Lysol, which today scours toilets
and bathroom floors, scoured vaginas
(and helped kill sperm) in an earlier
era, when, I guess, women were
hardier. (Andrea Tone, in Devices &
Desires [2001, Hill &
Wang], reports on the vaginal scalding
Lysol caused, and read a 1936 critique
of Lysol and Zonite douching). Note
the powerful, horrible word
"disinfectant." This is a
black-and-white ad from McCall's
Magazine, July 1928, the same month
that future Life magazine photographer
Lee Miller
unwittingly appeared in the first
menstrual hygiene ad to feature a real
person, a Kotex ad. She was just as
surprised, and disappointed, as the
rest of the country.