant to buy product because it meant asking a (most likely male) clerk for a box even though K-C invented the word Kotex so women would not have to say “sanitary napkin”