A society's collective social consciousness is formed by the more commonly known narratives that exist within it. It's how popular media is able to actively shape ideology - media, and particularly advertisements, are everywhere.

Soap advertisers in the Industrial Era considered themselves both builders of empires and carrying out the imperial mission, a consideration that marks the shift from small business to imperial monopolies. We discussed how they were able to change the perception of human hygiene, giving importance to being clean, and creating a new way to distinguish social and economic differences. Their success, I think, can be measured by how importantly we hold hygiene to the point where it has become an obsession.

Any quick survey of TV shows, movies, advertisements, etc. show this obsession - hospitals on shows like Grey's Anatomy, ER, and House are always super clean, super sterile environments (at least in appearance). Even the people on these shows are clean, they're pretty people without imperfections. And in movies and shows that feature New York, a place we know so well to be quite dirty, public places like subway stations, cars, the street, etc. are all so clean. CSI NY I think is a great example of this. To begin with the show is rather scientific, there's a level of scientific spectacle that goes hand in hand with hygiene. The "grittyness" of the show is always on a much cleaner level than reality.