Why we're brushing our teeth.

When I first scribbled "Pepsodent story" in my notes I thought I had my Monday drop locked in. Classic marketing tale. Clever ad man tricks America into brushing. Habit loop. Done.

Except every marketing bro on LinkedIn has already beaten that story to death.

But I knew it was something. Didn't know what.

The story itself is famous. Hopkins rebrands plaque as "the film." Creates a tingling sensation. Makes brushing a national habit. Charles Duhigg covers it beautifully in The Power of Habit. Every marketing person has read it. Most have referenced it in a presentation with a slide that says "CREATE THE CRAVING" in 72-point font.

Which is exactly why I couldn't write it.

I don't do famous stories. I do the thing nobody noticed about the famous story.

But what? Hopkins was brilliant. The tingle was addictive. America started brushing. What's left to say that isn't just regurgitating Duhigg with worse prose?

I almost deleted the note entirely. Then I made myself ask the annoying question: Why did I write this down in the first place?

Because something about it bothered me. I just couldn't figure out what.

Started searching. Fell into the usual rabbit hole.

Found the WWII angle. Sixteen million soldiers forced to brush. Monthly inspections. Thought: "Oh, that's interesting. Military made it happen, not marketing."

Drafted it. It was boring. Who cares whether it was ads or the Army? Either way, people started brushing. Cool. Monday drop solved.

Except I kept thinking about it.

If the Army forced compliance, why did they keep brushing after discharge? And if Hopkins created the craving, why did only 10% of Americans brush before the war?

Neither explanation worked alone. And together they just felt like I was hedging.

Then I'm brushing my teeth one night, actually thinking about the newsletter while doing the thing the newsletter is about, very meta… and I realize I'm rinsing.

Like I always do. Like everyone does.

And something clicks.

I just learned two months ago that you're not supposed to rinse. You're supposed to spit and leave the fluoride on your teeth. That's the whole point.

I'm forty fucking years old.

So I google "why don't people rinse after brushing" and fall into a new hole. Turns out most people rinse. And a shocking number are buying fluoride-free toothpaste. Tom's of Maine is #2 on Amazon. The fluoride-free market is growing 5% a year.

And that's when I see it.

We think we brush to prevent cavities.

We don't.

We brush because Hopkins made us crave that clean feeling. Fluoride… added later, almost accidentally, is what actually prevents cavities. But we gave brushing all the credit.

People are now removing the fluoride because they think the scrubbing is what matters. They believe Hopkins' lie so deeply they're voluntarily throwing away the thing that works.

That's the drop. That's what was bothering me about the Pepsodent story the whole time.

It's not about how habits form. It's about how we lie to ourselves about why we do things. And how those lies can be so effective that a century later we're teaching them to our kids.

First draft: 850 words.

I explained everything. The Army. The tingle. The fluoride timeline. The psychology of habit formation. I walked readers through every step of my thought process.

It read like a term paper.

Cut it to 650. Still too long. Still too much hand-holding.

The problem: I was writing what I learned, not what mattered.

Deleted the entire Army section. Who cares about compliance versus craving? That's intellectual masturbation.

Deleted "Story time." Added it back. Deleted it again. Added it back. Kept it because without it the opening feels too abrupt.

Deleted every phrase where I was narrating my own brain. "What really gets me." "Here's the thing." "But wait." All of it. Readers don't need my play-by-play. They need the insight, delivered clean.

Final version: about 400 words. Took five drafts. Still not sure the opening is right, but if I change it again I'll never publish.

The fluoride-free toothpaste thing keeps eating at me. How many other products are we using wrong because the marketing was too good? How much of what we think works is just ceremony around the thing that actually works?

Also: I just bought fluoride-free mouthwash last month. It does nothing. I spent $8 on peppermint water because the bottle looked evolved.

Doing great.

The best marketing doesn't just sell a product. It sells a story about why the product works. And if the story is good enough, we keep believing it even after we remove the ingredient that made it true.

That's not a marketing lesson. That's a human lesson.

And I'm almost 40 years old, still rinsing away the fluoride like an idiot and use fluoride free mouthwash, because nobody ever told me the clean feeling isn't the point.

// Ann