SPEAKER_01: Amazing, fascinating stories of inventions, ideas and innovations. Yes, this is the podcast about the things that have helped to shape our lives. Podcasts from the BBC World Service are supported by advertising.
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SPEAKER_02: I wish somebody would tell me what Kotex is. That was a bemused young American man at a dinner party in the 1920s. Nobody would, of course. Kotex was a code word, an arcane reference to a secret man was not meant to know. Kotex was and remains one of the US's most popular brands of menstrual pad. But to tell you the truth, I had never heard of it. To Shara Vostral, author of Under Wraps, this is unsurprising. One of the defining missions of menstrual products such as pads, tampons and cups, says Vostral, is discretion. The rest of the world simply isn't supposed to know whether a woman is menstruating or not. Not for nothing was one early brand of tampons called fibs. Not everyone approved the wink implicit in that name.
SPEAKER_08: Fib is a polite word for lie.
SPEAKER_02: That was the complaint of one woman to market researchers.
SPEAKER_08: Fibs suggests something nasty, secretive, unclean. If I wanted to buy tampons at a store, I would not buy fibs just because of the awful name.
SPEAKER_02: Nevertheless, women have had good reason to keep quiet about menstruation. In 1868, the vice president of the American Medical Association noted that female physicians could not be trusted during their monthly infirmity. Five years later, the American doctor and sex educator Edward Clarke argued that girls should be removed from the classroom during their periods. It was too demanding to expect them to think and menstruate at the same time. The writer Eliza Duffy sharply responded that Dr Clarke had no objection to women performing strenuous housework during their periods. Perhaps he just wanted to deny education to girls. Perhaps indeed. It was hardly surprising that women preferred to keep the details of their monthly cycle to themselves using home-made approaches. But in the late 19th century, as home-made products were replaced by manufactured commodities in other parts of life, why not in this case? The challenge was how to advertise and sell a product that society found unmentionable. The first recorded attempts to sell disposable pads date to the 1890s, but the key technological breakthrough came during the First World War. Kimberly Clarke, a paper company, used a new material called cellulocotton to make bandages. Cellucotton was made of wood pulp. It was much cheaper than cotton and far more absorbent. At the end of the war, as Kimberly Clarke was looking for new markets, they received letters from nurses explaining that they were using the cellulocotton for something other than bandages. Clearly there was a business opportunity, but it seemed risky. Wasn't the product too taboo to advertise or even to purchase? Kimberly Clarke launched anyway, settling on the mysterious name Kotex. It stands for cotton texture, but more importantly, young men at dinner parties had no idea what Kotex meant. The new product caught on fast. For decades, women had been finding some independence by taking jobs in factories and offices. Whatever Dr Edward Clarke might believe, they could think and menstruate at the same time. And they needed a convenient, disposable product. To everyone's surprise, Kimberly Clarke had a hit. The first detailed study of the growing menstrual technology market was conducted in 1927 by Lillian Gilbreth, a pioneer in applying scientific ideas from psychology and engineering to commercial problems of marketing, ergonomics and design. She noted that modern women needed to be out and about. She emphasised that women wanted a product that was discreetly packaged. But while the products themselves were made to be used in secrecy, soon there was nothing secretive about the way they were marketed. The booming demand encouraged manufacturers to bombard consumers with advertisements, albeit euphemistic ones. Men may have been mystified in the 1920s. By the 1930s, some felt under siege. The future Nobel literature laureate William Faulkner complained, I seem to be so out of touch with the Kotex age here that I can't
SPEAKER_04: seem to think of anything myself. It takes quite a broflake to blame Kotex adverts
SPEAKER_02: for your writer's block, but it says something about how quickly the previously unutterable technology had entered the cultural mainstream. The sell you cotton pad was followed by the commercial tampon, patented in 1933 and marketed as Tampax. The first menstrual cup appeared soon afterwards in 1937, patented by a woman, Leona Watson-Chalmers. Then came the war. Menstrual products were marketed as a way to help women participate in the war effort. One Kotex ad showed a teenager moping, her broom and mop abandoned. Who would have thought you'd turn out to be a deserter from a dust mop and a few dishes
SPEAKER_04: when mom's counting on you. These days, women spend about $3 billion a
SPEAKER_02: year on sanitary products in the US alone. They have long since entered the culture. From a Western perspective, the old sense of embarrassment is laughable. 21st century adverts have mocked the tropes of an earlier age of blue liquids in sterile laboratories interspersed with shots of women in tight white shorts riding white horses. But in many parts of the world, it's no joke. Consider the case of Arunachalam Muruganantham, a school dropout from southern India, who in 1998 decided his wife deserved hygienic, affordable pads rather than the dirty cloth she was having to use. I wouldn't even use it to clean my scooter, he said. He began experiments to produce a simple pad-making machine, something that could bring both jobs and cheap pads to women across India. His wife walked out on him. So did his widowed mother. What he was doing was simply too humiliating. Muruganantham is now celebrated for his invention. And yes, his wife Shanti did come back. But his setbacks give a sense of just how powerful the stigma remains in many parts of the world. That stigma is one reason why, according to UNESCO, one in ten girls in sub-Saharan Africa miss school during their periods. Dr Edward Clark might have approved, but this is a serious matter. After falling behind, some girls drop out entirely. Rumour alone is not to blame. There's also a lack of access to clean water and lockable washrooms. And, of course, there's the problem that Arunachalam Muruganantham was trying to solve. Young women can't afford the menstrual products that others take for granted. William Faulkner may have felt alienated by the Kotex age. But nearly a century later, many women are still waiting for that age to arrive.
SPEAKER_06: Our journey into the hidden world of sanitary products began with Shara Vostral's Under Wraps. For a full list of our sources, please see bbcworldservice.com slash 50things.
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