Showering Is So Yesterday
Dear Blogreader,I spent last weekend in Asheville, N.C., an arts and culture hub where you'll find people wearing, singing and doing things that we only find out about years later down here.
Yet, one of the things that seems to have snuck down here is the propensity for less showering.
It's something I noticed gradually.
Several months ago I was talking to a friend about a mutual acquaintance of ours (let's call the person Dude Guyhair). He mentioned that this person didn't shower every day. It seemed adverse to me. How could you not shower every day? Germs would attack your body in blood-hungry legions, and even worse you would smell bad.
Afterward, whenever I would meet Dude Guyhair, I would pick up on his scent. Not disgusting, just a natural aroma, like you might expect a mechanic to smell. Yet, I didn't find it particuarly abhorrent.
Then I went to Asheville and there was that same smell on men and women I passed in the street. Now, it should be noted that these people were most definitely hippies or bohemians or homeless, one of those. In short, they weren't working on the stock exchange or putting on a collared shirt for work (in fact, one guy was dressed like an old fashioned train engineer...).
The dual experience of Mr. Dude Guyhair and those folks in Asheville got me wondering about my own showering habits.
How important is it to take a shower?
I consulted the internet to find out and discovered a very interesting opinion from Ross Gittins, an economics writer for the Sydney Morning Herald in Austrailia and he wrote this:
"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.
Don't kid yourself. We could do all we needed to do to prevent disease with far fewer showers. If we were really on about hygiene, we'd put a lot more emphasis on thorough, soapy hand-washing and a lot less on showers.
They don't shout it too loudly, but many dermatologists disapprove of all the showering we do, particularly the way we soap up every time as though we've just fallen into a manure heap. All that unnecessary soap and water leaches the natural oils from our skin.
Dirt isn't identical to germs and disease. In any case, our modern lives of paved roads and footpaths, travel by car rather than horse, use of electricity rather than coal, and our predominantly white-collar jobs, mean we rarely get particularly dirty."
It made me think. In a single week, I probably shower more than I wash my hands. It's shocking to me now that I've let it go on this long. The Center for Disease Control lists handwashing as the number one deterrent for disease. Yet, I'm worrying over whether I've lathered myself in body wash today or not.
Also, according to Gittins article, incessant showering may in fact be harmful. Doing it more than once a day every day could possibly shed oils important for the body's well-being.
Not showering EVERY day would cut down on energy costs as well.
Of course, there IS the chance that you might stink....
Posted by
on 06/23 at 11:34 AM
You’re nasty. I keep hand sanitizer on my desk and I use it religously. Nasty. Nasty. Nasty. I ain’t shaking your hand.