Each month young teenage girls open their YM’s and eagerly read tales of menstrual mishaps sent in by the magazine’s young readers. What could be worse than getting your period at prom? Having a tampon fall out of your backpack and roll across the classroom floor only to stop at the teacher’s feet? And he’s a man! Or returning to the table only to have your date tell you that something must have fallen out because now your panti-liner is stuck to the OUTSIDE of your pants leg? Why are young women so “mortified” (to use the popular teen magazine lingo) when these things happen? This is the twenty first century and we all know about menstruation. We see ads for feminine hygiene products on television and in magazines. These ads tell teenage girls that they are strong, athletic, on the go young women and with the right products they can stay on the go, even during those “difficult days.” More importantly, using the right products will insure that no one else will even suspect “it’s that time of the month.” Having your period shouldn’t be public knowledge. How embarrassing! But why is it embarrassing? As Karen Houppert points out in her book The Curse: Blood is kinda like snot. How come it’s not treated that way? People with runny noses do not hide their tissues from colleagues and family members. They do not die of embarrassment when they sneeze in public. Young girls do not cringe if a boy spies them buying a box of Kleenex. (Hoppert 4) The way society has viewed menstruation, feminine hygiene products and women varied between the late 1800s and the 1940s. Much of that change was brought about by the advent of advertising, the products created, and the prescribed ways women were expected to receive these product... ... middle of paper ... ..., then sanitized and doctor recommended and finally were even linked to the war effort. Each time these ad campaigns changed women changed. They adapted to new products, developed new fears and insecurities, and saw themselves in a new way. Works Cited Brumberg, Joan Jacobs. The Body Project, An Intimate History of American Girls. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Finley, Harry. Museum of Menstruation and Women’s Health. 14 Mar. 2002. http://www mum.org. Houppert, Karen. The Curse, Confronting the Last Unmentionable Taboo: Menstruation. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1999. Lajud, Carol and Lorea Navaa. “History on Birth Control & Its issues.” 12 Mar. 2002. http://hss.fullerton.edu/womens/news/History on BirthControl.htm. “Modernist Advertising and the Modern Woman”. 9 Mar. 2002. http://www. Menstruation. Com.au/contributors/bleedinwomanpart4.html.
Dorothy Wardell’s article titled “Margaret Sanger: Birth Control’s Successful Revolutionary” explains what inspired Sanger ideas on contraception and what problems she faced while working to change the notions and laws on Birth Control. The central argument presented by Wardell is that Sanger’s efforts led to privileges for women’s bodies and health centers providing methods for women to act on these privileges (Wardell, 736). Although Wardell is effective in supporting her argument, it would be stronger if she included some historical context and evidence of Sanger’s opinion in her own words found in a speech of hers and in Family Limitation.
There has been a significant shift in this generation when it comes to gender roles and identity. In her book, Peril examines advertisements and propaganda from the 1940s to 1970s, when gender roles apparently influence stereotypes and societal pressure on women in America. In one of her examples, Betsy Martin McKinney told her readers of Ladies’ Home Journal that the sexual role of women is to have intercourse and complete it with pregnancy and childbirth and denying it would be denying her femininity.2 It is not right to take one person’s word and speak it fo...
The work of Zeitz is essential to understanding the changes within American culture. Several dynamics promote the image of the “flapper.” Even though the “New Woman” is able to break away from traditional values, expanding technology is a dynamic that affects that result. He clearly shows that these women challenge the societal norm through a different approach. The advertisements and publicity can still reinforce several stereotypes. These modernized changes are cultural echoes that American society faces today. There is an immense amount of advertising with the basis of beauty and sexuality. This work is necessary to understand the flapper and the dynamics that made America modern.
McLaren, Angus. Birth control and abortion in canada, 1870–1920. Canadian Historical Review Volume 59 (3): 319-40.
"A free race cannot be born" and no woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother"(Sanger A 35). Margaret Sanger (1870-1966)said this in one of her many controversial papers. The name of Margaret Sanger and the issue of birth control have virtually become synonymous. Birth control and the work of Sanger have done a great deal to change the role of woman in society, relationships between men and woman, and the family. The development and spread of knowledge of birth control gave women sexual freedom for the first time, gave them an individual identity in society and a chance to work without fearing they were contributing to the moral decline of society by leaving children at home. If birth control and Sanger did so much good to change the role of women in society why was birth control so controversial?
Samuel A. Pasquale, M.D., and Jennifer Cadoff, The Birth Control Book: A Complete Guide to Your Contraceptive Options, New York: Ballantine Books, 1996
Advertisements in Life magazine showed women mainly in ways were they were responsible for kitchen duties and taking care of their husbands. In the early 1950’s, there were recurring ads of women with refrigerators. In an advertisement from 1950, a woman is dressed like a typical housewife standing next to the refrigerator showing all the features it entails. It gives off the message that during this period of the 1950’s, society saw women as the face of the kitchen and a majority of the duties as a housewife took place there. Another advertisement from 1950, gives a clear indication of gender roles. In the advertisement for a refrigerator, the women and her daughter are shown organizing their refrigerator, and the man is shown as carrying in the refrigerator. The advertisement expresses that women are more fit for domestic work and that men are more for the labor tedious work that a woman cannot do. In an advertisement from 1953 to sell health insurance, the man who is selling health insurance puts a picture of himself and his...
Williams, Terry Tempest. “The Clan of the One-Breasted Women.” Community Matters. Ed. Marjorie ford and Elizabeth Schave. New York: Longman, 2002. 125-131.
The first form of birth control came in the form a pill and was approved by the FDA in 1960(qtd in Gladwell ) The pill was said to be the safest form of birth control because it was safe and said to be a natural form of birth control. John Rock was a well know man around the community. Loretta McLaughlin writes, "It was his name and his reputation that gave ultimate validity to the claims that the pill would protect women against unwanted pregnancy.”(qdt in Gladwell) Even back then, with all the research that they set out to do the pill was still know to cause cancer in young women, not only cancer but the miscarrying of children shortly after taking the pill.
Although birth control has been practiced since ancient times, the first organized efforts developed during the 19th century as population increased dramatically because of improved medical care, nutrition, and sanitation. However, birth control met with resistance. In 1873 the United States Congress enacted the Comstock Law, which prohibited the distribution of birth-control devices and information.
...locaust Girlhood Remembered. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2001. Print.
Nussbaum, Felicity. “Risky Business: Feminism Now and Then.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 26.1 (Spring 2007): 81-86. JSTOR. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Mary Pipher goes on to say that the problem faced by girls is a ‘problem without a name’ and that the girls of today deserve a different kind of society in which all their gifts can be developed and appreciated. (Pipher,M). It’s clear that cultures and individual personalities intersect through the period of adolescence. Adolescence is a time in a young girl’s life that shapes them into the woman they become. I think it begins earlier than teen years because even the clothing that is being sold for younger girls says sexuality. Bras for girls just beginning in every store are now padded with matching bikini underwear, Barbie dolls are glamour up in such away that these girls believ...
As early as the nineteen fifties women were identified and targeted as a market. In a consumer culture the most important things are consumers. Advertisers convinced homemakers that in order to be a “good” wife and mother you must have their products and appliances to keep a clean and perfect home. The irony of this ploy is that consumers must have money to buy, and so trying to improve their quality as homemakers, off into the workforce women went. This paradox left women ...
"People and Events: The Pill and the Sexual Revolution." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 12 May 2014.