Skip to main content
Two-page newspaper spread from Lysol describing how disinfecting your vagina with Lysol was a "correct" practice of feminine hygiene.
Mid-century Lysol campaigns shamed women into “disinfecting” their vaginas. Source unknown.

Contraceptive douching products begin to be remarketed as feminine hygiene products.

Date: 1970s

RHRR
AIDS
Mid-century Lysol campaigns shamed women into “disinfecting” their vaginas. Source unknown.

Following the introduction of "the pill," douche product manufacturers begin to build a market around the "problem" of vaginal odor, moving douching from a code for contraception to an issue of hygiene. By 1988, the sale of feminine hygiene "deodorants" will have risen 21.3% in drug stores, and feminine douches will have risen 3.9%. Sales will then explode again in response to the AIDS crisis.