Vintage Ads

Lysol douche ad, 1928, U.S.A.

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.