Vintage sanpro: anyone remember giant towels with loops and belts?

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The first ones mum gave me were huge affairs with an elastic waist belt. There were these loops at each end that you threaded through to wear - felt like you were straddling a hammock and made you walk like a jockey. The horror.

Then there was the Bunnies incinerator at school - a terrifying steampunk monstrosity that you fed the used towel in and it would make an appalling noise as it mashed it up. Oh, I wonder if that was why mum called towels 'bunnies'?

I quickly discovered Vespre towels - someone had the rather bright idea that regular press on towels always bunched into a particular curved shape in use, so why not make them in that shape? I liked those.

I was a late tampon adopter - started at 18. Tho I liked the ones with the pull-out compact applicator (Compak??), I always wondered - who the hell thought those sharp plastic teeth was a good idea??

I went meno before mooncups happened, sadly so I can't comment.

Ah, memories ...

"Sanpro" is easier to say. Though I suppose we could use "menpro" (which might have the added benefit of keeping people who are women by gender and not by sex happy too :))

I think people just say sanpro because it's shorter to type. Why avoid using the term sanitary?

I assume nobody is flushing anything now? Even if it claims to be flushable?

You’d be amazed. Start any thread on here about flushing stuff and someone will claim to have no idea they shouldn’t flush tampons.

Yes I remember the incinerators at my school in the early '80s.

I used to cut up my sanitary towels and make a homemade towel with wings long before they appeared in the shops.

Someone should write about this. The journalist Michael Bywater wrote a wonderful book called "Lost Worlds: What Have We Lost, & Where Did It Go?" which is basically a little encyclopedia of things (objects, ideas) we used to have but don't any more. I remember thinking that a female version would have been very different, though, and would have included things like belted sanitary pads, underslips, corsets, stockings etc.

God, the burning smell of those little incinerators in the girls’ loo at school. Filled the corridor because it vented into what had been open cloisters but now with glass. The boys were obviously so polite about it :/

That’s a really good idea RoyalCorgi. Although if I wrote it it would have the entire 1987-1992 Body Shop catalogue. 😂

When we had the school 'period talk' in the late 80s, the leaflet talked about looped and press-on towels, but I never actually saw a looped towel for real. We were given a bright pink tampon case. I've never got on with tampons and always used towels (have recently switched to washables). Remember they were thick when I first started and had rubbish little strips that barely adhered. 'Wings' were a revelation.

There was an incinerator in the loo of our local community centre. I had no idea what it was for and the gaps my imagination filled in were grisly.

I don't like using 'sanitary' either, tbh, as it implies periods are insanitary. 'Menstrual protection' or 'menstrual products' is OK, I think.

'Sanpro' = fewer characters to keep the title short, also because I worked as a Boots Saturday girl replenishing shelves, and Sanpro is/was the industry term for the products.

Mind you, I picked up a sense of secretiveness from mum. I was very surprised when visiting a friend's house aged about 15. Big box of tampons in full view in bathroom. Two sisters, their mum a nurse, so a different kind of mindset from our 'keep them in your bedroom so dad and brother don't see.'

Mum remembered her own mother appalled to learn she was using tampons. 'You'd think I'd said I was on the game!' Might explain it.

@KaronAVyrus I'm 57, started menstruating age 10 at junior school. Mum sent me with a letter to the the teacher instructing her to let me leave class to go to the loo. I was mortified because THAT MEANT SHE KNEW.

I'm too young to have had the pleasure of dr white.

Old enough to remember the "simplicity " towels my mum bought me just in case

No wings and not individually wrapped. When cramming them into the little bag I had purchased myself as no one thought I might actually require the means to take to school or out the house , you had to hope they hadnt ripped or got grubby or that the adhesive strip hadnt started to peak away meaning it was too covered in fluff to stick to your underwear.

Lucky I started so late really ( 16) I had paper round money then to kinda be able to sort myself out a bit with stuff.

I remember tampax minis with the cardboard applicator that pinched and/or bent . We got a free sample at school.

Kotex or dr whites for me, they chafed after a bit, .

"Vintage sanpro" is absolutely in period because "sanpro" is one of the words used back then (engraved in hieroglyphics on stone tablets )

Yup, my mum (who was in fact a tyrannosaurus rex or perhaps more accurately a second wave tyrananosaura regina, I am so old) gave me looped towels and a belt when I started. Fortunately, I soon worked out how to buy press on towels. I remember thinking "these should have little wrap-round flaps to stop the blood getting on your knickers" - bloody hell, I'd be quids in if I'd thought to patent that one.

When I was a student I remember doing the theory of polyelectrolyte gels (the stuff that goes into thin towels and super-absorbent nappies) - it's mathematically very elegant!

I remember posting about this before. My friend was talking to her mum and an older friend of her mum's or might have been neighbour. She (neighbour) when a school kid would be chased home by dogs who could smell the towel (in those days I don't think they changed them much, plus I did hear of families 'sharing'). My friend used to work at sunlight laundry where posh women sent their reusable towels to be laundered.

I remember tearing an old towel in two and it was mostly blue hand towel material (that almost cardboardy stuff) and cotton wool. Chafed like buggery.

When I went to China I wanted to know what the Chinese used. This was in the 80's and it was just like my old towels but smaller!

I remember the Dr Whites. I remember on the back of some of mum's thin Mills and Boons books they advertised Tampons with showing what they were. Just that they gave you confidence and you could swim whilst wearing them. Cue me telling mum I had started and she gave me a Dr Whites with a belt.

She suggested I have a bath so I did and she called out to late, "You have removed your pad, haven't you?" Too late, it disintegrated!

I also remember a range of knickers that had a sort of buckle you attached a towel to. You have to remember it was there. Many is the time I gave myself a bit of a shock forgetting about the plastic buckle!!

My mum presented me with her left overlooked towels. I never used them, sticky pads the size of bricks were acquired instead. Taking them to school in paper bags as the didn't come individually wrapped. In the end I swapped to going home at lunch to change, back in the day when you could.

As a teenager I remember reading a leaflet, possibly from the Tampax box, which referred to “daintiness”. I hadn’t a clue what they were on about and am not clear even now.

It’s amazing how when only women or girls would have been reading such a missive, very probably in the privacy of their own bedrooms they felt it necessary to use such vague euphemisms. Women’s business! Unmentionables! How shocking! I’m so glad those dark days are over

Looped

I swear that early on the manufacturers never thought to ask women what they wanted, like having them wrapped so you could go to work or school.

Gross.
I am 55 and yes mother gave me the giant towels and belt...I was horrified tbh.

There were stick ons and I found them...

Mother would tell me about in her day (1940s)how her own mother had refused to spend money on the belt and looped towels for her and insisted she used home made from old towels reusable pads.

Which she had to keep in her school bag in a special little bag and bring home to be washed.

Poor girls...

I remember I hated buying them when I started University, as up till then my Mother bought them for me. I'd go to Boots hoping it wouldn't be a man behind the counter. They would be put into a thick brown paper bag, so everyone would know what you had bought.

Dr Whites were the reason I wept every month from age 11 to age 14. At 14 I discovered Tampax and defied my DM's order use sanitary towels.
Revelation.

I remember seeing the looped towels in the post office, along with the home perming kits.

I think I used simplicity and body form. All huge and mainly cotton wool which bunched up. Mum told me to rip them in half and flush them. Then they had a plastic sheet at the bottom layer, this I had to put in the bin. No bin in the loo.

I then used tampax as girls at boarding school soon told me they were nicer to use. They came with a little blue plastic case to store 2 inside. I can’t remember if I still used the huge pads as well.

Now I use washable ones and I will get some for my daughter when she needs them. A total circle as my mum said to me how lucky I was to use disposable pads when she’d had to use washable ones that were made of rags and had to be boiled clean in a pan on the stove. She would be horrified if she knew I used washable ones.

Oh yes we had to venture into tampon territory ourselves as I recall as they weren't deemed 'suitable' for young girls.

Wasn't there some thing about how tampons 'broke' your virginity?

Jeez I feel old

Yes, we weren’t supposed to use tampons. It was definitely a virginity thing. I remember talking about it with friends. Luckily when at boarding school we could buy tampax from the school shop so it was easy.

I also remember sending off for a booklet about tampons and periods. Reading it avidly and wondering what was wrong with me as surely an egg cup is a small quantity.

I can’t remember their name now but I remember the first ‘thinner’ pad coming out and they were incredible! They were in a long cardboard box. And then wings! What a game changer. Remember Clare Rayner and her ‘now with wings!’ adverts that showed you how to use them. 🤣

I was told that a period was the same as a tablespoon could hold 🧐
Also my mum was adamant that I wasn’t allowed to use tampons and it must have been a virginity thing as she was so over the top about it. I just bought some and worked it out for myself.