The Dirt on Clean - Katherine Ashenburg [89]
“We are all glowing, and sparkling, and snapping, and tingling with health, by way of the toothbrush, and the razor, and the shaving cream, and the face lotion, and the deodorant, and a dozen other brightly packaged gifts of the gods.”
—Theodore MacManus, “The Nadir of Nothingness,” 1928
FROM THE BATTLEFIELD TO THE DRUGSTORE
Even more sensitive a subject than deodorant, menstrual pads appeared and became a success in the 1920s. Before the invention of Kotex, women used cotton cloths or rags, which they washed and reused. During the First World War, a Wisconsin company called Cellucotton made bandages from wood fibre for use in the army hospitals in France, and the nurses began using these “cellucotton” bandages as disposable sanitary pads. Once the war was over, the company renamed them Kotex (short for “cotton-like texture”) and hired a Chicago advertising agency to market this awkward product.
Bizarrely, its first ad showed two wounded soldiers with an attendant nurse, and two other soldiers in the background. Accepted by the Ladies’ Home Journal but never printed, the ad was recalled by the agency, which had second thoughts about spotlighting men in connection with such an unmentionable female function. But the product’s wartime origin—perhaps some sense that if it was good enough for heroic soldiers, it would serve for a woman’s monthly inconvenience—was apparently too compelling to forgo entirely. The next attempt, which was published in the Journal in 1921 and is pictured here, shows a wounded veteran seen from the back in his wheelchair in a garden, attended by a nurse and another woman. A third woman sits behind them on the grass. The copy fills in the “romantic background” of this “wonderful absorbent,” which is now manufactured by machinery that makes and seals it completely without contact from human hands. The sanitary pads became so successful that the company changed its name from Cellucotton to Kotex.
Her chapter called “Odors” begins with a breezy preface:
If you are going to be insulted, don’t read this chapter. But there is really no reason for your taking offense if you have that dreadful thing known to all the world as “B.O.” (Body Odor)! It is not you who should be offended, but your friends, if by this time you have not lost them all. Of course, you do as you like, for after all it is your book—not mine.
The frankness of deodorant manufacturers, Hadida writes, has brought a formerly forbidden subject out in the open. Now men and women are being told that unless we bathe daily and use deodorant, “we are guilty of B.O.” It’s obvious why this reprimand is necessary: “You need only to go into a dressing room of a department store, depot, theatre, office building, or any other room frequented by women to know that more attention should be paid to the subject of baths.”
Never underestimate the unpleasant aroma that stems from the neglect of cleanliness: B.O. has been the cause of rupture of friendships, of the breaking of engagements, of exclusion from definite social groups, of disgusted expressions of the face, of quarrels between husbands and wives, friends, brothers and sisters—and how unnecessary—when for ten cents the difficulty can be removed.
Although Hadida claims that a ten-cent box or bottle or jar of deodorant can last a lifetime, that is doubtful given the frequency and range of applications she suggests. After bathing, it should coat “ANY PART of the body that is likely to have an odor—under the arms, between the toes, around the edge of the hair, in the groin, the palms of the hands.” Because nerves and excitement provoke B.O., it’s a good practice to carry a small package of deodorant in your purse for extra applications