Femfresh Lightly Fragranced Absorbent Body Powder For Intimate Hygiene - 200G

Product Information

Galvanised by the Femfresh advert and an erroneous understanding that the IBA had newly authorised vaginal deodorant advertising on television (which had, in fact, been allowed since 1969), WiM wrote to Brian Young, Director General of the IBA, calling for its Advertising Advisory Committee to overturn the authorisation. In the letter, WiM cited medical opinion to argue that vaginal deodorants were unnecessary and dangerous, as not only had they caused irritation in some women, but they could mask odours resulting from conditions requiring medical attention. WiM also claimed that the advertising itself could be harmful. They wrote that the adverts were ‘designed … to make some women ashamed that their sexual organs might be offensive to others’. This shame could ‘prevent the success of their social and emotional experience’. They questioned why the IBA would allow ‘the advertising of such a socially useless and medically harmful product’ while maintaining a ban on the ‘advertising of contraceptives’, highlighting the hypocrisy of censorship around sexual topics. Young replied, reassuring the ‘Ladies’ of WiM that the advert was ‘very discreet and makes no explicit reference to the use of the product’. 68

Some drugs may have Authority Required (Streamlined) status which does not require an explicit approval from Medicare, instead the doctor can use the Authority code found in the published Schedule for a given drug/indication. LSE, 6WIM/P/01/04, Women in Media, Vaginal Deodorants 1970–72, Press Cuttings: Obstetrics and Gynaecology, November 1970; She, January 1969.

PHARMACIST ONLY MEDICINE

LSE, 6WIM/B/03 Vaginal Deodorants 1972–1973, Letter from Sandra Brown to the Editor of Ad Weekly, 2 November 1972. Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), p. 104. Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg, ‘An Inventory of Shimmers’, in Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (eds), The Affect Theory Reader (Durham, London: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 1–28, here p. 7. Femfresh in particular targeted this kind of campaign at adolescent girls aged thirteen to eighteen, hoping to instil a life-long habit in them. We can see this explicitly in an advert from 1972 in which a very young, white woman is depicted sitting with legs apart, staring straight at the camera, smiling. Split down the middle from head to toe, she is dressed half in school uniform and half completely naked. One of her breasts is fully on display. The camera's gaze looks up her skirt, the unclothed half of her genitals hidden by shadow. Text highlighted the role Femfresh should play in the transition from girlhood to womanhood; ‘even when you've left your gymslip behind … you don't outgrow … the need for intimate freshness’. 58 The text explained that ‘the more woman you are, the more you need Femfresh’, explicitly linking the deodorant with a womanhood which was both feminine and desirable, and in need of careful management lest it be offensive to others. Young women were encouraged to form ‘the Femfresh habit – you'll never grow out of it’. Femfresh's approach in this campaign presented odour as an expected part of womanhood. Whilst still relying on the shame inherent in such products and played on by earlier ads, it normalised vaginal odour as a problem shared by all women and solved individually by buying and using Femfresh. IBAA, BU, IBA/0131, 8014/4/5/1, Sanitary Protection Viewers’ Correspondence 1972–1979, 22 June 1972.

Some PBS medications are restricted and require prior approval from Medicare before a doctor is able to prescribe them on the PBS. This prior approval to prescribe grants the doctor the Authority to prescribe the desired medicine and have it funded under the PBS. Independent Broadcasting Authority Archive, Bournemouth University (IBAA, BU), IBA/0131, 8014/4/5/1, Sanitary Protection Viewers’ Correspondence 1972–1979, Letter from Archie Graham, 8 August 1972. I would like to thank Tracey Loughran, Gareth Millward, Hannah Elizabeth and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and encouraging comments on previous versions of this article. Thank you to the Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex and the ITA/IBA Cable Authority Archive, Bournemouth University for granting permission to use quotations. This research was funded by a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences, ‘Body, Self and Family: women's psychological, emotional and bodily health in Britain, c. 1960–1990’, reference no. 08080/Z/17/Z. WBA, Company Archives 390, ‘Planning for Profit: Planning Your Chemist Counter’, Winter 1971/2, pp. 3–5.

On 6 October 1972, the Advertising Advisory Committee of the IBA sat down to watch all the ads featured in complaints; ads for vaginal deodorant brands Femfresh, Bidex and Perfemma, and the Lil-lets ads. No one on the Committee was personally offended by the Lil-lets ads, but the letters they had received meant they could ‘not justify an immediate decision to open television to the general advertising of sanitary towels and tampons’. Regarding ads for vaginal deodorants, the Committee was split. It was ‘generally’ thought that the Femfresh ads were ‘made tastefully’, but the ‘women members of the Committee’ – two of the seven members including Pike – raised concerns about the safety of the products. They cited ‘unfavourable press and medical comment’ and argued that ‘there was a real possibility that girls and women could be induced to worry about totally natural secretions’. 113 Graham assured the Committee that their medical advisor had not ‘come across any cases of serious irritation caused by these products’ in his Birmingham practice. It was eventually agreed that the ads ‘could be questionable on grounds of taste’ rather than safety. The Committee recommended that ads for genital deodorants should not be accepted ‘at this time’, but with ‘total medical clearance’ this could be reconsidered. On 31 October 1972, an IBA press release announced that it would no longer accept ads for sanitary protection or vaginal deodorants because ‘no advertisement should offend against good taste or decency’. 114