Dr White's looped sanitary towels

[florriepeck]

I didn't know these were still a thing!
DM used to buy these for me when I first started my periods in the 70s.
Saw some today on the shelf in my local chemist while I was hanging around waiting for my prescription to be dispensed.
I was tempted to buy some: remember them being so soft and comfortable .Didn't see any of those belts to wear with them, though.
Set me wondering: does anyone use looped towels these days?
Must be a market for them if they're on sale.

On a very slight tangent, please can anyone tell me about laundering reusable cloth pads? I can't imagine they're put in with everything else in the machine, I doubt folk would run a wash for them every day and handwashing surely wouldn't get them clean enough (?)

So what happens - do folk save them up then do them in a batch perhaps?

For some reason I didn't have a belt. My DM was a nurse and "liberated" narrow bandages which were threaded through the loops and tied around my waist. Classy.

I'm just conjuring up the look of the belts alongside a suspender belt! Sexy - not 😂

Strawberrycreamsundae it was fun wasn't it, the note which you handed over like some shameful thing. I had no idea what they were when I started collecting them, I can't imagine why I never asked but I sensed it was something best not talked about I guess I was about 6 or 7.

OH yes!!! Press on towels. I remember now. That’s what DM called them.

@HorribleHairdressers

Oh god. The incinerators! Now I do remember those! I'm going to have nightmares tonight.

I started in 1968 and those looped towels with a belt were it. The Nikini system was revolutionary! The original garment was plastic and rustled but there was a delux pink nylon one which was better. My mother used tampax but they were for married women only in her view, in fact she told me she even asked the GP and he agreed. Which was embarrassing as he was my best friend's dad. I started buying my own when I was about 14 I think.

It was what my mum gave me in the early 80’s. I was a ver skinny teen, the belt hung and the towel moved about leaking everywhere. I have a life-long visceral aversion to discussing mentruation at all. I even flinch at kids saying Period 1 for their lessons.

Oh gosh this brings back memories! I started just after I was 13 and I was unbelievably innocent about it all! My mother handed me the dreaded belt and towels - I hated it all. We used to call them 'things' and I had to ask her to get me some more 'things' when I needed them. I was SOOO embarrassed. We used Lilia towels which came in a pink cardboard box with feathers on it.

I had older ds & we used those little zip make up bags for carrying extra sts & spare knickers. I had mega heavy erratic cycle from the beginning age 12 (shudder) & use to wear 2 sts & 2 pairs of (dark) pants to hold everything in place - it was wonderful in the heat of the Aussie summer - & sitting down it was like have a pillow between your legs its a wonder we didn't all have bandy legs like jockeys are suppose to have. & the rush to (smelly) loo & those incinerators plus they had wonderful greaseproof toilet paper - so effective when you needed it. I remember one of my friends carrying her own toilet roll in her pocket - I kid you not! &the bliss of stick on sts - bliss no more periods!

@lowlandLucky yes I had those, I had the belt from about 78 until Vespre came along a few years later, revolutionary. I’ve never forgotten that name.

I used them - Yes - I am that old! : (

They were bloody awful!

Another one who had the fear of god put into her by Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. The Menstrooooation lady who came to their school with a 'special' film that only the girls got to see! And her discomfort when one of the girls asked about Tampax 'We don't recommend INTERNAL protection'.

Yes, I read it many times.

I started pretty late, just around my 15th birthday. Would have been late 80's. I gave the stick-on towel about 45 minutes. I hated it - the bloody thing was soggy, chilly and clammy, and the sticky bit managed to ensnare my pubes which killed. After my first 45 minutes as a menstruating woman, I said 'bugger this' and went for the little plastic 'handback pack' of super-slim Tampax that we'd been given at school (several years earlier). I remember literally wrestling the thing into my fanjo in the bathroom, lying on my back for some reason, and eventually, triumphantly, managing insertation. I proudly told my mother I was never going back to towels, and I never did.

I changed to a Mooncup in 2003 and it was like another universe.

www.bustle.com/articles/46404-i-wore-an-old-fashioned-sanitary-belt-for-my-entire-period-and-here-are-the-gory-details

Like a PP we had a long disused incinerator in our school toilets (late 80s/early 90s)and no other means of disposal really unless you wanted to use the open wire baskets for used paper hand towels None of the towel or tampon dispensers were ever filled my entire time I was at that school either.
My Mum was also vehemently opposed to tampons. Once I'd got a Saturday job age 14 I could buy them myself and I used to have to hide them in the lining of my school bag.

@Puzzledandpissedoff if it's a light day or a liner, I just chuck them in with my normal wash. If it's a heavy day, rinse in cold water (not hot, that can set the blood to stain) and then add to a normal wash.

Bricks, and oh yes, @mumwon that blasted Izal toilet paper! Toilet paper that was exactly the same as the tracing paper we used in lessons, except even less absorbent. Utterly pointless stuff. You couldn't even use a wodge of loo roll in an emergency.

I can't imagine they're put in with everything else in the machine, I doubt folk would run a wash for them every day and handwashing surely wouldn't get them clean enough (?)

I soak mine in cold water and then just put them in the next load of laundry I happen to be doing - why not?

I hated tampax. Hated the fact they expanded lengthways and ended up sticking out. Lilets fine though.

Utterly pointless stuff. You couldn't even use a wodge of loo roll in an emergency

Maybe that was the point? We had the "catalogue paper" at primary school in the 80s/early 90s. Was so horrible to use.

I was born in 86 and started my period in 1998...I can't imagine having an incinerator in school for towels!! I guess I was lucky growing up in a world where always and bodyform were standard. I did prefer tampons from about 14, after starting at 12, but my mum was always very distrusting of them too so she wasn't keen on me using them. Couldn't exactly stop me either though I also remember one of the first periods I had, I was really against changing my pad in school, I was a big tomboy and hated that my body was doing this (ironic then, really, that my periods stopped due to pcos in my late 20s and nothing will bring them back, which sucks!). Anyway, I didn't change my pad for the whole school day and when I got home it had basically fallen apart. The upper layer had split and the inside was coming out. I always changed regularly after that, funnily enough!

Also, I went to a really old fashioned junior school and remember greaseproof paper like toilet roll . Wtf even was that?!

I became really interested in what women did in the Victorian era based on someone asking in this thread. Ended up reading about 'menstrual madness'. Lovely suggestion for how to treat women on their periods in 1868 by Dr John Burns

In every case, unless she be cold and exhausted, we apply cold water both generally and locally. The patient always must be kept at rest in a horizontal posture. Opiates are to be given if there is much pain and irritation. The food ought to be sparing and anything warm is to be avoided. If necessary the vagina is to be plugged if a great effect has been produced upon the system by the haemorrhage, then strength must be supported by nourishment and cordials and liberal doses of opium will be found of much benefit. In order to prevent a return, the patient must be placed on a spare and dry diet, the sleep abridged, the exercise increased, the bowels kept open by mild laxatives and at the same time, the constitution invigorated by a cold bath [. . .] if (astringents) are to be employed, whey or sulphuric acid are the best. Styptic injections are often of singular utility. In repeated discharges emetics are sometimes of service."

Someone I used to know found some of these in her mum’s drawer when she was about ten, and thought they were a sort of cute little hat that looped round your ears. (This was probably in the early 1960s.)

She gaily went to meet her mum from work, wearing her nice little new white hat, and couldn’t understand why her mum was mortified and whipped it straight off!

Oh dear god, I remember when!
Up the bum elastic burn OW OW OW 😬😬😬😬

Even hundreds of years ago girls would have started periods by the age of 16 I expect
I’m not sure about this.The well off and nobility, yes, maybe, but not a lot of the peasants. I remember being struck by a section in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex describing first periods of women who were interviewed, and ages like 18 and 19 seemed to crop up a lot. And that would have been for those in maybe the first couple of decades if the 29th century, I’m guessing.

20th century! obviously.