The final myth to be covered may well be the most frivolous, but it might also be the one for which the media are most responsible, and this is the compelling American need for absolute cleanliness.

This cult of hygiene, intensified by an ad-induced insecurity, has become a national neurosis. Americans would scrub themselves to death lest they be thought unclean. Ten years ago, for example, no one had ever heard of vaginal deodorant, today, many women would not be without it. Advertising pressure can and does work.

"Aren't you glad you use Dial," Mr. Voice-Over asks some otherwise insignificant mass-man. "Don't you wish everyone did?" This Dial- scrubbed fellow suspects that maybe there are cretins out there who don't use Dial. After all, he has seen people lose customers, friends, and lovers because of white speckles ("tell-tale" signs of dandruff) on their shoulders. He has seen girls who will never be kissed again because they "did not make certain with Certs." He has heard of husbands abandoning wives over chronic "ring-around-the-collar" or because of cherry stains on their shirts. He has seen grandmothers hopelessly alienate grandchildren by looking grumpy from constipation. He has seen hardy youths win big games but strike out on dates because of unsightly blemishes. He has known of housewives who have dismayed their neighbors with the waxy yellow buildup on their kitchen floors. He has learned of bosses upsetting employees, teachers offending students, and maiden aunts estranging relatives all because they failed to use Scope. He has seen ladies hands turn into unsightly lobsters. He has had sure intuition about ladies' and he isn't even a hairdresser. Sometimes he has been able to tell mothers apart from their daughters. And yes, he has even smelled bad breath in dogs. What, he asks, can the world be coming to?

H. L. Mencken once claimed that no one ever went broke under- estimating the intelligence of the American public. For sure, Mencken speaks some truth, but he does so a bit too harshly. True, the American can be counted on to respond to a series of mythic suggestions, sometimes even if the myths are manipulated by the most blatant of hucksters. Bu there will always be a healthy stock of Americans too ornery and too independent to yield to the dictates of the mass media. Individualism, you see, is also an integral part of the nation's mythic heritage.