If you’re one of those dudes who gets all completely freaked
out at the mere mention of menstruation or any of its associated commercial
products, you might want to consider not reading this post. Some other things
you might want to consider include growing the fuck up.
As a person who is biologically female, I’ve often wondered
what women did before the days of tampons and sanitary napkins – although
normally, these feelings would be superseded by an overwhelming feeling of
gratitude that I was born in the days of routine vaccinations, indoor plumbing,
and women’s rights. My child psychologist (because I had that kind of
childhood) once told me, to my horror, that when she was a girl self-adhesive
sanitary napkins hadn’t been invented yet, so she had to wear a belt to which
the sanitary napkin would attach on both ends, in the manner, I imagined, of a
loincloth.
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| More or less. |
What did women use before the invention of sanitary napkins
and tampons? For centuries, women relied on strips of folded cloth. The
earliest recorded mention of sanitary napkins appears in the Suda, a 10th
century Byzantine encyclopedia of the classical world. Fourth-century Greek
philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, Hypatia, is also said to have
rejected a gentleman caller by flinging her used menstrual cloth at him.
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| My kind of woman. |
Tampons were
not unheard of in the ancient world. They are mentioned in the world’s
oldest medical document, the Papyrus Ebers, which
discusses the Egyptian use of tampons made of soft papyrus as far back as the
fifteenth century B.C., aka a damn long time ago. The ancient Greeks wrapped
lint around small slivers of wood to make tampons (ouch). Roman women used tampons
made of wool, while Japanese women used paper tampons that had to be changed 10
to 12 times a day (omg fuck that). Native Hawaiian women fashioned tampons from
a furry, native fern known as hapu’u, and throughout Asia, women still use
mosses, grasses, and other plant materials to make tampons to this day.
The first cotton tampons were actually invented for use in
medicine in the 18th century, when they were treated with salicylic
acid (which you may recognize as the main ingredient in aspirin) and used to
staunch the bleeding from gunshot wounds. Tampons are still classified medical
devices in many countries today, including the United States, where they may
continue to serve their original purpose in the operating theater.
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| *snort* Image by Shattonsbury~commonswiki at Wikimedia Commons. |
The first commercial sanitary napkins were available near
the end of the 19th century, with the first American sanitary napkin
being Lister’s Towels, marketed by Johnson & Johnson in 1896. Sanitary
napkins failed to catch on with American women for some time, due to a combination
of (allegedly) widespread prudishness and the fact that they were cost
prohibitive for many women.
Throughout the early years of the 20th century,
women continued to deal with their periods much as they had always done, by
using homemade products. Women’s underwear of the time was crotchless, so women
held cloth sanitary napkins in place by pinning them to their underwear or
wearing a homemade sanitary belt. Most women fashioned homemade menstrual pads
out of the same absorbent fabric they used for their babies’ diapers. For
traveling, women would stuff a cloth sack with flattened cotton. The used
cotton could be thrown away and the reusable sack filled afresh as needed. Many
women wore specially designed bloomers or sanitary aprons to protect their
clothes from stains.
Disposable pads entered the scene in the 1920s, when Kotex
pads were first marketed. Shopkeepers would save women the embarrassment of
asking for these products out loud by placing a money box on the counter next to
the Kotex so female customers could take a box and pay discreetly. It was
during this decade, too, that women started wearing closed-crotch underwear,
which made it easier to hold the newly fashionable disposable sanitary napkins
in place. Though the first self-adhesive menstrual pads appeared in 1969, women
continued wearing sanitary belts and napkins until the early 1980s. I didn’t realize they hung around that long,
because after the aforementioned session with the child psychologist, I went
home and asked my mother if she had ever needed a belt to hold up her maxi pad.
She replied, “No, Mom bought me the self-adhesive ones.”
Way to be progressive, Grandma.
