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Washing – Society Made Me Do It

March 26th, 2008 at 8:08 am by Cranky

Also, cleanliness is a corporate scam pushed by a small cabal of soap manufacturers.

No really.

I guess most of us like to believe that showering – or bathing, for that matter – is about cleanliness. About getting rid of dirt and germs so as to maintain a high standard of personal hygiene and prevent the spread of disease.

At least that what they would have you believe.

It’s easy to make people, particularly housewives, feel guilty about their standards of hygiene – something the advertisers of soaps, detergents, disinfectants and cleaning products learnt a long time ago. So part of our obsession with cleanliness has been induced by clever marketing.

This confirms my theory that government also injected bacteria into our communities. The Bubonic Plague? Bishop Wrighte of Canterbury was all over it.

Continuing:

In the old days, if you got a bit sweaty you allowed the sweat to dry and thought nothing of it. These days, many people can’t rest until they’ve showered.

And then there’s underarm body odour. It’s completely and utterly natural, we all have it, but since the spread of deodorant we’ve convinced ourselves it’s offensive and a sign of ill-breeding.

I can tell by your completely natural odor that you have not bought into the Great Lie.

So, much of our incessant showering arises not from a desire to be clean but from a relatively modern desire not to have a smell. I suspect many people have a quite exaggerated notion of the extent to which they smell – or would smell if they didn’t take as many showers as they do.

Many of us feel a social obligation to maintain what we believe to be the prevailing standard of personal washedness. We’d feel guilty if we didn’t. But just how high that standard actually is, none of us know.

Yes, being avoided at all costs does make me feel marginalized.

Seeing as this is an economics writer in the business section of the Sydney Morning Herald, there has got to be a point to this. Right?

To all this, you may say, so what? What business is it of an economics writer, anyway? It’s a free country and an affluent one. If we choose to spend a little of our wealth on lots of showers, what of it? Surely it’s a pretty innocent vice.

Well, not as innocent as it was now we’re in the age of climate change. [insert foreboding music. I think it goes Dun Dun Duuun!] And, soon enough, not as cheap as it was. Before too long we’ll be paying a lot more for the water we use and for the electricity or gas with which we heat it.

(s/t Tim Blair)

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12 Responses to “Washing – Society Made Me Do It”

Karenina Says:
March 26th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
So, along with using only one square of toilet paper, only washing my clothes on “cold”, driving a gay ass Prius and now the mere power of foregoing a shower (what, a day? A week? A month?) is going to make global warming go away? Is this what I’m hearing?

I can die today as I have now heard it all.

Wait, didn’t an ice shelf the size of Connecticut just break off? Isn’t that going to force water levels to RISE, which would, it seems, increase our water supply?

It’s just too hard to keep up, so I hereby give up!
Go_Fish Says:
March 26th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
I can see it now, a new market for “B.O. Credits”.

The Goracle will be pleased.
Tbird Says:
March 26th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Some say we try too hard to be clean.
There’s a theory out there that the rise in childhood allergies is due in part to the more closed environment in which today’s children are raised. They’ve never had the chance to build up a natural immunity to a lot of common types of pollen, dust, etc….
Swamp Rabbit Says:
March 26th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
“washedness”? Is that even a word?
Cranky Says:
March 26th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Point taken TBird, but…

You’ll take my shower away from me when you pry my soap from my cold dead hands.
michele Says:
March 26th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Okay, confession. When my kids were babies, I hardly ever bathed them. I figured with all the butt wiping, and all the chin dabbing I was doing, that they didn’t need to be dunked. Every time I changed their diaper, I wiped down what was dirty. They also played in the dirt, I’m sure they digested a few handfuls, and I never used anything specifically anti-bacterial. Neither got sick before about 10 months old. I think my son was fully a year old.

I think soap is very drying, and causes the skin to become oilier and stinkier. Ask the dermatologists.

Screw global warming though. I do love a long bubbly bath.
Juvenal Says:
March 26th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
I’m not ashamed to admit that, if I don’t bathe for a couple days, my bunghole gets to feeling…well, to avoid being any more explicit about it, it gets that “not so fresh feeling.” I don’t give a rat’s ass if I destroy the world and everybody in it by showering: When I get that feelin’ I need soap and water healin. And I refuse to believe that cavemen didn’t bathe their filthy asses, in their own primitive way, when they felt that. If the whole thing’s a marketing conspiracy, it’s the most helpful and humane one ever perpetrated on a grateful world.
Preston Taylor Holmes Says:
March 27th, 2008 at 7:24 am
Heh – bunghole.
michele Says:
March 27th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Yesterday at the dinner table, I was actually told what a “bunghole” was. It’s the opening on one of those big oil drums. I think there’s something called a “bung siphon” too. The conversation went great with chili and cornbread.

I know too much.

Yes. I must clarify, one should always wash the necessary things.
Nigel Says:
March 27th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
I cannot go more than 24 hours without a shower. No way….

In fact, when I travel I get absolutely OCD about the number of showers I take. Ride in an airplane…I feel gross. Subway…I feel gross.

And about the “bunghole” thing…washing there is the only thing I agree with those Musleems about.
Juvenal Says:
March 29th, 2008 at 11:40 am
bunghole: 1. n. a hole for emptying or filling a large cask. 2. n. the cecum or anus, esp. of a slaughtered animal.
sig94 Says:
March 29th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
My daughter had several very interesting experiences riding for ten or more hours in a non-air conditioned bus full of unbathed Egyptians.

You could actually walk on the stench.

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