1891
look ma, no hands!: the invention of the menstrual belt
As women transitioned from animal skin pads to cut-to-fit cloth pads that could be hidden under modern clothing, they had a new problem: how to make the pad stay put. The solution? Suspenders and belts that clipped onto the pad to hold it in place, which were first patented in the mid-1800s and later mass marketed in 1891 in the Jordan, Marsh & Co. catalog. So, instead of using an old-fashioned straight pin to attach a pad to your underwear (ouch!), women could buckle up for safety, so to say.
Menstrual belts were an important accessory for women for almost 100 years. When double-stick tape was invented in the 1970s, suspenders and belts quickly fell out of favor, and by the 1980s women were hanging up their elastic do-dads for good.
