Friday, April 30, 2010

THE RAGS: paraphernalia of menstruation

example objects from the collection

Menstruation is a matter for private lives, not public exhibition, so few museums collect artefacts associated with this defining occurrence in women's lives. In the collection of the Powerhouse Museum there is a small group of sanitary towels and tampons, pharmaceuticals to relieve the discomforts of the monthly 'period', and guidance booklets about puberty for adolescents and their parents. And in the Museum's Research Library there are magazines whose advertisements document evolution in the manufacture and marketing of menstrual products since the late 1800s. On The rags website you will find a selection from the Museum's collections, interspersed with menstrual anecdotes gathered during a wider research project on Australian home remedies.

Website content: Megan Hicks, Curator of Health and Medicine

Photography: Sue Stafford, Sotha Bourn, Jean-François Lanzarone, Megan Hicks

I've just read Nina Funnell's great article http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/enough-with-the-euphemisms-... on .. finally .. an ad for tampons that actually makes sense. Unfortunately the article is so softened that you have to evade the meaning free headline, ignore the horribly stupid picture and get through a couple of paragraphs of apologia before you get to the really good stuff. So I found some good stuff at the Powerhouse to sate my appetite for blood.

Posted via web from andragy's posterous

2 comments:

Erika Dicker said...

I love the Kotex Ad's and their new campaign.

You can search our collection http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/ to find more realted objects (we have a huge collection). Also check out the Museum of Menstruation www.mum.org

Great blog post.

Erika Dicker
Assistant Curator
Science, Technology, and Industry
Powerhouse Museum

Andra said...

mum.org is a great name for a museum of menstruation website! I lol the blood red favicon too. Thanks for the link.

The Powerhouse online collection is fabulous. I searched for bottled water last month and the information that contextualised the picture I found was very helpful.