That meant leftover scraps of fabric, soft strips of bark, or whatever else was available and absorbent.
But the tools left much to be desired. They were often bulky and unwieldy, and they had to be washed and dried—which meant they would be displayed publicly, a less-than-desirable situation in a culture that stigmatized menstruation. In , the first pack of Kotex crossed a drugstore counter. Thus began a new era: that of the disposable menstrual product.
Kotex were made with Cellucotton, a hyper-absorbent plant-based material that had been developed during World War I for use as medical bandaging. Nurses started to repurpose the material for menstrual pads, and the practice stuck.
Some physically active menstruators, like dancers and athletes, gravitated toward another emerging product: tampons. The tampons of the s were not too different than the ones on drugstore shelves today, generally made of a wad of dense cotton or a paper-like material attached to a string. What all of the new products had in common was disposability. Disposables also meant that menstruators would have to stock up each month, locking them in to decades of purchases. The appeal and ubiquity of disposables grew as more women entered the workforce.
You can't let your body slow you down, is the message. The outcome was a massive shift in the market. By the s, chemists were busily developing sophisticated plastics and other synthetics. The technologies leapt forward so quickly that manufacturers found themselves searching for new markets into which they could incorporate their new materials.
Advances in sticky-stuff technology bolstered the use of flexible plastics, allowing the pads to be attached to underwear directly rather than hanging off a complicated, bulky belt system. And designers found ways to weave thin polyester fibers into the squishy part of the pad to wick fluid away into the absorbent cores , which were getting thinner as superabsorbent materials grew more sophisticated.
All these product developments sound incremental, says Lara Freidenfelds , a historian who interviewed dozens of women about their experiences with menstruation for her book The Modern Period, but they add up to big changes in experience.
In the early part of the 20 th century many doctors, as well as members of the public, were squeamish about the idea that women—especially young women—might come into contact with their genitals during tampon insertion, says Elizabeth Arveda Kissling , a gender studies expert at Eastern Washington University and author of Capitalizing on the Curse: The Business of Menstruation. The first recorded U.
Others suggested stainless steel or even glass. By the s, plastics could be molded into smooth, thin, flexible rounded shapes—perfect, some designers thought, for tampon applicators.
A thin layer often helps hold the tightly-packed cotton part together. In some cases, the string is made of polyester or polypropylene.
By the middle of the century, the major players in the U. To stand out, companies came up with more and more ways to offer their customers discreet purchase, use, and disposal options. An obsession with discretion was longstanding. Women would cut them out and hand them silently across the pharmacy counter, receiving a nearly unmarked box in return.
Different women had different ways of dealing with their periods each month and there was little social expectation that all women would deal with menstruation in exactly the same way. At the same time, menstruation was a commonly accepted if still socially concealed reason that women might not be in the public eye during their periods.
But between women, particularly women of the same family or who shared a household, it was normal to manage menstrual supplies like handmade pads or rags together. Some women threw away their bloody cloths, writes Freidenfelds, but others washed and reused them. Like a number of other products that first came to market in the s, Kotex sanitary pads originated as a wartime invention. Kimberly-Clark, an American paper products company formed in the s, produced bandages from a material called Cellucotton for World War I.
Cellucotton, which was made of wood pulp,, was five times as absorbent as cotton bandages but much less expensive. In , with the war over, Kimberly-Clark executives were looking for ways to use Cellucotton in peacetime. So compression of absorbent material is necessary to maintain its structural integrity. Choice of raw material:. An efficient sanitary pad should be dry for comfort. Traditional sanitary pads were of multilayer cellulosic material.
Instead of dripping down, fluid tended to remain at or near the surface. This led to discomfort so one proposed solution has been to use thermoplastic fibre. It has been found that at least 20 per cent of the fibre should be hydrophilic to provide sufficient capillary attraction to pull the fluid through the cover and provide a dry surface.
It is generally made up of thermally bonded or air bonded composite non-woven. Nowadays, SAP is air laid with pulp and used to increase absorbency. The position of this polymer is important as it may clog the pore of the structure and restrict absorption of fluid, so the SAP polymer is affixed to a tissue and placed between the pulp and back sheet. Tests to evaluate performance:.
This method determines the total absorption capacity of the material. According to the test standard ISO , a sample is laid on a flat level and transparent surface, so that the underside of pad can be observed. Fluid is to be dripped, at the rate of 15ml per minute, so that 30 ml of the fluid maintained at a temperature of 27 0 2C is poured on to the centre of the sanitary pad from a height of approx. After the napkin has absorbed the full amount of fluid, the standard weight of 1 kg is put above the sample for a minute on the portion where the fluid is absorbed.
After that the back and sides of the pad are observed for fluid flowing up. The reading is recorded. A sample of the pad is to be immersed in fluid at room temperature for five minutes to completely wet it out. Fluid retention is calculated as a percentage of dry mass. A drop of test solution is allowed to fall on the sample and the time taken for the solution to transport from the upper layer of the napkin to the inner layers of the sample.
This is measured by observing the drop closely so that the dull wet spot is seen on the wet area of the sample. All samples should be conditioned for 24 hours before the tests. Wicking experiments :. Tests can be done according to BS Method 21 which specifies "determination of resistance to wicking.
One end of the pad is immersed to about 10mm in the synthetic blood and the fluid absorption along the pad is measured in mm after 30 minutes. Wicking is a desired characteristic of a sanitary pad as it allows fluid to spread along the entire absorbent structure. And so Sanitary pad manufacturers are more interested in increasing performance of pads by using material derived from crude petroleum. This has negative environmental impacts and is a health hazard.
Designing a sanitary pad safe to health, biodegradable, sustainable and affordable for lower income class women has become a challenge. An alternative raw material has to be found to replace these synthetic fibres and polymers.
Till date one of the most viable means to control bleeding during menstruation remains the sanitary napkin, especially in India. Now that the GST council has conceded to a year-long demand and exempted them from the ambit of the Goods and Services Tax, one is hopeful that it will make the napkins more affordable and accessible to women.
These disposable pads were developed by nurses in France to control the bleeding of the soldiers injured during battle. Made from materials that were easily available on the battlefield like wood pulp bandages, these were very absorbent and cheap enough to throw away later.
This design was soon borrowed by commercial manufacturers and in , the first disposable pads, called the Southball Pad, were available for purchase. While social inhibitions played their part, the monetary conditions of women also hindered them from using these napkins. The pads were priced quite high and could not be afforded by common ladies, who continued to rely on traditional methods.
However, those who could go and buy them would not ask the clerk for them, but would quietly go and place money in a box and take the box of pads from the counter themselves.
The pads available were also not that effective and were notorious for slipping either forward or backward from the intended position.
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