Open Thread: Thoughts on Bathing
2018 Update: We still think this is a fascinating conversation about thoughts on bathing — you may also want to check out our more recent post where we asked the readers how often they wash their hair.
A few days ago the NYT had an interesting article about people who don't shower regularly. Reading it, I was particularly intrigued about the woman who, they said, was a “petite, put-together brunette,” who “showers ‘no more than three times a week,' she said, and less if she hasn’t been ‘working out vigorously.' So I thought I'd start an open thread… how often do you shower or bathe? What are your thoughts on how that affects professionalism and decorum?
For my $.02 — I shower every day, although I've noticed in my older years that I don't need to wash my hair every day. (Still, the longest I can go without washing my hair is only 2 days — after 3 I need dry shampoo, at the very least, but I usually only do that if I”m trying to make a blowout last.)
Original image (2011) via to Flickr by happydacks. Updated images (2018) via Stencil.
If you only shower 3 times a week, you must not be having sex. A shower is absolutely a must after good sex. You are lazy too if you aren’t exercising hard enough to need a shower afterwards! That article is just plain weird.
You’re correct. I’m not having sex. Does this make you feel better?
If you only shower 3 times a week, you must not be sleeping with anyone. A shower is absolutely a must after a good roll in the hay. You are lazy too if you aren’t exercising hard enough to need a shower afterwards! That article is just plain weird.
If you post 3x re sex frequency, you must not be getting any either
Wow! Jump up and get in the shower after sex, and get rid of all that yummy smell? No thank you.
not right after–I love thinking I can smell his chest hair on me–but a few hours later, absolutely!
Muslim guys always seem to go straight for the shower afterwards.
I think she means cleaning yourself before you shower. I’d say generally you don’t need to clean every part of your body everyday, but then, you never know where you’ll get kisses . . . .
LOL accountants are pretty lazy
My hair looks best on the second day, so I wash it every two days. The first day is not bad. The third day not so good. Definitely it is a good idea to shower every day if possible. Am reading Wolf Hall – in those days – no plumbing. Just finished Madame Bovary. Also – no plumbing. Let’s appreciate and enjoy thegreat BIG luxuries that we have!
I am a shower every day type of girl. Even with a newborn baby, that was my must do every day. Sleep and meals were negotiable.
One good shower every night before bed. Have a lot of hair that I let airdry overnight, so showering in the morning means an extra hour to my gettin’ ready schedule!
I’m OCD about my shower routine too! lol.
I hate showering every day. It makes my skin itchy, dry, bumpy and gross. But I have the potential to get pit stinky, so I shower anyway. I definitely do not wash my hair everyday. When it’s down and straight I can go up to four days before it starts to look grody. I have noticed that when I just rinse and soap pits and other lady bits and soap nothing else, my skin is a leeeetle better. So I opt to let my skin’s natural oils work whenever I can. I used to slather myself every night in baby oil gel which worked, kind of, but also stained all of my sheets. :( Sigh.
Have you tried Dr Bronner’s or other basic soaps? I LOVE my Dr B’s!
My minimum is every other day, but I often shower daily just to wake up.
After working out (swimming or otherwise) I almost always shower, unless it was a relaxing yoga class.
My hair looks best the day after I wash it; if I wash it too often, it gets limp and greasy. This can limit the number of days per week that I swim. It’s best for my hair if I go 7-10 days between washing, but I like to swim every other day.
Of course everyone’s body is different. My son’s father is Ghanaian–I’m going to read the Curly Girl book recommended above. I think his hair would make really good ringlets, but we can never get it to work as it’s often way too dry by the time it’s long enough for that.
2 funny shower stories:
I had a co-worker in Germany who showered less than once a week. We all knew when he had showered, and no one (in an office of French and German co-workers) tried to pretend he didn’t stink–we just didn’t mention it to him. He was married and I often wondered what his wife did/thought.
My boyfriend grew up in a family with 4 kids and not a lot of money. He has really fine hair that was thin even when he was young. His dad would stand outside the bathroom and listen to make sure they weren’t wasting water, so he learned to wash it on the sly. Fortunately dad was blind, so couldn’t see the wet hair when he came out of the bathroom.
Well, OK, not fortunate that his dad’s blind, but it was good for his high school beauty routine!
I take a bath every night. Sometimes I shower in the morning too, just a rinse-off if I work out. I only wash my hair maybe every 3 days. I have hair that doesn’t appear greasy or oily very easily at all.
I hope this is not indelicate. But I feel I need to shower/bathe every day because of female, um, odors that seem to develop if I don’t. Maybe this is due to underwear choice or something else but I can’t skip bathing for a day and I also usually can’t re-wear jeans and wool pants the way others talk about it here. It’s been this way ever since I hit puberty.
I totally get there are people who don’t “need” to bathe every day. My husband is one of them – he doesn’t use deodorant either, and he never smells, not even after working out! I think some people just have stronger chemical composition of their sweat or something.
I have the same problem. The part that bothers me most is that after working out, I usually don’t smell bad like BO, but I do have that other odor that is pretty strong (my husband has said he can smell it). I wish I knew how to make it better! Like you, this has been an issue for me since puberty.
Do you guys wear panty liners? When my bf tried to talk me out of them, I thought he was nuts, but I tried it for a couple weeks, and things got much much better down there. And make sure your undies are cotton too.
And the hand-held shower mentioned above is great for when you don’t have time for a full shower but need to get those parts clean
what do you mean got much better
I had a lot of discharge along with the smell, thought I needed the panty liners to contain the discharge, but it turned out they were causing it.
and fb, thanks for the encouragement. I’ll try it tonight
I had a lot of discharge along with the smell, thought I needed the panty liners to contain the discharge, but it turned out they were causing it.
and fb, thanks for the encouragement. I’ll try it tonight
It’s possibly a combination of two things: taking in too much sugar and not drinking enough water.
If I don’t shower, my BF will only have conventional sex with me, and that doesn’t get me off. So girls, if you want the super sex I get, shower regularly, and bathe just before you go to bed. You will NOT regret it. But make sure you tell your BF to get in there with you, because he has to be clean before I can do him too.
I have to ask — what do you define as unconventional?
Sounds to me like she wants him to go down on her, as in eating a boxed lunch. My guy is the same way, but also about shaving. He told me long before we got close to that that he finds shaving down there much cleaner, and I’ve noticed that he only ever goes downtown when it’s nekked. My breasts have never been sensitive, but he’s the first person I’ve been with since I nursed my baby (now 8 yrs old) and he showed me that I’ve developed much more sensitivity there! Yay–but then he didn’t do it again for weeks, until I asked if nipple hair bothers him. Turns out it does. He could’ve told me! Can anybody suggest painless ways to remove it?
Tweezers
Ouch!
That’s what I was afraid of. Is there a way to do it so it doesn’t hurt so much?
it doesnt hurt for some reason when i do it..you should be ok
I shower every day, mostly because my hair is very oily and requires at least a little bit of shampoo at the roots or it’s gross by midday. Unless I’ve been sweating, I do not use soap anywhere except pits, feet, and girl parts. And I never use deoderant. I am very sure I don’t smell.
The smelly person never thinks they are the smelly person, and the smelly person often has friends/family who wont tell them they smell.
I’ve never met an adult who doesn’t wear deodorant who does not smell. And I’ve met quite a few who don’t wear it and think they do not smell.
I am sure you are mistaken.
I’ve found that Asians don’t smell as much as Caucasians. I think it’s because we (usually) have less body hair and less sweat. (I only have to shave my legs every other week at the most.)
My adult boyfriend NEVER wears deodorant and never smells. I, on the other hand, need 2 applications a day
Do you really believe that you know the deodorant habits of every adult you’ve ever met? That’s ridiculous. Granted, there are smelly people out there who don’t know they smell. But among the many, many NOT smelly people you encounter daily, you can’t possibly know their bathing or deodorizing habits. Everyone is different.
All of you good people who don’t use deodorant and wash your nether-regions daily and still think that you don’t stink: you are mistaken. Uncomfortable truth, I know, but it is still true.
The privates MUST be cleaned daily. Even if you don’t think your BO doesn’t stink, I think we can all agree that a dirty bum does. I wish this country would adopt the bidet like our Euro friends.
Just as an aside, all Muslim and desi (not necessarily Muslim) households have a container in their bathrooms close to the sink that they use to “water” themselves after using the toilet. Some use water cans for plants, big measuring cups, or the official “lota” (enter lota in youtube for a lot of hilarious videos). A lot of Arab households install a little hose (similar to the hose in your kitchen sink) for washing.
haha. I remember the first time I started dating a Muslim guy, I’d often do little things to help pick up his apt. Nothing big, but if he was folding laundry, I’d join in or put it away…that sort of thing.
It seemed he always had recycling in his bathroom. Nearly every time I went in there, I found a Coke bottle on the floor. I couldn’t figure out who was drinking on the pot (or in the tub?) but took several of them out–until he explained to me exactly what you just said. Oops! I had known about the cleanliness with water requirement from some Libyan friends, but they were at my house or their restaurant, so they took a container in with them each time.
It makes sense. Much cleaner than dry TP. If only the rest of the world adopted a similar practice!
Shower daily, no exception. It has to be done before I leave my house in the morning. Even if I don’t stink, it just helps to feel fresh. However, I have the type of hair that gets really dried out if I wash it every day, so it usually gets done every other day, or sometimes I’ll even go 2 days.
Deoderant also a must… I’m just one of those people that the product was invented for. But some people truly don’t need it. My boyfriend rarely wears it and I can attest to his non-stinkiness. I also live in China where deoderant isn’t a common product (good luck finding it at the store!), but the vast majority of people I know don’t seem to suffer from it.
What I do have issues with, though, is that some of my coworkers will come to work, unapologetically wearing the same outfit all week. I realize it’s common to wear some articles more than once before washing, but I also feel it’s kind of an unspoken rule that you’re supposed to mix up the outfit in the process. And some of those things need to be changed daily, like close-fitting shirts or camis.
I’m not sure one’s SO is the best person to determine their stinkiness. I have friends who swear their girlfriend is the best smelling person around and I can attest that she smells oddly like old sour cream and onions. I think we get used to the BO of those closest to us.
Shower 2x daily.I livein a hot climate and sweat easily plus have short hair. While I can understand people in really cold places not showering daily, it does gross me out. What’s even worse is people living where I do – who don’t shower in the morning . They smell. And no amount of deo can hide that fact in a crowded lift!
i am a banker and thus I can only shower once every 4 days but I dry shampoo it and use those wipes from always for my pumpum
What in the world does being a banker have to do with the ability to shower only every 4 days?
i have to shower before work bc i feel gross and because it wakes me up. I have very oily hair too so i cannot skip a day of washing the hair either. On weekends i’m lazier and may not shower til the afternoon and by then i feel sooo gross. so even if im going nowhere, i shower. i think the only time i skipped a shower was maybe when i was deathly ill as a kid. and even then it was ONE day tops. i also shower at night after the gym, and that’s usually 5x a week. So twice a day showers for me. I swear i love how i feel post-shower, i’d shower 4x a day if i had the time hahaha. and i always moisturize right after the morning shower. hair is only once a day in the morning.
I’m with you! I shower every morning and if I work out, I have to have a shower. I have oily hair and that definitely gives me away if I haven’t washed it for more than 24 hrs.
Does anyone else find it a little creepy that some men seem to like a woman hairless aside from the hair on the top of her head, her eyebrows, and her eyelashes? It bothers me because that’s a more natural state for a woman who’s…a *girl*. And usually a pretty young one, at that.
Don’t know if it makes him sound better or worse but…
I’ve generally agreed with you, 1:13, and never shaved there before this guy mentioned it. His reasoning was pretty unusual:
He’s short and was a band geek. When he got out of high school he had a bit of a physical inferiority complex. He really worked on learning how to please a woman in bed (indeed!) and also wanted to prove to himself that he could be generally attractive. He started lifting weights and got a pretty good body, and then took a job as, yes, a male dancer. It’s been about 2 decades since then, and he’s the sweetest, most faithful, non-gigaloo guy around. What’s remained from that experience, besides general confidence in his appearance, is that he shave himself down there completely. He’s been doing it so long it just seems ‘right’ and cleaner to him, and he prefers that his partner do the same. He explained this to me long before we reached that stage, and I think of shaving or getting waxed there as a favor to him, not as a requirement or something I “should” do for society’s sake. FWIW, I didn’t even shave my legs forever. My mom’s pretty pleased that I do that whenever I’m going to see him (which isn’t all that often–long-distance relationship). I’ve told him that if this works out and we’re going to be together, he gets to pay for laser hair removal. He hasn’t argued.
But in general, yes, the twiggy, no-hair body thing can be icky.
Ooogh, I never thought of t like that before. I am officially creeped out. I do keep the area neatly groomed, and shave around the perimeter – as if I needed to get into a bathing suit. But only once or twice tried shaving the entire area. I didn’t like it because it made me feel like a little girl – plus I didn’t like the feeling of my underwaar rubbing all over my bare coochie skin. Oh, and then there’s the moistness issue. Am I sharing too much? :)
lol–think we’re all sharing a lot at this point.
It is definitely an unusually slippery feeling to be all shaved down there. I like it, but maybe that’s because I associate it with the other feelings I know are soon to follow.
lol–think we’re all sharing a lot at this point.
It is definitely an unusually slippery feeling to be all shaved down there. I like it, but maybe that’s because I associate it with the other feelings I know are soon to follow.
Not sure what moistness issue you’re referring to.
I shower every day that I’m going out to some formal activity (work) or sustained interaction with other people. I miss some other days because I’m depressed, but I feel somewhat gross.
My hair is dry, thick, curly – kinky and needs to air dry, which takes a long time. If I lived in a hot, dry climate, I might wet it every day and let it dry naturally. In the temperate climate I live in, I probably wet it four or five days a week. Because my hair is dry, I shampoo it with a clarifying shampoo once a month. On other days, I use a daily cleansing shampoo for curly hair or use a conditioner as a shampoo, followed by conditioner for real conditioning. Whenever I wet my hair, I soak it, vigorously massage my scalp, and rinse several times.
I use deodorant unless I forget. Many people are under the mistaken impression that they don’t smell. Just because no one says anything doesn’t mean a person smells fresh. Some of the people quoted in the article are delusional.
this thread is getting gross.
grossER, that is.
Every. Single. Day – shower, shampoo, deodorant – no exceptions.
Cubans use a cup near the toilet too. I have one of those picnic plastic pitchers. My mom has an extra-large Taco Bell cup… I try to shower every day. I do skip it sometimes (out of laziness), but I feel icky and won’t have intimate relations with my husband on those days. I shower at night, but must use my cup to wash myself daily in the mornings. I know some people that shower morning & evening daily – I’m too lazy for that…
I shower every other day unless I go to the gym, then every day. Usually how it works is that I shower one morning, go through my day, wake up the next morning, go through my day, and then shower that night, so maybe every 1 1/2 days.
I shower daily, a.m., wash my curly hair every 2nd day, use deodorant daily, no perfume, and have a bidet. FYI, white, Irish, not exceptionally hairy, just terrified that I would be stinky and people would be too polite to tell me. Bigger question: What about the dry cleaning? I’ve actually thrown suits awa because no matter how often I’ve had them cleaned, they still stink. I’ll wear a suit about 4 times, febrezing in between, before taking it to the cleaners. Blouses, once or twice. Thoughts?
I’ve actually given in and washed a few blouses that I’d typically dry clean. I let them hang dry and then cool/warm iron them. Luckily, I haven’t had any issues with ruining the blouses (knock on wood). I feel that I’m forced to do this because the dry cleaners just doesn’t seem to get the stink out. As for suits, I am lucky enough to not have to wear one every day so this is a non issue for me.
There was an interesting post a month or 2 ago about how to deal with stinkiness for clothes. One idea was vodka. I myself once boiled a shirt for 10 minutes and that solved the problem completely. A black knit shirt. It was a favorite, and no, amazingly, the color did not shrink or fade.
I never wear a sleeveless blouse under a suit b/c I know that will eventually destroy it with stinky demons. And I do throw blouses away, egad. Next time I have some health insurance, I’m going to try like hell to get botox injections approved for my underarms. :) I also just got some prescription deodorant from a doctor – maybe it will work wonders? Haven’t tried it yet.
oops – the “shirt did not shrink or fade” ! not “color did not shrink or fade.”
I’m confused… I have a sink – what’s with the cups in the bathroom? Washcloth, running water and soap work pretty well.
I just had a comment forwarded to me that I can’t find above. Here’s my reply:
The “cups in the bathroom” have to do with an Islamic injunction to wash oneself with water after relieving oneself. Using a washcloth would be…icky, and soap would be overkill. If you pour the water over [that part of] yourself, you’re a lot cleaner than smearing the germs around with tp, and the container doesn’t get dirty, because it never touches you.
I am so confused about how one can get water from a cup or bottle to reach their nether regions. Imagine, say, trying to pour water onto the bottom of your feet. It just isn’t possible without tilting them upward somehow. Is acrobatics involved in the water/bottle/privates affair?
Your own experimentation can probably provide a more satisfactory response than I can type here.
Seems to me that the peri bottle they give you after a vaginal birth would be perfect for that.
That’s what I was thinking! They give you one after a c-section too.
Hee hee, how about a Hershey’s Syrup bottle!
For ML and Mandy-
You used to be able to buy armpit ‘shields’ for use in suit jackets on days you want to wear a sleeveless blouse under a suit. This protects the suit pretty well. BTW back in college I used to work at a drycleaner and one thing I learned is that dry cleaning is not the best method for cleaning. If you can spot clean areas with soap and water (testing a spot that isn’t visible first), I highly recommend that. Dry cleaning chemicals are toxic and leave their own chemical smell behind…they don’t remove other odors. Also I have loved the responses to this post. So very honest!
Each day, I shower and use deodorant. I wash my hair once a week.
To those who believe they do not smell, know this: people just aren’t telling you that you smell, but you can believe they are discussing you and your BO, when you are not there.
To “Anon for this too”—too much information but you had me laughing so hard, I had to get up and close my office door.
I don’t take a shower everyday but I bathe everyday. I shave almost everyday. My hair can go a few days without washing and actually looks better the day after its been washed.
I had 2 friends in college who didn’t use deodorant and didn’t have body odor. I thought I’d give it a try myself and by midday I needed another shower. I think some people can pull it off. So not wearing deodorant isn’t offensive to me, smelling bad does.