Tampax Advertisement (1978)
An advertisement for Tampax, OK magazine, 1978. It’s amazing to see such open marketing for period products on the back cover of a magazine from over 40 years ago, and I imagine so important for kids/teenagers at the time to see clear and informative marketing on something that could be bought at the shop.
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The invention of the tampon is credited to Earle Haas, who applied for the patent in 1931 after desiring to create something more convenient than the rags that his wife and other women at the time were having to use. A friend of his had informed him she used a sponge, which gave him the idea to produce an absorbent cotton plug that could be inserted and removed without contact. He failed to get people interested with his invention, and so sold the patent and trademark to Gertrude Tendrich, who started the Tampax company.
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Tendrick sewed the tampons herself at home originally, before they were mass-produced in a factory, and from their first inception they were designed to be flushable and biodegradable. The business expanded exponentially in the 1940s, as World War 2 pushed more women into the workforce and an educational department was established to better equipt sanitary product users with the information they needed. Tampax also produced cotton bandages and surgical dressings at the time to help the war effort.
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Competition grew in the 1960s as new companies appeared selling their own versions, but Tampax still dominated the market. By the 1970s advertisements were appearing on US television, and in the 1980s important conversations about Toxic Shock Syndrome started to appear, highlighting the risks of not changing a tampon regularly. It was also later realised the cylindrical shape isn’t the best fit, and towards the millennium the design was changed, with the Tampax Pearl released in 2002 to massive success. Today, Tampax is still a household name, with products like the Pocket Pearl that can easily be taken on the go.
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Whilst menstrual products throughout time have been marketed towards women, it’s important that we’re seeing language change now to include other people that bleed, including transgender men, non-binary and genderless communities. Access to period products isn’t universal, with financial barriers and colonial violence depriving people of menstrual dignity and care. Groups like Cysters do amazing work gathering information and advocating for menstrual justice, especially for communities that historically have been excluded from these conversations.
