What the Douche?

Compliments of a friend's email forward, here is a horrifying product from the 50s-60s, "Vagasan", a powder (what!?) douching product (via Madame Talbot) with these lovely ingredients:

Carbolic Acid 1/8 of 1% in mixed usable solution (Phenol, also known as carbolic acid, is a toxic, white crystalline solid with a sweet tarry odor, commonly referred to as a "hospital smell". During the 1880s Diphtheria was treated by Phenol Douches.)

Boric Acid A boric acid douche used to be the most commonly recommended means of addressing vaginal yeast.

Alum (think of pickeling alum)

Methyl Salicylate is a wintergreen-scented chemical found in many over-the-counter products, including muscle ache creams.

and Oil of Peppermint

Oh my godde. Acid and Pickling do not create word associations for vagina!! More on douching.

Of Douches. and Cunt Love.

Reading through a delightful post over at feministing that begins with a vintage video of a mother and daughter getting intimate on a beach on the subject of douching and ends with comments discussing the joy of the word 'douche' as an insult and the value of claiming it as a feminist insult (my personal favourite is douchgobbler and plan to take on this wonderful project of reclamation), Anna directs her readers to a very interesting website.

Vulva Perfume.

Um, wow and WTF? Very hip music, for one, which I have playing over and over again while I write this post... and I can't help thinking of the film Perfume I recently saw, a harrowing tale of a young man with the life goal to capture the perfect scent - the scent of a woman, concentrating it as a tiny bottle of perfume, which would put Europe into a crazed orgasmic ecstatic state of bliss (a beautiful metaphoric film worth checking out) ... Vulva Original claims:

The erotic, intimate scent of an irresistible woman... the precious vaginal odour filled into a small glass phial . . . Vulva Original is not a perfume. It is a beguiling vaginal scent which is purely a substance for your own smelling pleasure. Breath in and enjoy, anytime, anywhere, the odour of a beautiful woman.

I appreciate the rhetoric of this cunt-lovin' website and that they're totin' some serious vag love and selling a supposed smell of vagina! As questionable as the very thin, nipple/naval pierced air brushed models are, I still find the website and advertisement (cheesy suited guy and all) less offensive than the video initiating the feministing thread of a mother telling her daughter she ought to clean out her diry vagina! Douches be damned!