by Nora Ephron
(A Short but Gamy Section)
A housewife comes to the Institute for Applied Pharmaceutical Research in Yeadon, Pennsylvania, on a Monday morning, at which time she is evaluated by direct olfaction on a scale of eight. What this means, in plain language, is that she simply takes off her clothes, lies down on a bed with a curtain and sheet completely covering the upper half of her body, and a judge takes a nosepiece, places it over her vulvar area, and sniffs. The judge is female, earns up to $1,000 a week, and works also in underarm odor. The housewife is scored: from 0 to 2 means little or no odor; 3–4 denotes a detectable odor though one that is of no concern to the subject; 5–6 is strong odor; and 7–8 is ripe. After the first evaluation, the housewife takes a bath using only soap and water. Six, twelve, and twenty-four hours later, she is sniffed by the judge and evaluated. On Tuesday, the process is repeated. Wednesday and Thursday, she is sprayed with FDS after bathing and the evaluation proceeds. During the four-day period, the housewife sleeps at home but is not allowed to have intercourse. She receives $150 for four days of work. According to the Institute, the test shows that FDS reduces feminine odor more effectively than soap and water—by 74–78 percent after six hours, 53–59 percent after twelve hours, and 38–40 percent after twenty-four hours.
The first feminine-hygiene spray was a Swiss product called Bidex, which was introduced by Medelline in Europe in the early 1960s. Technologically, the product was a step forward: until that point, all sprays had been the wet, sticky variety; the Swiss were the first to use a propellant called fluorocarbon 12 to produce a warm, dry spray. The American rights to Bidex were purchased by Warner-Lambert, which imported it and put it into a small test market under its original name. At the same time, Leonard Lavin, president of Alberto-Culver, saw Bidex during a 1965 trip through Europe, and he brought the concept back to his company and summoned his chief scientist, John A. Cella. Before coming to Alberto-Culver, Cella was part of the original research team on the birth-control pill at G. D. Searle; once, while working with the raw estrogen used in Enovid, he sprouted a pair of breasts. They were only temporary. Cella is a good-natured man who seems to be thoroughly used to the enthusiasms of his boss; still, he admits that the idea of feminine sprays threw him a little. “We were all a little nonplused about it,” he recalled. “Oh, well. They never look to me for marketing decisions. Mr. Lavin came back from Switzerland and said, ‘This thing will go. Can we do it?’ I said, ‘I think we can do it.’ We had some background research on this going back to 1963 in the general deodorant field, in terms of what you could deodorize. It was a toiletry, but we were going to treat it as a pharmaceutical—we realized because of the area in which it was to be used it would have to have safety experiments. It is a grooming product, not a pharmaceutical, but it was a breakthrough.”
In terms of product development, the feminine-hygiene spray was not a breakthrough at all. It followed right along in the tradition of mouthwashes and underarm deodorants and foot sprays, a tradition Ralph Nader has called the why-wash-it-when-you-can-spray-it ethic. What the manufacturers of all these products have succeeded at over the years, as economist John Kenneth Galbraith points out, is in manufacturing and creating the demand for a product at the same time they manufacture and create the product. In the area of personal grooming, the new product is considerably easier to introduce than in other fields. “Year after year,” says Ralph Nader, “in any industry, the sellers become very acute in appealing to those features of a human personality that are easiest to exploit. Everyone knows what they are. It’s easiest to exploit a person’s sense of fear, a person’s sense of being ugly, a person’s sense of smelling badly, than it is to exploit a person’s appraisal or appreciation of nutrition, and, shall we say, less emotive and more rational consumer value.”
The underarm deodorant, which was the first product to capitalize on the American mania for odor suppression, was introduced over a hundred years ago, in 1870. A few years later, Mum, the first trademark brand, came onto the market. It had a primitive formula of wax which was intended to stop perspiration by simply plugging pores. In 1914, Odo-Ro-No, with a base of aluminum chloride, became the first nationally advertised brand, and it was followed by dozens of products containing metal-salts bases, which did control perspiration though they were less successful in controlling odor. The big deodorant boom came in the late 1940s, when the less than euphonious term “B.O.” was coined, and in the 1950s, when hexachlorophene came onto the market. This drug, which its manufacturers claim inhibits the growth of microorganisms on skin surfaces and thus prevents odors, was discovered in 1939 by a scientist named Dr. William Gump and became the sole property of the New York–based Givaudan Corporation, which sold it by the trainload to the manufacturers of Dial Soap, pHisoHex (the soap used in hospitals by doctors and nurses before surgery), and a wide variety of deodorant products. In the 1960s, the introduction of the aerosol container clinched hexachlorophene’s domination of deodorant formulas for the reason that alternative agents, like aluminum salts, could not be used in metal cans. Right Guard, and other “family-type” products, zoomed to the top of sales charts. At the same time, the mouthwash manufacturers introduced pocket-sized spray atomizers, and the first foot-spray powders came onto the market. The American woman had been convinced to spray her mouth, her underarms, and her feet; the feminine-hygiene spray, at this point, was probably inevitable.
Q: Miss Provine, why are vaginal deodorant sprays becoming so popular?
A: I believe that we’re living in a wonderful new era. An era where femininity really counts. And the more feminine you feel, the more feminine you’ll be. The hygiene sprays are popular because they’re an extension of this feeling. It tells me that we’ve come a long way since the horrible days when women were ashamed of feeling like women.
—Advertisement for Feminique.
Dorothy Provine, in this case, happens to be right. Women have come a long way since the horrible days when women were ashamed of feeling like women. To be exact, women have come full circle. Leonard Lavin is fond of reminding his critics that the tradition for the feminine-hygiene spray goes back to Biblical times; he is absolutely accurate; and he is furthermore totally unaware that he is basing his defense of his product on thoroughly primitive practices, purification rites that originated from physiological ignorance and superstition and that were instrumental in the early forms of discrimination against women. Says Rabbi Ira Eisenstein, editor of the Reconstructionist magazine: “To take an ancient concept and apply it to a modern one, especially for commercial purposes, to tie it in with exalted notions, is pure exploitation and misleading.”
Early purification rites surrounded the menstrual period, which was a mysterious phenomenon: the female of the species was able to bleed without pain, and elaborate religious customs were devised to cope with this incredible happenstance. The most complicated and widespread of these rites followed childbirth. “Women after childbirth,” writes J. G. Frazer in The Golden Bough, “are more or less tabooed all the world over.” Adds The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge: “… in childbirth the cause of uncleanness is not the fact of giving birth but the condition resulting which resembles that of the menses.”
The assumption that women and their sexual organs are by nature unclean is reflected in widespread practices in primitive societies. Many of these prevailed up to this century and would be quite ludicrous if they were not so barbaric. Delaware Indian girls, for example, were secluded upon their first period, their heads wrapped so they could not see, and were forced to vomit frequently for twelve days; after this, they were bathed, put into fresh clothes, and secluded for two months more; at this point, they were considered clean and marriageable. The Delawares were hardly unique among American Indians: the Pueblos believed a man would become sick if he touched a menstruating woman, and the Cheyennes painted young girls red at puberty and isolated them for four days. In Morocco, menstruating women were forbidden to enter granaries or handle
bees. Many Australian and New Guinea tribes forbade menstruating women to look at cattle or at the sun; one stray glimpse, it was believed, could cause milk stoppage, crop failure, plagues, famine, and total disaster.
The purification rites developed by the early Jews are probably the most commonly known today, largely because they are preserved in the Book of Leviticus. In Biblical times, menstruation was regarded as an impurity (it still is by Orthodox Jews) and women were forbidden to enter the Temple or to have intercourse at any time during menstruation and for a week thereafter. Any person who touched a woman—or even her bed linens—during her menstrual period was also considered unclean. After her period ended, the Jewish woman was required to take a ritual bath, or mikvah, and this was also required to cleanse objects considered idolatrous, and men who had masturbated or had had nocturnal emissions. There are Jewish theologians who insist that because men as well as women were required to bathe, the purification rites were not innately discriminatory; however, the status of women in Biblical times can be measured by the childbirth purification ritual in the Book of Leviticus (xii), which holds that a woman who bears a son is unclean for forty days thereafter, whereas a woman who bears a daughter is unclean for sixty-six days.
As the party goes on people leave Ann alone. And she doesn’t know why. Ann is never at a loss for conversation. It’s something else that makes people slowly move away. Something that Norforms could stop right away. What are Norforms? Norforms are the second deodorant—a safe internal deodorant.
—Advertisement for Norforms.
Once the basic formula for its feminine-hygiene spray was settled on (almost all the spray formulas contained hexachlorophene as the active deodorizing ingredient, perfume, an emollient, and a propellant), Alberto-Culver’s research department, under Dr. Cella, went to work testing the safety of the product. Because the spray was classified by the Food and Drug Administration as a cosmetic, very little testing was actually required: an eye-irritation test, an oral-toxicity test, and a skin-patch test would have been adequate. To its credit, Alberto-Culver went further; as it happens, though, by the standards set by its own chief scientist, it did not go nearly far enough. In an article on deodorants published last year in American Perfumer & Cosmetics, Cella itemized the testing he thought was necessary for the sprays, as follows: “Animal skin irritation and sensitization studies, animal vulvar irritation studies, animal vaginal instillation studies using the aerosol concentrates, human repeated insult patch tests on intact and abraded skin, subacute and chronic human-use tests, particle size analysis of the spray, and animal inhalation studies.” Cella wrote that efficacy tests would also be desirable, but he added, in a sentence that is a masterpiece of scientific writing: “Efficacy testing in this category presents problems of delicacy which do not encumber the underarm counterparts.” Prior to its introduction of FDS in late 1966, Alberto-Culver conducted only three of these tests. One proved that FDS did no injury to the labia and vaginas of twenty rats over a three-day period. A second was a skin-patch test on sixty-seven persons. The third was a use test: thirty-one women were given the product to use at home over a five-week period and showed no irritation.
In the meantime, the market-research and advertising departments of Alberto-Culver were at work developing packaging, fragrance, and a name for the spray. “The first piece of research we did in 1966,” said Henry Wittemann, vice-president in charge of advertising services, “was a concept test on the product. If you did it today, there would be different results because today the category exists. The first test we commissioned said that the concept was not appealing, and based on that the research agency recommended that we drop the project. But if you looked at the research carefully, there was a suggestion that women weren’t telling the interviewers what they really thought. The question came up as to whether women don’t really want to talk about this subject to anyone. We had done a questionnaire about deodorants with a concept statement saying that a leading manufacturer of toiletries was planning to come out with a deodorant for the vaginal area. Do you think you need it? Would you use it? When? With a test like this, you’re looking for over seventy percent to express interest. If you don’t get that, chances are you don’t have a product that’s appealing to the market. So we decided to go to a research company that had done work in this area, a company that had done questionnaires for feminine-hygiene manufacturers like Kimberly-Clark and Johnson & Johnson. These companies know how to structure questionnaires that deal with that subject to elicit a true response. So we did that, went out with a concept statement and samples, and the interest was over seventy-eight percent. We knew we had a viable concept.” Wittemann claims that at no time during this period was the question of sexual attitudes explicitly explored; the product, he claims, was conceived of as a general deodorant, not a sexual enhancer. (Sexually, the sprays are something of a bust: they cannot be used right before intercourse because they tend to cause skin irritation under those circumstances; furthermore, at least one of the sprays causes numbness of the tongue.)
“We considered names like Caresse and Care,” Wittemann continued, “all the names that might be in good taste. But every name we thought fit the product belonged to another product. We were using the code name ‘FD Number One,’ for feminine deodorant Number One. When we were blocked, we just went to the letters ‘FSD.’ Then it turned out we had to choose ‘FDs’ because even the letters ‘FSD’ were taken.” One criticism of FDS in recent years has been that its name is so close to F.D.A., a coincidence that might seem to imply government approval. Did that issue ever come up? “Never,” Wittemann replied. “The only thing that did come up was an objection by one of our executives, who thought the name sounded too much like FDR.”
“I had no idea it would be so controversial,” says Leonard Lavin today. “As we developed the product and the research proved to us that there was a need for this product—both from the clinical and consumer viewpoint—we were convinced of what we had. We realized that going to the marketplace with a feminine-hygiene deodorant was not the easiest thing in the world. This was an area, after all, where other products advertised with a certain amount of reluctance. Kotex and Tampax, for example. We leaned over backwards in delicacy, elusiveness, even in design of the package: it was as soft and delicate as possible. If you looked at the first print ads, you would really have to look to find out what the product really did.”
FDS was introduced on December 1, 1966. It came in a pale blue and white can, with a lacy white pattern surrounding the label. The drugstore display unit contained a sign, duplicating the first magazine advertisements, that read, “This new product will become as essential to you as your toothbrush.” In smaller print: “FDS. The name is FDS. Feminine Hygiene Deodorant Spray. It is new. A most personal sort of deodorant. An external deodorant. Unique in all the world. Essential on special days. Welcome protection against odor—every single day. FDS. For your total freshness.”
Ten Very Personal Questions
1. Does a woman need more than an underarm deodorant?
YES. A woman, if she’s completely honest about it, realizes her most serious problem isn’t under her arms.…
—Advertisement for FDS, 1968.
With the exception of Bidex, the Swiss product Warner-Lambert still had in test market in two cities, FDS had the feminine-hygiene-spray field to itself for almost a full year. The drug trade, which is notoriously unadventurous, did not believe there was any chance for the product to succeed. Leonard Lavin, who thrives on the notion of his relatively small company as a little guy plugging away in an industry of giants, believed implicitly in FDS, and he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars animating his belief, advertising in print media, publishing pamphlets for drugstore displays, creating a demand for the product by making women understand how much they needed it. “I don’t call it creating guilt,” said Lavin. “That’s your word. I think of what we did as raising consciousness. That’s a less loaded word.” There were almost
daily battles to be fought: drugstore owners would not stock the item; magazines like Life, McCall’s, and Seventeen were reluctant at first to accept ads for it; television had a ban on advertising for all such products. But by late 1967, Alberto-Culver had sold almost $4 million worth of sprays, and Warner-Lambert, a company that could read sales charts as well as any, decided to move ahead. The name Bidex was changed to Pristeen and the product went into a wide test-market pattern prior to national introduction in 1968. “The name Bidex was already taken under trademark,” said Guido Battista, associate director in charge of research and development on toiletries and cosmetics at Warner-Lambert. “But I would have objected to it because of the possibility of misusing the product. It might have seemed to have been intended for internal use. Interestingly enough, some of the information that got to the lay people was that these were vaginal sprays, which they’re not.”
“Our whole approach,” said Warner-Lambert’s Steve Bray, “was, women have a vaginal-odor problem and here is a product that will solve the problem. They do, you know. And panty hose contribute to it. Women’s liberation says that advertising is creating a need that isn’t there. They say it’s a nice, natural smell. That’s their right. But I would go back and ask them, do women have a vaginal-odor problem? I keep going back to the problem. The problem is there.”
Exactly how much of a problem American women were aware of before the sprays were introduced is not clear; what is clear is that feminine-hygiene-spray manufacturers cannot be accused of inventing it. In 1968, a market-research firm hired to investigate consumer reaction to the product gathered a group of housewives for a tape-recorded session that is notable for its embarrassment and coyness about the vaginal area. Said one woman: “I think the new deodorant sprays are sensational. Not that I have a problem down there, but sometimes I think I might.” Said another: “I prefer sprays to the foams or powders.… The sprays eliminate having to touch yourself.”
