By Jillian Klean Zwilling
Beginning in 1912, Lehn and Fink Products Corporation began to import their products to the United States. Among those products was the disinfectant Lysol, which was originally marketed as a household cleaner and disinfectant.1 During this time period, advertisers began to move toward a more “niche” model of marketing, and several new advertising strategies were employed to market the “differences” among products that were essentially similar.2 Two of the strategies that advertisers employed were direct marketing to women and market segmentation. As noted by historian Charles McGovern, advertisers began to draw connections between consumerism and citizenship, reinforcing the messages of Americans as consumers by “voting” with their dollars.3 So just as women were gaining the vote through the 19th Amendment, they were also being targeted by advertisers who sought to move products off the shelves by targeting the insecurities of the American public.4 Women were particularly targeted as an audience that advertisers thought were unsophisticated and easily manipulated.5
Advertisers portrayed an image of women as overly sentimental and emotional, and the ads they created reflected that. Advertisers were nonetheless successful in advertising to women, even if their views of women were simplistic. Manufacturers sought different ways to move products off the shelves and into American homes.6 One strategy that advertisers used was market segmentation, in which identical products were presented as different through packaging or small differences that did not affect the performance or utility of the good. As historian Roland Marchand notes, this strategy was quite common and was often used for several types of products. As the movement toward niche marketing began to grow, Lehn and Fink began to market Lysol for different purposes besides household cleaning. Ads for Lysol were aimed at women in different
ways, some ads aimed at nurses informed of the antiseptic benefits of using Lysol in hospitals and for care of patients.7 One of the most prominent ways that Lysol was advertised in ladies’ magazines at this time was as a “feminine hygiene” product, a term which became popular in the early 1900s.8 The ads for “feminine hygiene” products were a growing trend in the 1920s and 1930s. This growing popularity indicates a growing market that advertisers sought to tap into regarding the American publics’ concerns about hygiene, but also the growing movement to limit family size as an economic and hygienic decision. One of the most popular products to come out of this environment is the feminine hygiene douche. While more than one company produced a douche product, Lysol’s position as a known household name was advantageous for advertisers.
The Lysol Douche ads became popular in the 1920s, and the ads moved toward addressing women directly in ads and using coded testimonials. These strategies were also employed by other feminine hygiene products, such as Kotex and feminine deodorants.9 However, the Lysol douche was not just a product that women were encouraged to use by advertisers, but also a product that was covertly being used as a method of birth control. In the 1920s, any mention of birth control was an offence against public decency. Other forms of birth control were not widely available and laws governed any mention or distribution of birth control in any capacity due to the current political and sociological climate. In the time period before the mention of birth control was legal, advertisers were forced to resort to euphemisms and vague text to imply usage. This strategy of vagueness allowed advertisers to market their products as “feminine hygiene” products and fill a market need, while avoiding the legal problems with advertising birth control. However, women in this time period were able to decipher the messages in these ads through the rhetoric used and the Lysol douche became the best-selling form of birth control used in this time period by women from all socio-economic backgrounds.10
Previous research into advertising aimed at women in the 1920s and 1930s has commented on how women were often targeted as the main consumers of household products.11 This was also true in the case of fertility issues, as women were seen as solely responsible for all aspects of the home, including the avoidance of pregnancy.12 Ads in this time period also began to focus heavily on hygiene concerns and to create urgency for women to purchase products that would help them to assimilate into the norms of the middle class; especially women who found themselves in the middle class for the first time or those who were immigrants.13 This created a rhetorical space for advertisers to colonize the female body in new ways and opened doors for advertisers to employ new rhetorical strategies to prey on the fears of women. Especially fears regarding hygiene and the social mortification of being embarrassed by odors or the perception of uncleanliness. This article will examine the interlocking facets related to the Lysol douche to explore how the confluence of time and social factors resulted in the advertising of a household chemical and dangerous carcinogen as a douche, and also explore the rhetorical strategies employed by the advertisers of these products as an especially important question to the study of advertising. A rhetorical analysis of the strategies and conventions used in an effort to persuade women to participate in such rituals is paramount to the study of advertising aimed at women and the contextual factors of the question of birth control in the 1920s and 1930s.
The Question of Propriety
As noted by previous scholars, the quest to control fertility is one that human beings have engaged in since biblical times.14 The move toward controlling fertility in the United States was interlaced with social reform, as the poor were often those who struggled under the burden of too many children to feed, and lacked basic medical care resulting in tragic deaths in childbirth for both mother and child.15 This “problem” was exacerbated by the fact that doctors and nurses were not allowed to give advice to women regarding the spacing of children or the avoidance of pregnancy. This ban on medical advice resulted in many women taking the matter of birth control into their own hands and relying on “mail-order buying and purchases made at pharmacies, five-and-dime stores, gas stations, and vending machines and even door-to-door peddlers.” 16 This situation was further complicated by the passage of the Comstock Act by Congress in 1873, which officially made any mention of contraceptives “obscene” and drove the market underground.
The Comstock Act is now synonymous with censorship in the American consciousness. However, the path to the Comstock Act and its effects are an integral part of American attitudes toward birth control in this time period. The time period in which the Comstock Act was passed was socially turbulent and marked by the movement of the American population to a more urban sensibility and existence. The women’s suffrage movement also added to the tenor of changing American attitudes. The time period was also complicated by the arrival of immigrants, who were often seen as both participating in and purchasing sexually explicit materials which were becoming more popular and
easily accessible. Comstock and his allies felt that it was necessary to protect the country from such impurities, and therefore began a crusade to eradicate sexually suggestive and explicit materials and “sin” from the American consciousness. However, this movement to remove offending materials often proved to be counterproductive as prosecuting such materials only increased publicity for them.
The Comstock Act was at the center of an exploding controversy in the country as it dealt specifically with birth control. The Comstock Act “defined contraceptives as obscene and inaugurated a century of indignities associated with birth control’s illicit status.” 17 The legal move to define contraceptives as illegal and obscene had far reaching consequences for American women. After the passing of the Comstock Act, several states also followed by passing their own laws banning contraceptives as an indecency.18 This created a unregulated market for the control of fertility, which was entirely unregulated and often resulted in products that were ineffective at the least, and damaging to health and fertility at the extreme.
The Struggle for Birth Control
During the period of the Depression, the economic tenor of the country made the desire to suppress pregnancy an economic necessity for women. Women knew first hand that the economic strain of more children could lead to dire consequences. Attitudes began to change toward contraception as it became an economic necessity. 19 Pioneers in the birth control movement, such as Margaret Sanger, helped to bring on this change in attitudes.20 Sanger and her allies tried to establish a useful, convenient and safe practice of birth control that had better results than the current products on the market in the 1920s and
1930s. As studies of the time period noted, “the bulk of money spent for contraceptives, probably more than a quarter of a billion dollars annually goes for these “feminine hygiene” products. In general, they are singularly ineffective as contraceptives, being on par with plain water, and may be harmful.”21 As the country was approaching the mid 1930s, the attitudes toward birth control were changing, as noted by Dawson, Meny and Ridley in their study on fertility control in the United States before the advent of reliable contraception:
Women born between 1906 and 1910 (who reached theirpeak reproductive years during the Depression) weresomewhat more likely to have practiced contraception thanwere those in the earlier birth cohorts. Women who hadtwo or more live births, those who were college educated,the urban, the white-collar and the non-Catholic were mostlikely to have used a method [of contraception].22
The changing attitudes about contraception were also documented by public opinion polls in popular magazines such as Fortune and Ladies Home Journal. As noted by Pilpel and Zavin:
In 1936, Fortune Magazine polled a cross section of theadult population asking, “Do you believe in the teachingand practice of birth control?” Sixty-three per cent of allthose polled answered “yes”. Forty-two and eight tenths percent of the Catholics asked also answered “yes.” Again, in1938, the Ladies Home Journal found that 79 per cent ofthe cross section of women asked whether they “believe inbirth control” responded “yes”-51 per cent of Catholicwomen asked responded in the affirmative. 23
However, the anti-contraception provision of the Comstock Act acted as a catalyst for feminine hygiene products to advertise by stating that products that were sold for reasons other then contraception. Euphemistic terms such as “feminine hygiene” or “protection” from diseases, were legal under the law and therefore could be sold in pharmacies and five-and-dime stores where women had the most access to them. Women
were able to buy a product like Lysol in the housewares department, which protected their privacy.24 This unique situation of legality was one that advertisers were aware of and likely took advantage of, as the number of ads in the 1930s was increasing and the market was ripe with numerous “feminine hygiene” products available through mail order or over the counter. Stores began to install “feminine hygiene” sections with “lady attendants” to answer personal questions in a “discrete” manner.25 Fortune Magazine noted in 1938 that birth control was a booming business with over $250 million in annual revenue.26 The market was flooded with douches, jellies, makeshift spermicides, and even diaphragms, along with the traditional condoms and pessaries.27 This influx in profitability, along with prohibition on “obscenity” allowed euphemistic products such as the Lysol douche to soar in popularity.
The Fear Appeal of Pregnancy
One of the ways that advertisers sought to sell products in the 1920s and 1930s was by relying on the fears of consumers. As the progressive movement began to concern itself with the hygiene of America and its people, advertisers preyed upon the fears of women who were anxious about being perceived as impoverished or dirty.28 This view of hygiene as the “path to social (or moral) salvation” played into the fears of the growing middle class and the xenophobia that was rampant across the country.29
Advertisers played into these fears by creating products for hygienic purposes, such as deodorants, mouthwashes, toothpastes, and soaps.30 Some advertisers even went so far as to invent conditions that people would need to correct with their product, such as halitosis, a fake “condition” in which people “suffered” from bad breath.31 These fear
appeals often targeted women, who were seen as the primary consumers of household and hygienic products. Advertisers pushed a model of consumption on women in which consumption itself was liberation. 32 Women were encouraged to see their role as consumer as one in which they were able to be liberated from the dregs of life and able to make their family happy and healthy; the consuming of goods was seen as a patriotic duty of women everywhere.
The advertising industry, manufacturers, retailers andpolitical leaders provided a concomitant cultural ethos, thatcelebrated the emancipating properties of consumption; thepower to purchase was lauded as desirable, deserved andquintessentially American freedom. Women becamefavored recipients of this self-congratulatory encomium.33
As the primary consumers, women were also assumed to take fully responsibility for the birth control needs as well. Biologically, women were the ones who dealt with the physicality of being pregnant and were the sole caregivers of children more often than not. Therefore, women were encouraged by advertisers to use their consumer power to liberate themselves from pregnancy and economic hardship at a time when jobs were scarce and economy was unlikely to recover any time soon.
Although advertisers did not create the need for contraception, they exploited the fears of women to increase their profit margins substantially. Even though the products that were offered by advertisers were ineffective and even harmful, the options available to women at this time were limited. Businesses were legally protected by the vagueness of their claims as well. Therefore, women had little recourse if the product was ineffective or harmful, as the advertisers were claiming that the product was for feminine hygiene, and not for birth control. 34 The douche particularly was easily accessible and affordable at any five and dime, and the marketing of the antiseptic likely increased its value as a household item with many supposed uses.
The Popularity of the Douche
The Lysol douche was the most popular form of birth control in the late 1920s and 1930s, due to several factors. First, women in all stations of life could afford the product, and advertisers also suggested using Lysol for other purposes, such as “gargle, nasal spray and household cleaner,” which added to the economy of purchasing Lysol.35 Other douche products were similar in this capacity they could be purchased with a measure of anonymity and douching was often one of many uses for the product. One other douche brand claimed that the product could also be used for curing athlete’s foot.36 One of Lysol’s competitors, Zonite marketed itself as a tool to remove “germs” from women’s anatomy.37 Women were likely to purchase Lysol as it could be used for several non feminine hygiene related reasons and therefore was less embarrassing to buy at a store. In a time when birth control was considered obscene, most women probably did not want their neighbors to see them purchasing what could be birth control.
The douche was also highly criticized for its ineffectiveness by birth control advocates such as Margaret Sanger, as well as by scientists and scholars alike. Noted to be only about 30% effective, the Lysol douche was not much more effective than plain water.38 However, Lysol also contained a compound that was much more caustic than water called cresol, made from a compound of coal and wood. In 1936, Facts and Frauds in Women’s Hygiene was published to document the problematic use of the douches and other over the counter birth control products.39 The compound in Lysol was eventually
found to be a carcinogen by medical researchers, and was also likely the reason that many women were injured from the practice of douching with Lysol. 40 Many women were actively trying to avoid pregnancy with this method, and therefore douched more frequently then recommended and also used a higher concentration then recommended, which resulted in inflammation, burns and even death.41
The Federal Trade Commission was established in 1914, but its powers were limited and the Food and Drug Administration would not be established until 1933.42 The Robinson- Patman Act, established in 1936, was an anti-trust law which did not do much for consumer complaints although it was often a tool used by the government against cosmetics companies’ advertising practices.43 In short, a confluence of inadequate regulation and market forces led to a “buyer beware” situation for consumers in this time period. Lehn and Fink also refused to take legal responsibility when the Lysol douche harmed women. In cases in which women were burned using Lysol, Lehn and Fink responded by saying that they could not be responsible for alleged allergies to their product and that they had followed all FTC regulations.44 The lawsuits, however, did not stop the company from further advertising their product, although they did include packaging that noted that the product required dilution. All in all, Lehn and Fink were aware that their product was causing severe problems for women who were burned or harmed by the product, but still continued to advertise the product as one that women couldn’t afford not to use. The loose government regulations and the pervasive attitudes of corporate irresponsibility provided a situation in which women were harmed, but had no recourse for their grievances. Even if women were able to pursue legal proceedings for a company’s product, they could not admit that the product had been used for birth control due to anti-obscenity legislation. The result was a product that often created burns or cancer, and still resulted in pregnancies.
Female Liberation
One tactic that advertisers employed was the rhetoric of “liberation” for married women who were seeking to stay young and healthy. Several of the Lysol ads touch upon the fact that women without proper “feminine hygiene” habits can seem “old before their time,” however by using the Lysol douche women are liberated from being old before their time and from the “calendar” worries that young married women face. Similar to the messages women were receiving about their consuming “freedom” from other advertisers, messages about consuming feminine hygiene products also had the rhetorical undercurrent of freedom. Ads posited that if women wanted to preserve their freedom, they could use their consuming power to do so.45 Under the guise of “medical” advice, women were promised liberation from unhappiness, worry, and fear, if they would just use their skill as consumers in a discriminating fashion to choose a good feminine hygiene product. These messages echoed similar rhetoric that was used to sell women other products in this time period, including appliances and automobiles.46
As the population began to realize the improvements in living conditions emerging after World War II meant that many more people could hope to be upwardly mobile, the task of women in this paradigm was to be ardent consumers of products that would keep their homes and families healthy and clean. This was essentially the same message that women were receiving about their own feminine hygiene, a topic that was rarely advertised or discussed publicly before this time period. As women took on the
role of consumer, the cultural messages about women’s bodies and place in the world was also changing. While matters of women’s bodies were previously unmentionable or hidden, the focus on hygienic reform after World War II changed the context of the discussion.47 Women’s roles had changed significantly when they were working outside the home and the move to a scientific model culturally had made previously taboo topics more open for scientific inquiry.48 The medical community started to see the need to provide women with information about their own bodies and to publicize information about how those bodies functioned. 49 The question of menstruation and the reproductive cycle of the feminine body from birth to menopause were also being more fully investigated. 50 Women had also entered the nursing field during the war and the medical training provided educated many women about their own bodies. This allowed women patients to ask questions of a female nurse that they may not have asked of a male doctor previously due to an influx of female medical personnel. 51
These changes toward a more scientific perspective gave women confidence that they were purchasing a contraceptive device that was technologically advanced, even though that was not the case in this situation. 52 However, this belief gave women confidence to seek out contraceptives that would allow them to make choices about their own lives, as opposed to having those choices made for them by their own reproductive cycles. While the ban on contraception would not be removed until 1965, and was not taken off the books as “obscenity” until 1971, women who wished to be in control of their own fertility fueled the national move toward legal contraception.53 The push for women to control their own reproductive destinies become an avenue for companies and advertisers to colonize the female body through false claims and ineffective products, but the advent of these products also created market demand for products that worked and were medically safe. The pioneering women who fought for birth control in the public eye, such as Margaret Sanger, are important, but so are the millions of typical womenwho decoded the euphemistic text of advertising copy and clearly paved the way for the advent of better and most sophisticated methods of birth control.
Conclusion
The Lysol douche ads provide an interesting case study into the rhetoric of birth control and advertising in the 1920s and 1930s. This example provides an example of how cultural and economic factors worked to create a specific cultural climate in which advertisers were able to rhetorically craft messages to sell a product that was officially not for sale in this country. The passing of the Comstock Act, which was intended to drive out all forms of contraception, actually acted as a catalyst to increase the market for products that covertly were being used as birth control. While the motivation of the Comstock Act was to squelch all forms of obscenity, the publicity from arrests and seizures of materials often did more to pique the public’s interest
Another factor strongly related to the growing increase in birth control use was the increasing economic instability of the U.S. during the Depression. Women were put in a particularly precarious role by these factors and by the fact that their sex was thought to be primarily responsible for the decisions relating to fertility and childbirth. These factors allowed advertisers to craft rhetorical messages that relied primarily on the fears of women and also on the conventions of euphemism to convey their messages.
This study is important in that it provides an interesting socio-historical look into the history of birth control in this country, but also because it relates strongly the social norms of gender in advertising in the 1920s and 1930s. The trend toward fear appeals from such a gendered perspective speaks to how advertisers viewed women, and in turn how women were viewed (at least in the matter of birth control) from a cultural perspective. The advent of the Progressive movement in the 1910s brought change to the U.S. in terms of living conditions, especially for those who were at the bottom of the social hierarchy, but also opened the door for advertisers to prey on the fears of those who felt that they were not acceptable by societal standards. In this way, companies such as Lehn and Fink were able to make large profits from products that were not only not effective, but hazardous to the people who used them. However, the rhetorical strategies that were developed by advertisers during this time period were undoubtedly effective and continue to be used by advertisers today.
Notes
1 Retrieved from the Reckitt Benckiser website:
http://www.reckittbenckiser.com/RBTemplates/AboutUsOurHistory.aspx?pageid=15 2 Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1985).
3 Charles F. McGovern, Sold American: Consumption and citizenship, 1890-1945 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006)
4 Cynthia L. Henthorn,From Submarines to Suburbs: Selling a Better America, 1939- 1959. (Ohio University Press, 2006).
5 McGovern, 2006
6 Marchand, 1985
7 Oscar A. Bourgeault, “The Feminine Hygiene question,” The American Journal of Nursing 56.8 (August, 1956): 1021-1022.
8 Mary Ellen Waller-Zuckerman, “”Old homes, in a city of perpetual change’: Women’s magazines, 1890-1916,” Business History Review 63.4 (Winter, 1989): 715-757. 9 Marchand, 1985
Feminine Hygiene 16
10 Andrea Tone, Devices and Desires: A history of contraceptives in America (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2001).
11 Henthorn, 2006
12 Margaret Sanger, An autobiography (New York: Dover Press, 2004). 13 Henthorn, 2006
14 For a full examination of the history of birth control see: Christopher Tietze, History of Contraceptive Methods. (New York: National Committee on Maternal Health, 1965). 15 David Loth, “Planned Parenthood,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 272 (November, 1950): 95-101.
16 Tone, 2001, p. xv
17 Tone, 2001, p. 4
18 Harriet F. Pilpel and Theodora S. Zavin, “Birth Control,” Marriage and Family Living 14, 2 (May, 1952): 117- 124.
19 The University of Chicago Law Review, “Contraceptives and the Law,” The University of Chicago Law Review 6.2 (February, 1939): 260-269.
20 It must be noted that Sanger is a contested figure who contributed to bringing about legal birth control in the U.S., but was also an active participant in the eugenics movement. Her legacy is checkered at best.
21 Loth, 1950, p. 98
22Deborah A. Dawson, Denise J. Meny, and Jeanne Clare Ridley, “Fertility control in the United States before the contraceptive revolution,” Family Planning Perspectives 21.2 (1980): p. 76
23 Pilpel and Zavin, 1952, p. 120.
24 Pilpel and Zavin, 1952
25 Tone, 2001
26 Andrea Tone, “Contraceptive consumers: Gender and the political economy of birth control in the 1930s,” Journal of Social History (Spring, 1996): p. 485 27 Shirley Green. A Curious History of Contraception. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1971).
28 Henthorn, 2006
29 Henthorn, 2006, p. 37
30 Marchand, 1985
31 Marchand, 1985, p. 18
32 Marchand, 1985
33 Tone, 2001, p. 156
34 For a full discussion of consumer dissatisfaction see Aaker and Bruzzone, 1985, Diener and Greyson, 1978 and Hustead and Pessemier, 1973.
35 Tone, 1996, p. 501
36 Tone, 1996
37 Tone, 1996, p. 163
38 Tone, 1996
Feminine Hygiene 17
39 Rachel Lynn Palmer and Sarah K. Greensburg, Facts and Frauds in Women’s Hygiene (New York City, NY: The Sun Dial Press, 1936).
40 Clyda Rent, George S. Rent and Travis J. Northcutt Jr., “Behaviors related to the onset of cervical cancer” Journal of Health and Social Behavior (December,1972): 437-445. 41 Tone, 1996
42 Inger L. Stole. Advertising on Trial: Consumer activism and corporate public relations in the 1930s (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2006).
43 “Attack Robinson-Patman Act” Advertising Age, November 16, 1936, p. 1. 44 Tone, 2001, p. 172
45 Marchand, 1985
46 Henthorn, 2006
47 For a discussion on the folklore of disgustingness, see Jones, 2000. 48 Mary Beth Norton, “American History,” Signs 5.2 (Winter, 1979): 324-337. 49 Michael Newton, “Feminine Hygiene,” The American Journal of Nursing 64.12 (December, 1964): 100-102.
50 For further information about research about menstruation, see Lee, 1994 and Brumberg, 1993.
51 Oscar A. Bourgeault, “The Feminine Hygiene question,” The American Journal of Nursing 56.8 (August, 1956): 1021-1022.
52 Tone, 200153 Dorothy Wardell. “Margaret Sanger: Birth Control’s Successful Revolutionary.” American Journal of Public Health 70.7 (1980): 736-42.
