Making girls modern: Pakeha women and menstruation in New Zealand, 1930-70

Women's History Review

Volumn 7, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 565-581

  Brookes, Barbara ^a   Tennant, Margaret ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO   (New Zealand)

^b MASSEY UNIVERSITY   (New Zealand)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0006290292     PISSN: 09612025     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09612029800200183     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. See Sandra Coney (1993) Standing in the Sunshine, p. 97 (Auckland: Penguin), and Makereti (1986 reprint edition) The Old-Time Maori, pp. 138-140 (Auckland: New Women's Press).
2. A. Treneman (1988) Cashing in on the curse: advertising and the menstrual taboo, in L. Gamman & M Marchment (Eds) The Female Gaze. Women as Viewers of Popular Culture (London: The Women's Press);
3. L. Block Coutts & D. H. Berg (1993) The portrayal of the menstruating woman in menstrual product advertisements, Health Care for Women International, 14, pp. 179-191.
4. This suggestive phrase is the title of Jennifer Scanlon's book (1995) Inarticulate Longings. The Ladies' Home Journal and the Promises of Consumer Culture (London: Routledge) which, while not discussing menstruation, examines the role of advertising in a leading women's magazine.
5. Sally Alexander (1996) The mysteries and secrets of women's bodies: sexual knowledge in the first half of the twentieth century, in M Nava & A O'Shea (Eds) Modern Times: reflections on a century of English modernity, p. 166 (London: Routledge).
6. A point also made by Alexander in The mysteries and secrets of women's bodies', pp. 163-164.
7. Rima Apple, Selling femininity: the commercialization of menstruation, paper delivered at the 1996 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women.
8. Miry Pauline Callender (1930, 1931, 1932) Marjorie May's Twelfth Birthday (Sydney: Australian Cellucotton Products Ltd).
9. K.V., written reminiscences, 25 April 1995. Menarche, December 1969, aged 13 years and 3 months.
10. Jill Julius Matthews (1987) Building the body beautiful: the femininity of modernity, Australian Feminist Studies, 5, p. 31.
11. The Mirror, January 1940, p. 51.
12. Barbara L. Marshall (1994) Engendering Modernity: feminism, social theory and social change, p. 7 (Cambridge: Polity Press).
13. The Mirror, August 1932, p. 51.
14. The New Zealand Woman's Weekly, 8 October 1936, p. 63.
15. The Mirror, February 1936, p. 56.
16. On this concern with hygiene, see Joan Jacobs Brumberg (1993) 'Something happens to girls': menarche and the emergence of the American hygienic imperative, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 4, pp. 99-127.
17. Lauris Edmond (1989) Hot October: an autobiographical story, pp. 4546 (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books).
18. The New Zealand Woman's Weekly, 8 March 1951, p. 25.
19. Janet Frame (1983) To the Island, pp. 211-212 (London: The Women's Press).
20. Biosex-F: being sex instruction for the adolescent girl and young woman. The facts without the humbug, p. 11 (194?) (Auckland: Cornell Instructional Publications).
21. Judith Bulloch, written reminiscences, 10 April 1995. Menarche 1957, aged 13 years and 4 months.
22. Nerida Joyce, written reminiscences, 23 March 1995. Menarche 1966, aged 10 years.
23. C.G., written reminiscences, 2 April 1995. Menarche 1960, aged 13 years.
24. E. Roberts (1984) A Woman's Place: an oral history of working class women, 1890-1940 (Oxford: Blackwell)
25. E. Roberts, A Woman's Place: an oral history of working class women, 1890-1940, cited in ibid.
26. Margaret Wray (1948) Some aspects of menstruation in fifth form girls at Otago Girls' High School, Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, 5th year thesis.
27. Edmond, Hot October, pp. 4546.
28. Margaret MacDiarmid, written reminiscences, 19 February 1995. Menarche, 1940, aged 16 years.
29. J.B.P., written reminiscences, 22 June 1995. Menarche 1941, aged 14 years. One woman recalled her father's shock at some time in the 1950s when his male friend took his wife's sanitary towels down to the incinerator. R.D., oral communication, August 1994.
30. The phrase is from Leonore Davidoff (1995) Worlds Between: historical perspectives on gender and class, p. 5 (Cambridge: Polity Press).
31. B.H., written reminiscences, 20 March 1995. Menarche, 1939, aged 13 years.
32. Judith Bulloch, written reminiscences, 10 April 1995. Menarche, 1957, aged 13 years and 4 months.
33. C.G., written reminiscences, 2 April 1995. Menarche, 1960, aged 13.
34. M. Wray, 'Some aspects of menstruation', p. 15.
35. Interview, C.C., 12 July 1995.
36. Interview, Freda Larsen, 26 July 1995.
37. H.V.W., written reminiscences, 16 April 1995. Menarche, 1935, aged 10 years and 6 months.
38. Janet Paul, personal communication, March 1996.
39. AM, written reminiscences, June 1995. Menarche, 1948, aged 11 years and 6 months.
40. Sue Matthews, written reminiscences, 23 April 1995. Menarche, 1963, aged 10 years and 6 months.
41. Janet Frame (1984) An Angel at My Table, p. 23 (London: The Women's Press).
42. Department of Industries and Commerce, 1 9/ 52 Pt 2, 'Sanitary towels, miscellaneous correspondence'. National Archives.
43. Tampax advertisement, The Mirror, January 1956, p. 63.
44. James Foreman-Peck (1995) Smith and Nephew in the Health Care Industry, p. 152 (Aldershot: Edward Elgar).
45. J. Foreman-Peck, Smith and Nephew in the Health Care Industry, Ibid., p. 153.
46. True Story, September 1947, p. 45.
47. AMcC., written reminiscences, undated, 1995. Menarche, 1948, aged 11 years and 6 months.
48. Laurel Harding, written reminiscences, 19 April 1995. Menarche 1944, aged 14 years.
49. E.S., interview, 30 October 1995. Menarche 1968, aged 12 years.
50. Barbara Brookes, 14 October 1996.
51. The Mirror, March 1961, p. 66.
52. Foreman-Peck, Smith & Nephew in the Health Care Industry, p. 157.
53. S. L. Dunnet, written reminiscences, 19 March 1995. Menarche 1942, aged 12 years and 3 months.
54. Susan Buek-Morss (1989) The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Cambridge: MIT Press) cited in M Nava & A. O'Shea, Modern Times, p. 64.
55. Personal Communications; Patricia Crawford, Attitudes to menstruation in seventeenth-century England, Past and Present, 91, pp. 47-73.