Q-Tips: Who Are They Kidding?
- Cordelia
- Jan 21, 2019
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 10, 2019
We all use Q-tips. We all know what Q-tips are for. But for some reason, no one is willing to admit it out loud. Somehow, the fact that people use Q-tips to clean their ears (GASP! Who said THAT?!) has become this big, bizarre, open secret.
So much so that the Q-tip company is in this weird kind of denial about it.
In fact, the official slogan of the Q-tip brand is this phrase, "A VARIETY OF USES."
A "variety..." sure... But to avoid the fact that Q-tips are, in reality, used by a majority of people to do one single, very specific thing (CLLLEEEEAAAANNNN YOOOOUUUURRRR EEEEAAAARRRSSSS), the company has come up with a whole bunch of truly bizarre ideas to support this "variety of uses" claim. Some of which are oddly specific. Like, for instance, maybe you... #1. Want to remove a raisin from a red high-heeled shoe.
Well, Q-tips are GREAT for that...! Or maybe you... #2. Want to lightly touch the flat, easy-to-reach top of a computer key with a Q-tip.
Notice, however, that the pad of the Y key is NOT "hard to reach"... the image deliberately DOES NOT show the Q-tip cleaning the space between the keys--a task Q-tips might actually be pretty good for--it goes way out of its way to show the Q-tip NOT doing this, but only lightly touching the top, flat part of the key that could easily be reached with any implement other than a Q-tip. Almost as if they were subtly hinting at something, quietly implying that perhaps... just perhaps, there is some other, secret, unspeakable use that Q-tips are really meant to have... Oh, but no, certainly no one is suggesting that... Maybe you can use Q-tips for... #3. Lightly touching the tip of your finger when you get hurt.
Once again, notice the deliberately implausible posing of this photograph. The unrealistic way the Q-tip is meeting the finger. The awkward staging of it, the overly delicate contact, the ineffective-looking angle and lightness of the touch. Yet again, seeming to give the subtle implication that there's more going on here than the Q-tip company can admit to... It's this huge open secret. Everyone knows that Q-tips are for cleaning your ears. That's what people use them for. But to maintain appearances, the Q-tip brand has to play dumb about this, and come up with all kinds of... bizarre excuses. "You can use Q-tips for... um, the ever-present problem of shoe-raisin removal! Yes! Of course! Or, um, maybe touching the flat of the Y key on your keyboard. Everyone likes to do that! Or! Or, um, uh, lightly touching the tip of your finger if you get hurt! Certainly no one is suggesting that you... use them to... ah... er... um... clean you ears..."
Imagine if every other product were advertised this way.
Imagine, for example, if condoms were treated like this.
"Oooh, condoms have a Variety of Uses...! You can, um, string them along the branches of your Christmas Tree!"
"Or... um, maybe make tiny little balloons! Yeah, you know, um... for kids!"
"Certainly no one is suggesting that you use condoms to... um... er... ah..." Perhaps the final suggested use for Q-tips that their packaging depicts is the key--the answer to it all:
#4. Use Q-tips to lightly touch a baby's feet.
The most interesting suggested use for Q-tips is, by far, the "baby care" suggestion contained in this image. Why, you ask? Because it is here that the Q-tip brand comes the closest to the truth. "Delicately care for sensitive areas," they say, depicting--oh, no, not the baby's ears, of course. Whoever would suggest that...?--but the baby's feet! A clever bait and switch, if you ask me--because in my research for this post I happened to discover that Q-tips were actually invented with one very specific purpose in mind: CLEANING BABIES' EARS.
Yes, this is absolutely true. Originally, Q-tips were called "Baby Gays" (I kid you not), and they were invented for the explicit purpose of cleaning a baby's ears. You can read about the history of "Baby Gays" (a.k.a. Q-tips) here.
Just in case you're not up for clicking on that informative link to learn more, I'm just going to reproduce some of the text that's on that page right here and now:
"At the beginning of the 1920s, the American Leo Gerstenzang invented the first cotton bud.
The idea occurred to him whilst he watched his wife wrapping cotton wool around a toothpick to clean her baby’s ears."
Now, incidentally, another way of reading that same exact sentence is: "At the beginning of the 1920s, the American Leo Gerstenzang invented the Q-tip after seeing his wife invent the Q-tip... and marketing it."
Her name was Ziuta Gerstenzang, by the way, for anyone who's keeping score and cares to know the name of the person who actually invented the Q-tip.
Now I really didn't intend on getting all political in this post when I first set out, but this discovery really took me by surprise. Not because of the original purpose for which Q-tips were invented. That's completely obvious and should be a surprise to absolutely nobody. We're all in on that secret, here. But no one was in on the other, darker secret of Q-tip history: the fact that the inventor of this nearly century-old, incredibly useful household necessity was a woman--and one who has basically been erased from history.
The worst thing about this, to me, is the fact that the first couple of times I read that sentence as it originally appeared, I thought nothing of it at all. It was just so normal to me, I didn't even question it. I just read it and thought, "Oh, of course, seeing his wife do that is what inspired him to invent the Q-tip." And then I kind of did a double take, and was like, "...WAAAIIIIIT a minute..."
And that's when it hit me; if my husband saw me using a tool that I had made myself, by hand, to do a specific, difficult, delicate task, and decided to market it, I would have been credited as the inventor, or at the very least the co-inventor, in the case that he had made any contributions or adjustments to the finalized product. There is no way that he would take 100% of the credit for my invention. He wouldn't want to in the first place, and neither I nor the culture around us would have accepted it if he had tried.
But Ziuta and Leo Gerstenzang were from the 1920's, at a time when even if Leo had tried to give Ziuta due credit for her invention, the world around them would have had no trouble in ignoring it, and recording him as the sole inventor. I have no idea whether Leo tried to give Ziuta proper credit for inventing Q-tips or not, though the story that has been passed down does seem to suggest that he tried. The most quoted explanation of how Leo "came to invent the Q-tip" is the one recapitulated above, in which Ziuta's having handmade the invention first is basically the whole story. And yet, in spite of this story being retold pretty much everywhere that the history of the Q-tip is discussed, Leo remains the only one who is credited--EVERYWHERE. On the Q-tips' official website, on random other places, even on Wikipedia. There isn't so much as a photograph of Ziuta Gerstenzang anywhere on the Internet as of this writing, though you can find a nice big one of Leo Gerstenzang--he even has his own Wikipedia page.
The only place I was even able to find a resource attempting to give proper credit to Ziuta was in another blog (by another woman, Sharon M. Himsl) where Ziuta Gerstenzang and other unsung female inventors are discussed, in alphabetical order.
So going back to Q-tips and their alleged "variety of uses"--I think the history, no matter whom people may wish to credit for the invention, speaks for itself. Q-tips were expressly invented to stick in tiny babies' ears. For decades, doctors recommended adults use them for this purpose as well. These days, those in the medical profession are wary of people sticking anything in their ears smaller than their fingers, but sometimes... ya just got to, ya know?
I mean, of course you do. You know it. I think we're both on the same page about this.
Now, if you have twisty ear canals or tons of impacted earwax, sure--maybe don't do it. But I have it on the authority of my own ear doctor that people with straight-shaped ear canals whose ears don't produce a ton of wax can totally get away with using Q-tips gently, carefully, and sparingly.
...Wow. I just realized belatedly that I used the phrase "using Q-tips" without specifying exactly how or where. It's just so obvious. No one needs to specify at all. The ear-cleaning nature of this tool simply speaks for itself.
Anyway, my word to you, dear reader, is this: ask your doctor about your own ear canals--find out directly from the source whether or not "using Q-tips" is right for you...!
(But don't worry, even if it's not right for you, you can always use them to keep those pesky raisins off your shoes.) ;D
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