The Story of Menstruation

United States, 1946

Film
The Story of Menstruation thumbnail image.

This film was made as an outgrowth of Disney’s contract work with the armed forces during World War II. “The Story of menstruation” was probably the first American educational film with a woman narrator. The first half of the film discusses the natural process of menstruation through colourful yet simple diagrams, whilst the second half gives instruction on coping with behavioural changes and reinforcing gender roles, with a marriage scene followed by a picture of a young woman with her baby, suggesting “the natural course of life”. When this film was screened in schools, girls received a copy of a booklet, “Very Personally Yours”, which pushed Kotex products.

Content notification

Our collection comprises over 40,000 moving image works, acquired and catalogued between the 1940s and early 2000s. As a result, some items may reflect outdated, offensive and possibly harmful views and opinions. ACMI is working to identify and redress such usages.

Learn more about our collection and our collection policy here. If you come across harmful content on our website that you would like to report, let us know.

How to watch

This work has been digitised and can be viewed in the display above.

Collection

In ACMI's collection

Credits

production company

Walt Disney Productions

Duration

00:11:00:00

Production places
United States
Production dates
1946

Please note: this archive is an ongoing body of work. Sometimes the credit information (director, year etc) isn’t available so these fields may be left blank; we are progressively filling these in with further research.

Cite this work on Wikipedia

If you would like to cite this item, please use the following template: {{cite web |url=https://acmi.net.au/works/73241--the-story-of-menstruation/ |title=The Story of Menstruation |author=Australian Centre for the Moving Image |access-date=25 April 2024 |publisher=Australian Centre for the Moving Image}}