Vintage Tampon and Maxi Pad Advertising

In the words of her mother, Betty, Sally Draper "became a woman" this week on Mad Men. During her date with former neighbor Glenn Bishop at the Museum of Natural History, Sally gets a stomach ache. She runs to the bathroom and discovers she's started her period. Next, Sally flees the bathroom and takes a $25 cab back to the Francis' haunted mansion and into her mother's arms. After trying to act older, drinking coffee, and talking about her "boyfriend" with stepmom, Megan, in Manhattan, when confronted with a literal sign of growing up, Sally Draper just wants to be with her mom. Betty shows a rare moment of maternal warmth, holding Sally and explaining that her period is nothing to be worried about; it simply means everything's working and that one day she can have a baby, Betty tells her daughter.

The mother-daughter interaction about Sally's "change" comes off as surprisingly healthy. But the tampon and maxi pad ads of the time didn't treat this natural bodily function with such a matter-of-fact attitude. Whether with a distraction (hey, look, a pretty dress!) or the rhetoric of freedom, advertisers tried to sell a product women have never really been thrilled to buy. Let's look at some vintage tampon and maxi pad ads, which women like Betty or Sally would have seen in their day.