"I could feel his eyes accusing me!"

Ladies! Would you like a permanent solution to the inexplicable fatigue which makes you want to leave social events before anyone else? COULD IT BE that your fatigue is due to. . . vaginal odor?

According to "science", Lysol provides a "simple protection" for health and youthfulness (for nothing is more of a drag than an old, worn-out vagina). "Sane habits of living, sane habits of diet and the proper practice of feminine hygiene" will undoubtedly turn you into a cartwheeling party girl who doesn't want to go home until at least 5:00 a.m.

Remember! "Only a poison can kill germs". Stop using Lysol to disinfect toilets and get rid of cockroaches in the cellar! Send for our plain brown envelope TODAY.

BLOGGER'S P. S. I picked this ad out of the bundle I posted last time, because it seemed unusually cryptic. Of course it's a well-known fact by now that Lysol wasn't used as a feminine hygiene product at all, but as a form of birth control. You have to read very carefully between the lines of text to see how the pharmaceutical companies tiptoed around illegality, for advertising birth control was almost as illegal as using it.

This one may be one of the more bizarre entries, though many of these ads claim that marriages often end simply because the wife's genitals stink. No kidding, that's what they actually say. So she's supposed to use this carbolic substance (known to cause a number of deaths by ulcerating the inside of the uterus) to get rid of the horrendous stink and replace it with - you all know what Lysol smells like, right? And back then, it was 100 times more powerful and used a different active ingredient, because there were no regulations.

So this one. . . it's strange, but I can only figure out that the wife is exhausted and can't enjoy the evening because she's pregnant. Well, she's done it again! Now she can't "stay young with her husband", which I assume means keeping up with his sexual demands. The reference to staying young hints at midlife pregnancy, which was dreaded more than anything due to the possibility of Down syndrome and other late-birth calamities. Not to mention the heavy stigma that attended those births. It just wasn't seemly that people that old were still having sex.

These ads almost always talked about "germs" and "mucus matter" and other things that come perilously close to describing semen. The word "protection" always appeared somewhere. The sad thing is, though many women very likely fell for this and depended on Lysol, it just didn't work. Douches are likely to propel those little swimmers right up into the promised land. Better stick with Coca-Cola, which at least would be more pleasant a taste for hubby than a mouthful of chemicals. 

(I just had an awful thought about the Pepsi Challenge, but I will keep it to myself.)

Random baggage

That's why she can't get a man!

"That's why we can't get a man for Edith!"

(word-for-word transcript)

CRUEL WORDS – yet it was lucky she heard them

“How dreadful! They said I was careless about perspiration odor in underthings. 

Oh dear, I don’t realize I was offending that way”

(Due to the vicious comments of her friends, Edith sees the light)

“Girls, may I join the Lux party tonight?”

“You bet, Edith – it takes only a jiffy”

“Lux is swell – it takes away odor, yet saves colors”

“My, that was easy! I’ll do it every night – then I’ll be sure I’m not offending anyone ever”

PARTIES ALL THE TIME NOW

“Edith is having a grand time”

“Yes, all the men rave about her now – she’s always dainty, thanks to Lux”

AVOID OFFENDING

Underthings absorb perspiration odor. Protect daintiness this easy way. . .

Wearing underthings a second day is a careless habit no girl can risk. We all perspire, and the odor clings. It becomes noticeable to others even before we’re aware of it ourselves.

But it’s easy to be sure of never offending. Just swish underthings through Lux each night – perspiration odor vanishes.

Of course, Lux has none of the harmful alkali ordinary soaps often have, and with Lux there’s no injurious cake-soak rubbing. These things weaken fabrics, fade colors. Anything safe in water alone is safe in Lux.

Oh. . . KAY. Now that I've had a chance to absorb all that, if absorb is the right word, I wonder if it belongs in the same category as those awful "can this marriage be saved?" Lysol douche ads.

But when I really look at it, as Lucy would say, "Euuuwwwwwww."

Standards of hygiene really were different then. People bathed once a week, in many cases, and washed their hair once a month (in the sink, then wrapped their head in a towel like a turban). Washers were inefficient, and clothes were dried on a line in the back yard.

Deodorants weren't common, and unheard-of in men.

So I don't know about this ad. Unless Edith's potential "man" was down on his hands and knees sniffing her crotch, I'm not sure it would be such an obstacle (in fact, I have heard that certain men enjoy such things).

But the ad pretty much states that poor Edith is wearing the same pair of panties (and note how they avoid that word - too sexual?) over and over again. Double-euuuwwwwwwwww.

It's worse than the guy who turns them inside-out and wears them again.

Yuck.

But wait, they do say "underthings", don't they? In the cartoon, she's holding up a slip. I wonder how stinky a slip could be after two days?

The Lysol douche ads were secret code for "birth control douche", which could not be mentioned by law. So  I have a theory this wasn't about slips at all. It's just that they couldn't mention panties. Panties, to my mind anyway, are the only item of apparel that could get really stinky after a day.

So she's swishing her gitch, or gotch, or ginch, or gonch, or gitchies, or gotchies around in warm water and Lux. (To do this, you join with your friends at a "Lux party", which by today's standards is hard to imagine.) The weird thing is that the ad implies you should do this "every night", as if you have only one of everything. So how would it dry? By blowing on it?

Hey, Edith - now that you're so popular because you smell like Lux soap - get one of those boyfriends to come over and help you out.

What a douche!

This is the latest in a long, incredible line of ads aimed at women, presumably post-War. This absolutely baffled me at first (actually, it still does). It seems to be hinting, nay, stating that married women have a certain delicate little problem, one so offputting it can "ruin" a happy marriage.

Not to put too fine a point on it, their cunts stink.

We don't know why (except that we do!), as these are women who look to be clean and tidy, women who change their underwear daily and take baths. (And wash their hair in the sink and roll it up in a towel like a turban. Oh, I remember.)

I can only decipher this mystery as such: women smell so horrible and rank and offensive because they have had sex with their husbands. So it's HIS excrescenses that stink so much, except SHE gets the blame for it, and for breaking up the marriage.

So what's the solution (so to speak)? Why, Lysol Brand Disinfectant! You don't use it straight (or at least I don't think so), but add about a teaspoon to your "regular" douche, the douche you have every day because women's private parts are inherently smelly and foul.

I can only imagine how she'd smell THEN. Like a freshly-scrubbed kitchen floor, maybe, or a toilet that had just been swabbed out. A real turn-on, and obviously preferable to smelling like your husband's rotten festering day-old spooge.

Personally, I thought Lysol was for drinking when you're really desperate, or when the liquor store clerk throws you out for loitering. It goes well anywhere, most especially under a bridge, and with anything, namely Sterno. But for cunt hygiene, well, it's not the first thing I would have thought of.

But there is one thing I know, honorable readers (and forgive me for using the word cunt, it's the only one I could think of besides twat) - it's that stupid-ass HUSBAND who is the real douche, and for that, he deserves a Lysol enema so potent it will spurt out of his ears.

Love-quiz. . . For Married Folks Only

(This is a word-for-blotchy-word transcript of one of the many Lysol "Love Quiz" ads "for married folk only". The coy reference to "Lysol. . . every time" could only mean one thing.)

COULD THIS MARRIAGE HAVE BEEN SAVED?

A. Yes. . . had the wife taken heed of her husband's increasing coolness, known the secret of thorough feminine hygiene, kept herself lovely to love.

Q. What does feminine hygiene have to do with keeping married happiness?

A. Far more than some women realize. . . but the WISE wife has the assurance of complete daintiness when she uses "Lysol" brand disinfectant REGULARLY in the douche.

"Check these facts with your doctor. . . "

Q. Many women use a douche only now and then. Is regularity in douching so important?

A. Yes, indeed. . . it should be a routine procedure with every married woman, and always with "Lysol". Because it has marvelous deodorant properties due to its PROVEN ability to kill germs instantly on contact.

Q. How about homemade solutions, such as salt and water?

A. They are old-fashioned and ineffectual, not to be compared with "Lysol"'s scientific formula. "Lysol" has tested efficiency in contact with organic matter. It is both effective and safe for delicate tissues when used as directed. 

ALWAYS USE "LYSOL" in the douche for its efficiency in combating both germs and odours. It will help you feel you have perfect grooming (for) romance.

Check these facts with your doctor (unintelligible)

Why 4 OUT OF 5 PREFER "LYSOL"!

For Feminine Hygiene use "Lysol" Every time

FREE BOOKLET! 

(the rest unintelligible, but contains the word "Lysol" at least three times. The product name appears about ten times in the copy. So we won't forget.)

OK then, so this is a repeat of something I did awhile ago, but the same truths apply. Bizarre and obnoxious as advertising is now, it was infinitely worse then.

I'm sorry, it's late, but I had to show you this. I hope you can read the text. I had to look at it twice, or more likely about 600 times to believe what I was seeing.

Women were conned into believing they were so stinky and drippy, the only solution was to douche every day with LYSOL. What did they have, bugs up their vagina? Were their twats so desperately in need of disinfection?

The add doesn't say this, in fact nobody ever says it, but MEN are the main reason women get stinky in the first place. You try getting ejaculated into, and not smell like an elderly salmon.

This ad is more horrific than the one about "more doctors recommend Camels". But if it doesn't work as a douche, I guess you could always drink it.

(Discovery! This ad wasn't a fluke: now I find a slew of them. A whole sociological treatise! If a woman smells like a woman, her marriage is over. If she smells like Lysol, however. . . va-va-VOOM!)

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm