Dr White's looped sanitary towels

8, poor wee thing. I was a month off fourteen and my older DM gave me a belt and looped towels. I started to cry and begged for sticky pads. Next day she handed me money to purchase some at the local shop, but she insisted they were not as substantial as the looped kind.

I think the pre-knickers generations basically used rags to make nappies for themselves. Menstruation usually started later than it does now as we are in general better health and have much more food available so puberty is earlier. And after marriage women were likely to be either pregnant or lactating far more than we are.

Does anyone remember the myths about not washing your hair or having a bath?

Girls at school used to say they had been told no hair washing and no baths when you had a period. (Can you imagine???) No one had showers in their homes in the late 60s, it was a bath or nothing.

Thankfully, my Mum said it was okay.

Always ultra thin were a revelation and completely transformed periods for me so comfy (maybe why tampons werent used by me or DD either !)

Jesus Christ! I've just looked up images of them and there appears to be some sort of sensualized cult following on Pinterest. It's bordering on fetish!

Aaah the Joy's of being 16 when you started

Buy what you want with paperround money I'd never have coped with the massive thick things my my bought me . Although in fairness they were preferable to the sweaty plastic scratchy always wiry the blue gell stuff . Reusables are so much nicer. Thankfully by 90s things had improved from the belt days but i remember Judy blume

I think towels of some description were around in the 1940s. I remember in 'Tenko' it being said that Yamauchi had allocated one sanitary towel per two women prisoners when they arrived at the internment camp, and the series was advised by a woman who'd been in a Japanese WW2 camp so fairly sure that would have been accurate. The women's periods soon stopped due to malnutrition so protection ceased to be a problem.

I luckily avoided these as my periods started about the same time as these came on sale .DM bought me some new sticky back ones that I noticed ,and the belt she had bought for me was unused Phew! No idea why they are in sale now ! ( Could never get the "hang of tampons though even after being married with 2 children!?"

I was advised to get these for after childbirth - mind you 24 years ago now...

TiddlestheCat I sincerely hope so. I do not understand why girls had to wear gym knickers

In the ladies loo at work (NHS) we still have the brown disposal bags hanging from a loop of string behind the cistern. They have a picture of a crinoline lady on them.

I remember a teacher giving us the "menstruation" talk at school and she told a story about when a pupil got her period and they gave her some Dr Whites. They found her desperately trying to get her feet through the plastic loops. I always wondered if that was true.

I can't believe they still manufacture the hideous things. I'd like to Google but I'm too scared.

This is all new to me! I just had those MASSIVE stick on ones which were more like maternity pads and rustled when I walked (and made it look like I had a cock inside my PE knickers! I expect that PE knickers are a thing of the past now at secondary school?

I am 50, I recall my mother buying me a pack of these when I was about 10 or 11 "in preparation" but...SHE GAVE ME SAFETY PINS. The thought of putting a safety pins in my knickers filled me with horror.

Fortunately I didn't start my periods until a few months before my 14th birthday and by then they had Bodyform. They were bloody uncomfortable too, with the big hump in the middle and I was so paranoid when I used them, convinced everybody could see a foot of sanpro sticking out of the back of my skirt. I wasn't allowed to use tampons so didn't move onto those until I was old enough to buy them myself. As a result of all of this, I made sure my own DD was well armed when she started. She was only 8 though

I think i had the sticky kind when i first started my periods in the 90s! So bloody uncomfortable, like sitting on a fence! It really compounded my self consciousness and shame. It wasn't til about year 9 that i twigged the other girls were using Always! What a flipping revelation. No more paranoia about skirt lumps, no more sitting on a padded log. I know we slag them off on here, and i know every pad i've ever used is still sitting in landfill, but still!

I though that but wasn't sure what she regarded as earlier times. I was thinking 1940s but, as someone said, Victorians and earlier didn't wear pants. I suppose the wealthy didn't have to do much and didn't need to be very active. Poorer women would have been under nourished and constantly pregnant so wouldn't have had the problem.

My mother called sanitary towels ‘doofers’,

OMG! My mum also called them that too. I thought it was her own made-up word. My gob is smacked, well and truly.

God, my mum gave me those looped ones. It must have been around 1978. She was an older mum, my sister was 10 years older than me. I had a sanitary belt. They always moved around, they seemed to move back up your arse! I used them for around a year then changed to stick on ones. I finally got the hang of tampons by age 15 or so. No periods now for the last 8 months, bliss.

I think horsefly was speculating about what came before looped towels rather than suggesting people washed looped towels.

From what I have read women just used rags which were either burned or washed.

Well yes that's what I mean. Women didn't even wear pants so something must have kept the rags in place. So maybe they fashioned a belt arrangement.

20 July 1969, we put a man on the moon.

Back home, women had to use looped pads and a belt for what, another five years?

I remember, 'contour' tampons and the very irritating radio advert for them. I didn't get along with them as I needed to feel the blunt open end of the tampon on my vagina to know I was in the target zone.

It felt really weird touching my vagina with something rounded and plastic. I want sanitary protection, not a feeling of being penetrated.

I gave myself an impromptu Brazilian every time I sat down

Not sure whether to laugh or wince.

You didn't wash the dr Whites. I think in earlier times when women washed rags they probably didn't have belts. I'm not sure how they kept them in place though. That was before my time.

Oh wow. I never used them but remember my mum did!