A sanitary belt was a fabric or elastic waistband worn around the hips to hold a menstrual pad in place. Before pads came with adhesive strips on the back, there was no way to attach them to underwear, so the belt served as the anchoring system. It was the standard method of managing periods from the early 1900s through the late 1960s.
How a Sanitary Belt Worked
The belt itself was simple: a narrow band of elastic or cloth that fastened around the waist, with clips or hooks hanging down in the front and back. A menstrual pad, typically a thick rectangular absorbent cloth or disposable napkin, had loops or tabs at each end. You’d thread those tabs through the clips on the belt, pulling the pad snug against the body. The tension from the waistband kept everything in position.
In practice, the system had clear drawbacks. The clips could dig into skin, the pad could shift during movement, and the whole setup was bulky under clothing. Adjusting it required undressing. Despite these issues, it was the only widely available option for decades, and most women simply adapted. Some versions were sold as “sanitary suspenders” in the UK, functioning on the same principle but sometimes resembling a garter-style design rather than a simple waistband.
Who Improved the Design
Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner, a Black American inventor, received a patent in 1957 for an improved sanitary belt. Her design addressed some of the comfort and functionality problems with earlier versions. Kenner had actually developed the concept years before filing the patent but couldn’t afford the application process, and she faced racial discrimination in her efforts to bring the product to market. Despite these obstacles, her patent was officially granted, making her one of the few recognized innovators in menstrual product design during that era.
Why Sanitary Belts Disappeared
Pads were kept in place with sanitary belts up until the 1970s, but the turning point came in 1969 when Stayfree introduced the first adhesive menstrual pad. Instead of needing a separate belt and clip system, the pad simply stuck to the inside of underwear with a strip of adhesive on its backing. The convenience was immediate and obvious. Within a few years, belted pads went from being the default to being nearly obsolete.
The shift happened fast because the adhesive pad solved almost every complaint about the belt system in one stroke: no more clips, no more bulky hardware, no more readjusting. Underwear itself became the anchoring mechanism. By the mid-1970s, most major pad manufacturers had switched entirely to adhesive designs, and sanitary belts largely vanished from store shelves.
What Came Before and After
Sanitary belts weren’t the first attempt at menstrual management, but they were the first widely commercialized system. Before belts became standard, many women used homemade cloth rags held in place by pinning them to undergarments or simply folding fabric into their clothing. The belt offered a dedicated, reusable framework that made disposable pads practical for the first time.
After adhesive pads replaced belts, the pace of innovation accelerated. Pads became thinner, wings were added for extra security, and entirely different products like tampons (which had existed since the 1930s but gained wider adoption later) and menstrual cups expanded the range of options. Today, period underwear with built-in absorbent layers has pushed the concept even further, essentially eliminating the need for any separate product at all. Each generation of menstrual products has essentially been an answer to the discomfort or inconvenience of the one before it, and the sanitary belt was one of the longest-running chapters in that progression.