A Galician history of menstruation | Public

Possibly Anne Frank was a pioneer in talking about the rule in a widely read text. Because menstruation, until not long ago, was not talked about, at least beyond cute messages in ads for hygienic products. Of course, menstruation does not usually appear in history books and was not treated when analyzing the "things of the world", despite the fact that it is more than linked to our daily existence.

Hygiene —in general— began to arouse interest among thinkers around the 18th century, after centuries in which the issue was seen with different eyes —as they remember in Toilette, the catalog of an exhibition on hygiene that was hosted a few years ago. a few years ago the Madrid Museum Cerralbo, the previous centuries were a period in which washing was disdained, even more than in the Middle Ages. Reading the advertisements in the Spanish press from the early 19th century, for example, allows us to find many commercial messages for cosmetic products and soaps. In large and influential European cities, such as Paris, the rich and powerful of the Age of Enlightenment had luxurious bathrooms with bathtubs. The question of personal cleanliness increased in importance throughout the 19th century, which is the period in which the great hygienic explosion took place. Scientists discover microbes, Victorians find the WC and bookstores are filled with hygiene and civility manuals telling readers what to do and how to do it. hand over to cleaning.

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Reading those hygiene and urbanity manuals, many of them aimed directly at children, is not complicated at all today. Thanks to the digitization of the resources of the different archives and libraries, they are just a click away, waiting in the cloud for the pages no longer full of dust to open. The sample chosen for this story from the online collections of the National Library of Spain is not the largest, nor is it limited to books published in Galicia (in fact, some were published in places like Seville). , but these types of manuals knew various editions and reissues and were quite popular, so it was most likely that they had circulated widely throughout the country.

Not even the realist and naturist writers left a clear example of what happened when women had their period in the past

Although menstruation had to be an element that powerfully affected the hygiene of women at the time, and that they were often the direct recipients of these books, is not a topic that is directly addressed in the manuals of civility and hygiene, much less in those that were intended for girls . "The best of cosmetics is virtue", wrote DoloresBarberá in 1897 in Compendio dehigiene para niñas, which is a kind of very Christian advice —very much in line with some of the authors of the time—but very little concrete about how one should keep clean and what one should or should not use to achieve it. The important thing is to wash regularly, as all the manuals insist, surely because, as they make clear in a hygiene text from 1903, "in Spain worry, routine, ignorance, perishability and the horror of water continue to prevail." ".

Washing is generic and not very specific advice for women and for "those periods of the month". How did our great-great-grandmothers handle it, and above all, how did they maintain hygiene if until not long ago it was not so difficult to listen to urban legends about what could happen to you if you got wet while on your period? In Elements of Private and Public Hygiene by Dr. Francisco Javier Santero, published in 1885, we can find a few recommendations. Just parse the index and go apart correct. We must use fine and renewed cloths, wash the external genitalia with lukewarm water and dry the area well and prevent the feet from getting cold, so it is advisable, according to the doctor, wear stockings coat and waterproof shoes and never put your bare feet on the bare ground. You have to do active exercise and also avoid everything that excites the sensitivity of the menstruating woman.

Free bleeding, a trend as a protest and alternative to feminine hygiene products, was already done by our ancestors

These tips, however, were not in a manual for ordinary people but rather in a scientific text and possibly intended only for professionals or students training to become one. The recommendations may therefore be a sort of ideal of what a menstruating woman should do, but not necessarily a reality.

Knowing the truth from experience is tricky. We have no diaries, no studies, no witnesses. Not even the heavy-handed—as far as details are concerned—realist and naturist writers left a clear example of what happened when women had their period. The subject was of course very taboo, like so many other things. However, going off on a tangent, it is possible to follow his track.

If you Google something about the history of menstruation it won't be hard to find information on the subject. Although specialized books on this are hard to find (and scarce, especially when compared to those that generated other issues), the subject is one that arouses a lot of interest today. It may be that for our grandparents all this has been taboo and something to hide, but it is not so much in these times. The listicles actually all recover the same ideas and the same facts, since we all drink from the same —and Anglo-Saxon— sources. It is possible that the most original and accessible book on what is not told about being a woman in the 19th century is Unmentionable, by Therese Oneill, a kind of reaction to the precious world of novels and period films and that allows discovering that the clothes were not washed, the arsenic was a slimming agent and having the period an uncomfortable and unhygienic experience. Oneill's sources are, of course, also Anglo-Saxon, although some of his data can be extrapolated.

For this question, there are two things that Oneill shares that we must take into account. First up is the recent history of underwear. Panties are something especially recent and even the alternatives that we take for granted that were used until the beginning of time (like bloomers) were not really. In fact, in 1918, Carmen de Burgos had yet to insist that it was advisable to wear 'closed pants' under clothing (and pants should be understood as underwear). The second is that, among so many layers of petticoats that women wore and dark colored clothes, menstruation was something that was left free, or so some experts believe. Free bleeding, free bleeding, is a trend that has become fashionable in recent times as a protest and claim and also as a direct alternative to the use of "feminine hygiene" products. Actually, it is not something so new, but what our ancestors already did.

Throughout the 1920s there were offers of sanitary napkins and they weren't cheap: in 1923, they cost 60 cents each, or 7 pesetas a dozen

And according to my family's memory, that was exactly what happened in the rural area of ​​the Mahía Valley, for example. When I was talking to my mother about this report, she remembered a conversation with her mother. My grandmother told her at the time that from what she knew of her grandmothers they used the "leg over leg" method and that, of course, they did not wear our modern panties.

To better understand what the menstrual experience of our ancestors could be like and, above all, what was offered to them during that time, there is another source to use: press advertisements. Women were also consumers of media in the 19th century, as evidenced by the boom in exclusively targeted media during the period, but also by the more prosaic analysis of the advertisements that appeared in the mainstream press during the period. And, in addition, the study of the press allows us to focus the story in a much more concrete and direct way on Galicia. All you have to do is open your browser, connect to Galiciana (the Biblioteca de Galicia's digital newspaper library) and choose the keywords with which the search will be carried out.

Of course, the method —let's continue with my grandmother's term—"leg over leg"» was not advertised in the newspapers and it is not difficult to imagine that bourgeois women (who, after all, wore colored clear attire) had used other alternatives. We all hear about sanitary napkins at some point. In the Galician media at the time there were not many advertisements for belts and special girdles for menstruation much less with instructions for use, like those used by Anglo-Saxon researchers (who also have the great advantage from a wide collection of distance sales catalogues), but thanks to a couple of advertisements for offers from the beginning of the 20th century, we can find out how much they cost women and what these cloths were like.

Casa de Saldos, both in its store in Ferrol and in the one they had in Santiago, had offers of sanitary napkins throughout the 1920s. In 1923, they cost 60 cents each, or 7 pesetas a dozen, in 1924 a box was around 4 pesetas and in 1929 they were made of plush and were 3.50 pesetas a box of half a dozen. And no, they weren't cheap. To contextualise, one of those same advertisements (the one from 1929) maintains that they were at 0.90 pesetas and the stores (that's how they were presented) at 6. The cloths could be reused, because they were washable and not disposable as sanitary pads are now. .

An advertisement for the El Siglo store from 1915 provides a better understanding of how they were used. Later, in A Coruña, they sold a box of cloths with a girdle "the most comfortable one known" for six pesetas (a corset cost 2.40 in the same store, and a suit complete for children, 4). That same establishment also sold another model that year, the Ideal girdle with 12 panels, recommended for travel and once again insisting on its comfort (which suggests that few models were comfortable in general). Traveling while menstruating in those days must have been a rather unappetizing experience. In 1918 an advertisement in the Lugo newspaper El Regional alerted about the "Victoria Eugenia bands", for sale in an establishment on Calle Reina. We do not know if the idea of ​​naming a hygiene product was very amusing to Afonso XIII's wife, but the bands were "softer, more comfortable and elegant" and promised more security when travelling.

Other ads offered nylon sanitary napkins for 4 pesetas

Was there another way to use these napkins? A sterile advertisement in a newspaper in A Coruña in the summer of 1890 announced the sale of "belts for menstruation and childbirth" in a city pharmacy, but we can learn little more about them thanks to this advertisement.

The cloths lasted a long, long time. In August 1969, another advertisement, this one in El Pueblo Gallego, by Saldos Arias from Vigo, announced that they were selling nylon sanitary napkins (which, yes, is the same material from which stockings are made) for 4 pesetas (some panties cost 19 ). The death of the sanitary napkin is so recent, in fact, that it is most likely that if you were of a certain age they would still have been used, or that women around you would have. My mother still remembers the experience of the cloths (something very uncomfortable in her memory) and my friends' mothers too. The memories of the cloths seem to be linked to the process of using, washing and reusing. One of the witnesses remembers the basin of water in the bathroom in which they were left to soften, hidden so that the children would not see it, and another that of cleaning them in a hurry because of the shame of being seen. There are also the stories of discomfort, since the cloths moved.

Pads tried to reach Galicia very soon, although the big brands that now dominate the market arrived later

This does not mean that pads and tampons did not exist in parallel. In fact, both are intertwined with the history of everyday life in the 20th century, at least on a global level. Another of the witnesses, who spent those years emigrating in Europe, had access to these products as easily as we have now: you just had to go to the supermarket. In the Galicia of the 60s and 70s, there was a lack of information and knowledge (and perhaps also competitive prices: you have to remember that they were expensive) for the pads to assume their market niche.

However, the compresses did try to reach Galicia very soon. One of the first to appear in the global market for these products was Kotex, an American brand that already appeared in the Galician media in the 20s and 30s. Kotex was the pioneer in the US market and took advantage of one of the inventions that had Released by its owner (Kimberly-Clark) for World War I. The sales surpluses for the soldiers were converted into hygiene products. The war nurses themselves were the ones who put the manufacturer on track: during the war, they used this material instead of traditional cloths because it was much better.

Its advertisements in the Galician media insist that it is easy to order and easy to throw away, while being absorbent. Advertising is also very interesting to understand what they were selling in terms of lifestyles. There are chic women and even a flapper (or modern woman in the terminology of the time) talking to a nurse (Nurse Kotex, a figure they used to inspire confidence). It is quite easy to imagine that it was not a success, not only considering the subsequent history but also considering its price. In the 1930s they had to lower the price to 4 pesetas per box and their advertisements pointed out that they were cheaper, but "always the most comfortable". And although 12 "pillows" came in the box, it most likely did not compensate in terms of economy.

The big napkin brands that now dominate the market didn't launch until 1969 (Evax) and 1978 (Ausonia). of 1967 and promise to put an end to girdles, pins and the smell). An article from the 80s in El País, which analyzes the state of the market, marks the beginning of the success of its use (at least for disposable pads) in the 70s, in a parallel way to diapers.

But the advertising of pads, pads or tampons is not the only way to understand what the historical experience of menstruating could be like, nor the creation of the market linked to it. And if Galiciana is sparing in advertisements for specific products for menstruation (despite how very useful an advertisement in which they had explained how to put on one of those Ideal girdles would be very useful for journalists of the future...) it is not at all about pills, syrups and mysterious things for women and their "period problems".

In the Galician media of Galicia there is no trace of the Femi Pills, common in the media of the 1930s that can be found in the BNE's Digital Newspaper Library (and which were also read in Galicia), with their euphemistic advertising for «suspended rules», but of many other products between the 70s of the 19th century and the 30s of the 20th. Some are being sold for "periods withdrawn" but, given what they say in other ads and what the success stories that sometimes accompany them show, it's likely that they had been a promise rather than being sold as some kind of abortifacient. miraculous remedy for fertility problems.

The remedies were a cure-all balm that was used for the "ills" of women, such as hysteria, but also for many other illnesses

Dr. Santoro, the one with the hygiene book, explained that the uterus makes us (more or less ) women are a bit crazy after the age of twelve (it's the start of menstruation to blame!!) and that "women during their menstrual period are much more impressionable for whatever reason". So sensitive were the women that a "moral" impression could cause the period to stop suddenly. And of course you had to avoid all those things that could cause a girl to start menstruating prematurely, such as dancing, flirting or books. The advertising of the remedies also allows a better understanding of the vision that people had of the period, of women and specifically of menstruating women.

The remedies were a kind of cure-all balm that was used for the "ills" of women, such as hysteria, but also for a kind of range of multiple illnesses, such as growth problems, paleness, stomach pains, syphilis or jaundice. You could ask at the pharmacy from Carlos' Saiz Dynamogen, Toni Wine and Syrup- Quina and Iron Regenerator, La Margarita Loeches Water, Doctor Clin's True Antipyrine Solution, Doctor Torrales' Vulcanized Liquid Sulfur or Pink pills , which in a newspaper issue is recommended by a doctor from Logroño.

The Vegetable Compound of Lydia Y. Pinkham also arrived in Galicia and its media, one of those entrepreneurs from the USA who became rich in the 19th century. Her solution cured (or promised) painful, irregular periods, "burning pangs" or "mental depression." His 1920s ads are fascinatingly avant-la-lettre at times, talking about the "birthright" tonot be disturbed by the rules and including modern girls or mothers playing with their children in their images< /b> (but also the girl who is afraid of getting married, perhaps because she imagines how menstruation can get much worse after marriage). By including to convince, they also include testimonials from women who took the compound and for whom it worked. What is known today in marketing as "personalized recommendations", so in vogue on e-commerce websites to increase what they call "conversion". Opinions about "what is the ideal tampon for beginners?, how to put it in? or how do you know if it is in the right place?", speak a lot about a social change and the end of a historically taboo topic.