I got my period at age eleven. I wanted it to come earlier, mistakenly thinking my boobs would come along with it. A few cramps and no boobs later, I rued the day our school ever showed us that stupid development movie and handed out little pink "starter kits," packed with panty liners, maxi pads, deodorant and the dreaded tampon. I didn't quite understand how that was going to go up there comfortably; like my butt, it was exit only (hey, I was eleven!). A few more messy maxi-pad periods later, however, I was ready to give it a try one morning. I was so tense I missed school that day but by about 1:30 I had successfully inserted—well, almost successfully, it took a few more periods for me to figure out I wasn't really supposed to feel it while it was up there—a tampon, what I figure is the best way we have, so far, to deal with Aunt Flow. I'm still waiting on those boobs, but in the mean time, let's take a little walk down Memory Lane with the history of menstrual products.
GURL.com takes us on a tour of the history of menstrual products.
We're all familiar with "the rag."
By the time American cities were bustling in the 1700s, menstruating women were wearing simple cloth rags similar to their babies' diapers. They would wash and reuse these rag pads, which were often embroidered and personalized. Ever heard the colloquialism "She's on the rag"? Well, she literally was.
But what the hell is "menstrual slapping?"
During the 19th century, a custom in many Jewish, Slavic, and Lithuanian families was The Menstrual Slap. A girl's first period (officially called the "menarche") was marked by an immediate slap to her face by her mother.
The slap was meant to usher the girl into womanhood, and possibly to "slap some sense" into this newly fertile girl so she wouldn't become pregnant before she was married. So basically, the menstrual slap was the original form of abstinence-only sex education.
Still seems better than the "menstrual cup," the toilet plunger of periods:
In 1867, a patent was granted for a small reusable rubber cup to collect menstrual blood when inserted in the vagina. The invention didn't receive much attention until 1937, when author Leona Chalmers received a patent for a similar device and introduced it commercially. In the late 1950s, Chalmers joined Robert P. Oreck to develop and market the Tassette (little cup in French/English). Ad campaigns for the Tassette ranged from the incomplete and inexplicable, "Tassette - Not a Tampon, Not a Napkin" (Uh, so what is it?) to the absurd. "New - Monthly Protection as Dainty as a Dew-Kissed Flower."
Unfortunately, the Tassette cup never made a profit and went off the market in 1967 due in part to the fact that women could reuse the same cup for five years at time and because some customers didn't like repeated washing of the product.
All these and more (moon huts?) at GURL.com's History of Menstrual Products.
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