Enjoy These Vintage Menstruation Brochures
Remember that day in fifth grade when boys and girls were divided into different classes? The way children learn about how their bodies change during puberty has itself changed over the years. In my own experience, the school has outsourced most of this work to a small booklet produced by maxipad.
I don’t remember what company it was, but chances are this brochure or something similar is in this online collection of sex brochures from the Menstruation Museum that Erin Blakemore recently wrote about in the Washington Post . In a 1932 booklet from Kotex, the fictional Marjorie Mae gets a conversation from her mother about birds and bees . In 1940, Kotex revamped the booklet to make it more casual, and this time it included life hacks such as stamping the date of your period on the calendar.
These books provide a curious study of what feminine hygiene manufacturers think parents want their children to read. Yes, you will have your period; here’s how to use the maxipad; please don’t ask any more questions about sex. In some ways useful, but hardly gives a complete idea of what a young person with a uterus needs to know.
I have not yet found a booklet in the collection that would match my memories of fifth grade, but perhaps you will. And tell us: did your gym teacher just handed them out and awkwardly answered the questions? Or have you received a more useful education than what is written in these books? And also, since I have wanted to know for many years: what did the boys get?