This Soviet poster from the 1930s instructs:
“Are you taking care of your breasts? Harden your nipples with daily washing in cold water.”
What are they talking about? Harden your nipples? Was this the work of some apparatchik whose only entertainment during mundane bureaucratic duties was to watch for nipple erections? Probably kept the thermostat lowered in the office too. Or, kidding aside, was there believed to be some genuine health benefit in chilling your tits?
It isn’t often that I wish America could be more like the Soviet Union.
It looks like she’s been washing them so long that she’s about to fall asleep from it.
Could it be about preparing your nipples for breastfeeding?
If it were just ‘wash your boobies’, I’d bet it was something about breast feeding (clean boobs = happy, healthy babies).
But as is, I’m stumped. And rather glad I don’t live someplace, somewhen, when my government tells me to wash delicate parts with cold water.
Too bad they don’t have a portrayal of Stalin leering in the background.
It’s in the 30s outside and my office heater is pouring out cool air. Glad to know it’s good for something.
I think if the point was to sterilize said boobage for breast-feeding purposes, it’d be recommending vodka instead of water.
“You don’t know how lucky you are, boys,
Back in the U.S.S.R.!”
Maybe it’s a whole trying-to-improve-latch-on scheme to improve breast-feeding; maybe they thought that causing your nipples to harden on a daily basis would make them more protuberant when breast-feeding time came along.
Actually, breast milk itself has antiseptic properties and just leaving a bit on the nipples and allowing it to dry is about as good as you are going to find for nipple care. I do remember that some older sources suggested various treatments like washing vigorously with a rough cloth to toughen up nipples for breastfeeding.
I got a bucket and a squeegee right here. I propose that we institute a campaign of clean boobies right here in the good ol’ USA, and I’m voluteering to start! Who’s with me?
“Old” sources as recently as the early '90s were recommending “preparing” the nipples by roughing them up with a washcloth, running cold water over them and tugging on them gently while pregnant. The idea was that those native-type wimmin breastfeed with no chafing or cracking problems, and it must be because they’re not wearing clothes all the time and their nipples get tough. It’s all not true, of course, and it’s no longer recommended by current sources.
I’m with you buddy, my plane leaves in 3 hours 
In Soviet Russia, nipples harden you!!!
:dubious:
Okay, that one doesn’t work so good…
This isn’t a good place to start out with the “wire brush and Dettol” story, is it?
It’s more than likely a preparation for breast feeding. It has been thought that ‘toughening’ nipples would protract inverted or flat nipples and improve babies’ latching on. You can’t help but think that this advice is brought to you by the same people that have been hard at work ‘discovering’ the clitoris.
Nowadays I think the usual remedy is a breast shell, but the efficacy of this too is questionable.
Waverly, certified breast expert.
As to why the State was so concerned with the state of its nipples, in Soviet Russia it was considered really important to produce lots of wee workers. Women who had some crazily large number of kids (10 I think) got an award that translates as “Hero mother.”
Ah yes, here it is. Apparently you got valuable prizes too.
Interesting that the same government that rewarded large families in order to make up for combat losses was the same one that purged millions only a few years earlier. I bet there were a few military planners who wished they’d saved some of those “traitors” for the ranks instead of sending them to secret mass graves.
Just out of curiosity, do you have a cite for this? It seems to me that leaving a bit of something warm and packed with nutrients would have the exact opposite of an antiseptic effect.
I don’t know. I say God bless the Soviet Union.
We just have a difference of opinion.
