Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Holy Cow, Lysol Saves Marriages!


Nope, this isn't a scene from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," it's a warning to wives from February 18, 1928.

We already know that a Lysol douche is the most important tip to pass on to your terrified daughter. But did you also know that it will prevent your husband from having reluctant sex with your sister?
Her husband and her sister are going to the country club dance. She would like to go...but hasn't the energy. She is "too tired"...as usual.

And, when they were first married, she was always the one who thought of interesting things to do. Now, so much of the time, she is listless, unhappy, bored.

The change came about gradually. But now, without understanding why, they both know that the joy and zest have gone out of their marriage.

These pathetic, "quiet tragedies" are very common, and so often they are unnecessary. They are caused, so often, because the wife is negligent about the delicate matter of personal hygiene--or perhaps because she does not understand the facts about it.
All those years that I spent watching douche advertisements on television, they were always focused on the aesthetic argument: "you stink, darling, so take some of this." Lysol, however, was telling women in 1928 that spraying their insides with watered-down poison would prevent lethargy, perhaps in the way that setting a cat on fire makes it run really fast.

3 comments:

Eric Little said...

Scuze me--gotta go retrieve my bogglin' mind.

What's next? Drano for constipation?

Eric Little said...

A less wise-ass comment--a factoid I synchronously came across:

"Lysol Originally imported from Germany, Lehn and Fink Products began U.S. production of Lysol brand spray disinfectant in 1912."

--from "A Gravity's Rainbow Companion," 2nd ed., by Steven C. Weisenburger

And considering the episode that this note is in reference to, my previous comment is positively proleptic!

Adam Thornton said...

If it will make you queasy and make you laugh at the same time, Pynchon will invent it and write about it!