the xlog : x-rated weblog

Sure, we may see some pretty rough stuff in the porn that’s out there today. Gangbangs, double-anals, gagging, bukkake, and a bunch of other things that you might not have seen in porn from the 1940s. But one thing that we don’t do to our women today is suggest that shooting Lysol up their hoo-ha is a damn fine idea.

Check out the little collection of vintage ads linked below to read how this idea was sold to women. They were told thier husbands were going out at night without them because they were neglecting feminine hygiene and that Lysol was both safe and gentle to use as a douche. They were told that using Lysol would help her stay young and healthy. And they were told that “often a wife fails to realize that doubts due to one intimate neglect shut her out from happy married love.”

You can click on the small images below to open larger versions of these ads in a new window.

Actually, there is a little more to this story, which you can read by clicking the link below for the full posting on this.

Here’s some deeper background on why Lysol was being sold so effectively to women back in those days.

At the time it was illegal to market contraceptive products to women, so ‘femenine hygene’ became a euphamism in advertising for birth control (and abortion remedies). So even though douching with Lysol was both ineffective and dangerous, it could make women sterile and it could induce a miscarriage.

More from From Medicine.net “The History of Birth Control”

When [condoms] were declared illegal, the flourishing trade simply began selling them as “hygiene” products. For example, vaginal sponges were sold to protect women from “germs” instead of sperm. This led to misleading if not downright fraudulent advertising. From 1930 until 1960, the most popular female contraceptive was Lysol disinfectant — advertised as a feminine hygiene product in ads featuring testimonials from prominent European “doctors.” Later investigation by the American Medical Association showed that these experts did not exist.
The fraud of the Lysol douche was a byproduct of illegality. Because birth control couldn’t be advertised openly, manufacturers would use euphemisms to refer to birth control. They took advantage of consumers’ hopes.

More from Planned Parenthood

In the early 20th century, solutions of Lysol and other equally harsh disinfectants and detergents were used as contraceptive “feminine hygiene” douches by millions of American women. While the douches were ineffective in preventing pregnancy, women who used them often became infertile; researchers suggest that the chemicals made women more susceptible to pelvic inflammatory disease, which can affect fertility.