The internet is full of cultural wars, there is nothing new about it – about eating with your left hand in South Asia, slurping in East Asia, eating with hand instead of cutlery, the hygiene zeal of the Japanese as against, say, some other Asians and so on. But this round of the cultural war rippling across the internet is the hygiene-war taken up by Afro-Americans against their Euro-American counterparts. They are dissing them for everything from not showering daily to not using booty-towel. Then there are Americans, both colors wondering how people use just one towel when they are showering – shouldn’t they be using two towels – one for their booty-hole and one for the rest of their body? Which made me wonder, don’t these people clean their booty-hole after shitting? Apparently not, because there are reports of dirt-trails in boxers. What even!
I’d hesitate to give generalised opinions on people’s hygiene habits because of many reasons. It would depend on the availability, accessibility and affordability of water, climatic conditions, the cultural importance of hygiene and so on. I’m exploring some of the hygiene-related matters from the perspective of a tropical South Asian, giving some unsolicited opinions and suggestions (as usual). Take it any way as you please.
Showering – frequency
How often should we shower- once/twice/frequently a day/days/week ?
The need and frequency of showering would depend on the climate where one is residing, availability of water, one’s occupation, social norms and so on.
For example, people in sweltering tropics would be sweating off buckets during summer and not-so-mildly even during monsoon. Same with people working in mines or oil rigs. In the tropics, people have access to enough water that they can afford themselves daily showers twice or thrice a day. The same cannot be said of the latter group who may not have access to that much water; so maybe they have to restrict themselves to towelling off their grime daily and taking showers once or twice a week.
For people living in arid regions like deserts, water is a precious commodity which makes showers and even washing clothes, a luxury, which most can’t afford.
Then there are people living in places like the Tundra region – why on earth would they take a shower ? They probably have some way to slough off their dead skin or maybe they don’t need to because they’re living in a way that’s socially acceptable to them.
I live in the tropics; so for me it’s a rare day that I don’t shower – body-only, daily and full-body (scalp/hair included)- every other day(water dries up scalp but I sweat profusely – so it’s a compromise). When I was employed, I used to take one shower in the morning before leaving for work and one at night before going to bed. Now after retirement, I just take one shower at night. But even now, when I’m going out for the day, I cool myself down with a shower/wet towel before heading out because the moment I step out, the heat will hit me full-blast, overheating my body and making me fall sick – cooling down before stepping out gives my body time to adjust to the outside-heat – I don’t know if that makes any scientific sense, but it makes perfect sense for my body.
So frequency of showers will depend on one’s specific conditions and situations.
Showers – sloughing off
There seems to difference of opinion even about the manner of ablution, like using soaps – do you move the soap bar on your body or do you lather the soap and use the lather to clean your body?
Most of us Asians live with our families where even with attached bathrooms for each bedroom, we have to share it with at least one other member of the family. So using the soap bar directly on our skin and leaving it with skin-debris, pubic hair, etc., is definitely a no-go. We lather up the soap and use the lather on our body and rinse it.
I have mature skin, so for the last decade or so I’ve been using salt (yes, common salt), instead of soap, to scrub my body. It works well for my skin, leaving it squeaky clean. For younger skin, it’s probably not advisable. Since the waste water goes into the sewage system and eventually end up in the ocean, it doesn’t add much to the pollution either. While it works for skin and acts as a viable alternative to soap while showering, it can’t be used as a disinfectant – for washing hands or butt.
Some Americans (of all races) also seem to be of the opinion that we should have separate towels for our booty-hole and for the rest of our body. This is probably based on their reality that other than using toilet tissue, they don’t clean their butt; so they need a separate towel to clean that hole in their body. They also seem to have some aversion to cleaning their butt-hole even when showering.
A separate towel for the butt-hole is environment friendly, but is it advisable? How do you wash it after using it? Do you wash it separately by hand or do you wash it along with other towels and clothes? Because if it is soiled with shit, you’re transferring it to wherever you’re washing it. Why transfer your shit out of your toilet? If not done extremely carefully, it’d defeat the very propose of hygiene.
Asians in general use handheld mugs or bidet sprayers to clean their butts after shitting. We(or rather, the rich among us) also use bidets like some Europeans.
What I do is clean the hole with water(bidet sprayer), then soap(not salt) it (with my fingers – it’s part of my body – I’m not employing somebody/thing else to clean that part), rinse off again and dry it, every time I shit. I wash my hands thoroughly with soap after I use the toilet every time after I piss or shit. And we usually don’t have runners in our underwear.
For Americans, who are not used to watering their butts, an ideal compromise would be to try an unscented wet-tissue after using the toilet tissue. Unsolicited advice, but there you go. You’re welcome.
Westerners especially Americans seem to have an irrational amount of disgust for their butt-holes. For people who have no qualms sticking their fingers up others’ asses, their hypocrisy is a bit much.
Oral hygiene
Much of what we understand about American hygiene habits comes from Hollywood movies and web-series.
We see the characters(fictional) brush their teeth(without any foam- must be in deference to aesthetics), keep the tooth-brush back on the sink and saunter off. When do they rinse the paste off their mouths? Do they just leave it there? Why? Do they gargle? The usual practice seems to be to floss(maybe), brush the teeth and gargle with mouth-wash(maybe).
We, in South Asia, rinse our mouths off with water after every meal; some of us do it after taking beverages also.
What about the tongue? Do they clean their tongue? We use tongue-scraper to clean the gunk off. In earlier times, our ancestors used coconut-plantain-midribs as scraper. Now we get ready-made scrapers made of plastic or steel, both of which can be a bit sharp. As for me, after brushing the teeth(with toothpaste & a pinch of baking soda), I rinse the mouth with water and brush the tongue with the toothbrush, after rinsing the toothpaste off it – works quite well. And finish off by rinsing the mouth again.
And how often do we brush the teeth? Twice is practical though our dentists would insist on doing it after every meal. I do it(brush-scrape-rinse) in the morning and at night, I floss and clean the teeth with a small piece of dry cloth-wipe.
Also they(in the movies) seem to keep a cup on the bathroom sink, which they fill up with tap-water and drink. Why would you drink water from a cup that is exposed to all the bacteria and germs that thrive in the dank bathroom-environment? They also seem to keep their medicine-cabinet in their bathroom. Our medicines always come with instructions to keep it in a cool, dry place – is it different in the US? We keep our medicines in or near our dining space for easy access to take medicines “before or after a meal”.
General Hygiene
Here I’m citing two practices commonly seen in western movies(Hollywood and European).
1. Shoes in bed – In many movies and series, we see characters coming off the streets and jumping onto their sofas/beds with their shoes on. Do they actually do that in real life– bring the street-filth into their living space?
We keep our footwear in a space near our home entrance – when we enter our homes, we leave the street-footwear on the shoe-rack/shelf and wear our chappals or go without any. Wearing any kind of footwear on seating areas or beds just isn’t allowed. We(many of us) also do some simple ablutions on returning home, like washing our hands with soap, our face and feet with a little water – it just refreshes us in a jiffy.
2. Hugging the toilet – Many characters are seen barfing into the toilet, hugging it, after a drunken binge or when sick. I wince every time I see it. Why would you put your face anywhere near your shitting spot? Use your wash basin – everyone uses it to spit into it anyway- yeah, there’ll be some undigested gunk at the bottom- remove it with toilet tissue and flush it down the toilet.
Clothing – washing frequency
How often do we change our clothes, our undergarments and so on? In the tropics, we change our clothes everyday –both our work-place clothes and home clothes – because we sweat profusely fresh out of our shower, in our newly changed work-clothes and the few seconds/minutes that we take to walk from our home to our vehicles and from the vehicles to our office is enough to get our clothes sticking to our backs – so we have to wash all the clothes(esp the undergarments) we wear everyday. The only clothes we may reuse without washing are our pants(dark-colored ones) or jeans or sarees or dupattas (clothes that are not too close to our skin or don’t absorb much sweat or grime)- everything else has to be washed, if we don’t want to stink up our vicinity. Rich people will probably change their clothes every few hours; ordinary folks like us wear two sets of clothes each day which will be reused only after washing.
People who enjoy cool autumns and icy winters may have different washing frequency and that’s the way it should be.
Deodorants or perfumes
Using perfumes to cover up body odor is an ancient practice. If our body odor is bad, we should do something to mask it. But I’m not a big fan of deodorants in powdered form – it adds to the air pollution and we can never be sure of the effect of the chemicals in it on our lungs or skin. Using these talcom powders on babies have become fairly common these days – babies don’t sweat – why torture their delicate skin and lungs with these chemicals? We have to wonder about the role of these baby-talcom powders on kids getting respiratory issues like asthma. My realisation came quite late; I discontinued using talcom-powders only in the last 5 years or so.
I’m also not a fan of the recent trend of spraying the air with perfumes and walking into the mist. Instead of just spraying/dabbing specific pulse/sweat centres, they’re breathing it in as well. Do we wear the perfume on our skin or on our clothes? The safest thing to do is use it on the clothes but it may leave a stain on the clothes. Most people do a mixture of both – a bit on the skin and on the clothes. Is it necessary? It is, in closed environments like an air-conditioned space like a vehicle or office space.
On top of everything already mentioned, there’s the economic factor also, which plays a very big role on our hygiene. A large portion of the world’s population has little or no access to clean water (which is necessary for maintaining personal hygiene)for even drinking or cooking without having to buy it(in urban areas) or travel great distances to bring it to their homes(in rural areas); let alone have water for cleaning themselves or their clothes or their surroundings. So our turning up our noses at them isn’t going to change their habits because they’re doing their best in their given circumstances.
But people in a given social and economic setting who have the means to have better hygiene, should practice better hygiene. If it doesn’t take a huge toll on our finances, we should do our best to keep our skin, scalp, clothes and shoes clean. Or the ribbing and drama will continue. Sure we can live with some dissing but if we can change our habits for the better, why don’t we?
