Although the national security threat represented by STDs—and the women who were allegedly responsible for spreading it—faded out of consciousness after WWII, the notion of vaginas as a source of sickness and putrescence was by now medically ingrained and culturally ubiquitous, even without the fear of a specific disease attached. The cult of cleanliness that had long surrounded women’s domestic lives had also made its way into the boudoir, along with an entire cottage industry devoted to making them feel as bad about their unhygienic bodies as they did about their messy homes.
