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In Defense Of The Douchebag. Yes, Defense.

The Surprising Origins Of The Word "Douchebag"

October 23, 2012

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Consider, if you will, the douchebag. Back in the mid-aughts, all the cool kids were using the term to describe anything they didn’t like, including, on occasion, this site. Shortly afterward, many of those same internet tastemakers started lining up to throw it under the bus (speaking of worn-out catchphrases), all in the hope of being the first to coin its replacement.

Rarely has so much hate had so little effect. "Douchebag" has been DOA’ed more often than the Knicks’ championship aspirations, and yet it remains stubbornly un-deceased, which shouldn’t be all that surprising. If four decades of zombie movies have taught us nothing else, it’s that the minute you turn your back on something you think is dead, it’s pretty much guaranteed to jump up and bite you on the ass.

Despite the best efforts of neophiles, hipster pundits and William Safire wannabes, “douchebag” is in wider use than ever. It’s the new “assh*le,” with the added benefit of not requiring an asterisk to be published in an advertiser-supported publication such as this one. How then, do we explain this remarkable story of endurance, and why are we so convinced that "douchebag" will be around long after all its detractors have curled up their tootsies and shuffled off to join the choir invisible?

First, a little history. Douching, or the spraying of water into the vagina, dates back at least as far as the Napoleonic era, when the future Emperor of Elba encouraged the practice among the female consorts of his soldiers, hoping to discourage the spread of STIs. Common sense dictated that a little post-coital rinsing would flush away the bacteria responsible for debilitating venereal diseases. Like most common-sense solutions to complex problems, this idea was both horrifyingly wrong and disturbingly resilient.

Douching remained more or less in vogue through the latter half of the 20th century. Until the mid-1960s, douchebags made of heavy-duty rubber, and filled with a variety of putative spermicidal solutions, were promoted as a method of contraception despite being about as effective at preventing pregnancy as they were in curbing the spread of syphilis and gonorrhea.

These associations with female promiscuity led to the first derogatory connotations of the term douchebag, which was originally an insult directed at women rather than men. Saying that a girl “hung a douchebag over her bathroom door” suggested she wasn’t the type you could take home to Mom.

With the advent of the pill and methods of birth control that actually worked, douching came to be seen as a thing of the past. Calling a woman a douchebag now implied she wasn’t just skanky but old and used up as well.

Then, in the late '70s, douching was reinvented as an integral part of that mysterious set of rituals known as feminine hygiene. The S.I. Massengill Company spent millions marketing disposable douches that were little more than premixed vinegar or baking soda solutions in one-shot plastic squeeze bottles. Anyone who watched TV during that era can recall a deluge of commercials in which preppy women on sailboats and tennis courts confided to each other in hushed tones that sometimes they didn’t feel, you know… fresh. Products with names like Country Flowers promised to restore that natural, field-of-daisies fragrance to women’s genitalia, the irony being that messing with the pH balance of the vagina will turn a lady’s nether regions into a bacterial frat party quicker than you can say "yeast infection."

So what, you may be wondering, does all this have to do with a bunch of gel-slicked, robo-tanned losers in knockoff Cavalli T-shirts who think it’s OK to hit on your girlfriend any time you leave her unattended for more than eight seconds?

We'll get to that, but first let's take a minute to honor the versatility of this ever-popular insult. Like snowflakes, no two individuals' definitions of "douchebag" are alike.

"It's basically any guy who possesses a comical lack of self-awareness," offers Deadspin and GQ writer Drew Magary. "You know those frosted tips look like sh*t, right? No? You're a douche."

Mandy Stadtmiller, deputy editor at XOJane, describes a douchebag in more general terms: "Any person who is a crappy person (male or female)."

For some, contemplating "douchebag" means conjuring a mobius strip of meaning that would baffle even the most nimble student of language.

Grantland's David Cho isn't a huge fan of word, not just because of its connotations, but because of the ease with which it's used. "So it's you, sort of saying, 'Hey, guy who has a collection of traits that I'm going to deem is sh*ttier than me — you're a douchebag.' But, now, as the word has really become a mainstay in our lexicon, people are being a lot more liberal with their use of the word, which means we're all going around being judgmental dicks on a regular basis. Now, wait a second, does that mean in this weird chicken-or-the-egg (or Looper, I think)-type situation that the use of the word 'douchebag' makes the person actually saying the word the bigger douchebag? OH. SH*T."

Jen Doll, who writes frequently and entertainingly on language at The Atlantic Wire, isn't a big fan either. "It's kind of a lame insult," she wrote via email. "What, exactly, are you trying to say? More and more it seems only douchebags are using the term douchebag. So, as an expression, it ends up saying more about the person who says it than about the person it's being said about."

Writer and Jezebel founder Anna Holmes' current definition is "Mark Halperin," the political analyst at Time and MSNBC.

Say what you will, the term has a surprising elasticity.