Resumen

FERNANDEZ CAMARENA, Cintli Aylín  y  GARCIA ALCARAZ, María Guadalupe. Controls and Regulations through Advertising (1950-1970). Debates hist. [online]. 2024, vol.12, n.1, pp.53-85.  Epub 24-Mayo-2024. ISSN 2594-2956.  https://doi.org/10.54167/debates-por-la-historia.v12i1.1441.

In this study, we explore how printed advertising for female sanitary towels presents and promotes menstruation in a context of control and instruction. From a socio-critical perspective, we conceive education as a process that influences meanings, behaviors, habits, and consumption. Therefore, we argue that advertising contains a discourse that shapes behaviors and establishes menstrual behavior norms for female bodies. Our research is situated in the decades of 1950 and 1970, a period of product introduction and social acceptance. The analysis is based on advertisements from a local newspaper, two women's magazines from Guadalajara, Mexico, and a booklet aimed at 11 to 14-year-old girls. We focus on Kotex® towel advertising, the most popular brand. We find that the ads promote a discourse of biopower that seeks to sanitize, modernize, and feminize women's bodies through advertising strategies that present menstruation as a private, dirty, and exclusively feminine issue, a "problem" that sanitary towels solve.

Palabras llave : anatomo-politics; biopower; female towels; menstruation.