"I thought an aphrodisiac had to be taken-uh-orally."

"It does." said Mr. Clark. "I've been in this business a long time-why are you embarrassed young lady?"

"Never mind," I said, and the conversation turned to Bidette's advertising campaign.

Bidette's quarter-page black and white ad shows a naked young woman hugging her knees and says, "Deal with a woman's body like a woman. For a woman," it continues, "underarm protection is not enough. There's the problem of vaginal odor. A very personal problem."

"Are you aiming at a particular age group?" I asked.

"We're aiming at two age groups because we have a woman and a daughter." said Mr. Clark. "We're aiming at I'd say from fifteen, fourteen, up."

"As young as a young lady could be knowledgeable," added Mr. Bryson.

Bidette "pioneered" this kind of forthright advertisement, and never had any resistance to it.

We did debate to some degree how far to go to actually spell it out. You could say that same copy without the word "vaginal" for instance, but we felt it was time. This era today is one of being able to express oneself and we felt the women would much more ap-

preciate a direct expression of exactly what it was for than to dance around with it.

Mr. Clark showed me a drawerful of feminine deodorant sprays made by competitive companies, including "My Own," "Ambiance," "P. S.," "Busy Body" and "Concern." He pointed out that anxiety over vaginal odor is not peculiar to America. Bidets are common through Europe and a towelette called "Bidex," name and packaging copied from the American product, is now sold it Switzerland and Germany. Also, Youngs Drugs exports Bidette products to Europe.

Before I left (with gift packages of Bidette towelettes and deodorant mist) Mr. Clark and I talked briefly about the Harvard strike and he assured me that at least some of the establishment has a conscience, but that we were alienating people like him by taking over campus buildings.

THE ORIGINAL two-page full color advertisement for Warner-Lambert's "Pristeen" shows a girl sitting on a dune, her knees at her chest and her air fluttering slightly in the wind. She looks very sad ( contemplative I later learned) and the headline reads, "Unfortunately the trickiest deodorant problem a girl has isn't under her pretty little arms. The real problem, " continues the ad in smaller letters, "is how to keep the most girl part of you-the vaginal area-fresh and free from any worry-making odors."

Warner-Lambert also makes Listerine, Rolaids, Bromo-Seltzer and Oh Henry candy bars. The Pristeen executives I tried to get in touch with had all just returned from a conference in Puerto Rico, and were not enthusiastic about talking to me. I did speak to Miss Peggy Prag of Papert, Koenig, Lois advertising agency who devised the original advertising campaign for the product.

Miss Prag works in a glass office on the 36th floor of a modern office building in the cast forties in New York City. In her thirties, chic in white slacks and a brown sweater, she offered me coffee and in a slow but alert voice told me the kind of image she had attempted to present of the kind of girl who uses Pristeen.