Blowhard, Esq. writes:
Back here, Paleo Retiree wondered if pop culture wasn’t getting a little too coarse. Here’s the latest example:
I’ll bet these are just rebranded baby wipes, too. Here’s the press release for the campaign from the advertising firm Grey, New York.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
Ugh.
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Discarded ad copy: “For the classy gent who’s tired of using the socks he just took off or the elegant lady who gets super wet.”
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Fresh + Sexy™ wipes are available in a travel pack for weekends away (24 wipes), as singles for “on the go” (20 individual wrapped wipes), and in a tub for the nightstand (40 wipes).
Available soon, the “massage parlor pack” (200 wipes).
Peter
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Peter, I’m surprised you didn’t point out that the beaver is already an endangered species.
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Oh yeah, it’s Peter my fellow GNP fan! Miss your Roissy 2008 comments and links. 😉
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Too depressing a notion to contemplate 😦
Peter
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The mid-century strikes again. Do a google image search for douche ad lysol, and douche ad zonite. The OCD culture (as it were) about feminine hygiene was as pervasive then as it is now, especially by the ’50s.
“So humiliated when she realized the cause of her husband’s frigidity … Failure [to douche] often results in such needless tragedies — homes broken up, few social invitations, the feeling of being shunned without knowing why. … combat an offensive odor even greater than bad breath or body odor …”
I remember the good old days when a feminine hygiene was hardly advertised because women dropped their weird OCD rituals that in all likelihood made their odor worse by clearing out the good bacteria and only leaving the mean mother-fuckers left to multiply.
Tampon and pad ads were common in the ’80s, but not so much the douching, crotch-sanitizing, pube-shaving ads. Just some on-the-go career gal confidently striding about, worry-free because her whatever it was would stay in place and absorb what it was meant to. They weren’t gross or coarse like those of the mid-century and today.
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You may be asking why I know so much about the history of feminine hygiene practices and advertising… it’s all part of my look into how unwholesome the mid-century was. What kind of ads should I look for if I wanted to probe how gross and taboo-violating they could be in a mainstream, widely visible ad campaign lasting decades. Blammo — feminine hygiene.
For anyone else who doesn’t mind reading up on weird subjects, see the book Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation. Most of it is predictable feminist griping, but there’s a middle section that focuses on primary sources like the ad campaigns, and what women were expected to do back then.
I looked further back into the Jazz Age, and they weren’t obsessed with feminine hygiene. They had better sense and better taste. It’s specifically the mid-century and the past 15-20 years that OCD feminine hygiene has come back.
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I defy you to find anything remotely like this in 1955, Agnostic. If you hate the 1950’s, fine, but don’t be absurd. I actually lived during this time, and I can assure you things were not particularly “unwholesome” back then. I’d be very careful in using a cherry-picking left-wing website as my source for all things 50’s, as well as trying to jam everthing from feminine hygiene to candy bar types into a “theory of everything”.
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Fifties douche ads and these contempo sex wipe ads may be tapping into some of the same OCD energy, but the messages are completely different: “keep your home and marriage together” vs “git more thang”. Pretty big difference.
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