I was going to say that - getting a pad stuck to your hair was the WORST!
Ladies, menopause is the relief we all deserve. It’s wonderful.
Heh, I read this and pictured someone with a pad stuck to the side of their head and wondered how.
Can’t come soon enough, IMO.
According to Google this book came out in 1979!! So weird. They have a chapter on tampons but their chapter on pads is exclusively belted pads. I wonder if the belts hung on in a certain part of the country, or if older women (presumably like the writers of this book) were just habitual belt users, not even really aware of self-sticking.
When I was 17 (almost 18) my parents, very solemnly, told me we should watch a show on PBS about human reproduction. My parents seemed to think it would deal with sex but, of course, it was a PBS show on biology and how a sperm meets an egg.
Super uncomfortable evening and they did not know I had already lost my virginity.
It is bad enough parents do not have a sex talk with their kids but, to the OP, I remain very shocked that so many girls are not prepared for the time menstruation begins.
Why withhold that from them??? It’s not a choice. It’s a biological reality. How terrible is it to let that be a surprise to her?
Clearly, many parents skip this. That’s criminal in my view (figuratively criminal).
Denial. “My little girl can’t becoming a woman! I’ll just pretend its not (not going to) happen.”
You see the same thing with a suspicious lump not getting checked, and yeah, it’s criminal.
A friend of a friend (my friend was older than I am, so this is a long time ago, now, but still…) was told by her parents that you get pregnant by kissing. So she and her boyfriend were doing everything BUT kissing… My friend told her friend how babies are made. That got back to the parents, who banned the girl from interacting with MY FRIEND.
Parents sometimes do really dumb and damaging things.
This website [spoiler]http://www.mum.org/youreay1.htm[/spoiler] (maybe NSFW?) gives more information about “You’re a young lady now” and many other booklets over the years.
Post #72 above.
My mother got it for me.
Definitely Safe for Work. There isn’t one suggestive or remotely explicit thing in it.
The booklets my mom got (one for each gender, and obviously from the same source) included line-drawings of genitalia; that’d probably be considered NSFW. I don’t know if the “For Girls” book was leftover from my older sister, or if Mom just wanted me to learn the full story of both halves of the system.
“You’re a Young Lady Now” doesn’t acknowledge the existence of genitalia. Regarding tampons, as I recall, it says something vague like, “They’re worn inside the opening from which the flow comes.” Really helpful, eh?
Isn’t the most likely source of such booklets from school? I would also expect them to have some pads and tampons on hand for students who need it.
The “line drawings of genitalia” reminds me of the bit in Tom Sawyer where the kids were dying to have a look through the schoolmaster’s copy of Gray’s Anatomy — not because the contents were taboo, merely because they were naturally curious what book he was studying all the time and kept in his locked desk.
Wow! That program’s been on a loo-o-ong time, hasn’t it. 
It’s odd; I went to a girls’ school- they were perfectly open about menstruation, and sex ed classes had starting before we even went there, from primary level at age 6-7, but they did not have any pads or tampons available onsite. Not even a vending machine. Given that students also weren’t allowed offsite during school hours under the age of 16, so you couldn’t even nip down to a shop if caught out, it seems impressively stupid in retrospect.
Yes, I saw your post. Just pointing out to everyone the MUM’s version and other similar booklets that may be more complete than ebay’s version. I just thought the website might not be one to get caught reading at work. Hence the “?” part.
FYI for those who don’t know: MUM = Museum of Menstruation. I looked it up.
There’s a museum? Wow! I seem to remember a booklet or something, but my mom pretty much told me everything, I think.
I’m picturing something less like The Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and more like Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum.
I got a book of some sort, but I don’t remember the title. I dealt with pads for a year or two, but I hated them, especially in the summer because my summer days revolved around swimming, hanging out by the pool on weekdays and going to our lake house on the weekends. So when I was 15 I put Tampax on my moms shopping list and they appeared in the bathroom cabinet and I was set. I even wore two at once during heavy flow days……that used to be thing and the instructions told you how to do it. I think they stopped showing you how after the tampon/toxic shock scares.
I recall my Mum breaking the news to me about the facts of life when my school sent home a letter, informing her that we were all going to be shown how to use the Tampax vending machine, so any parent behind in their sex ed better get going. (I was 10 at the time).
My Mum was not a great fan of tampons (this was the early 80s), but luckily I had an older sister who put me straight (and also showed my how to hook up a bra).
I don’t remember the title of the book that I got; but it had line drawings, not very complete but clear enough to see penis/testicles and vulva, of both boys and girls. I did some poking around online but can’t find it. I don’t know the publication date, but I started menstruating in late 1962 or early '63 (I remember my age but not the time of year) and was definitely not taken by surprise, so it must have been published before that.
The book didn’t discuss tampons, or if it did must have done so only very vaguely; I remember seeing ads for “internal protection” and thinking at first that they were for something that one had to go to a doctor to have installed. A lot of girls were using tampons, though, by the time I was in my mid-teens, though pads with belts were also still common – I don’t remember hearing anything about tampons and virginity at the time, but I expect that depended on the particular social group.