Speaker 1: Hey, it's Devin. We are working on an advice episode,
Speaker 1: and who more qualified to answer your questions than Man, you,
Speaker 1: Noah and me Devin. So, if you have an argument
Speaker 1: you're trying to settle with a spouse, you got a
Speaker 1: debate you're trying to settle with for a friends, email
Speaker 1: us at Manuoah Devin at gmail dot com, or you
Speaker 1: can give us a call at the number in our
Speaker 1: show notes.
Speaker 2: I'm Manny, I'm Noah, this is.
Speaker 1: Devin, and this is no such thing the show where
Speaker 1: we settle our arguments in yours by actually doing the research.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, how often should you wash your legs?
Speaker 3: I have no there's no no such thing. No touch,
Speaker 3: thank no touch, thanks touch, thank no touch thank.
Speaker 1: So. I think a good place to start. This conversation
Speaker 1: was one of our first conversations we had about showering.
Speaker 2: Okay, first conversations about show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I remember. It's pretty. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: core memory.
Speaker 2: Paint a picture for us.
Speaker 1: We're all sitting in the old business inside our offices,
Speaker 1: and one of our friends i'll say their name, but
Speaker 1: we'll bleep it out, was talking about how her dad
Speaker 1: is so crazy and you want to know, the crazy
Speaker 1: thing that her dad does.
Speaker 2: Remind me really struggling to remember this moment.
Speaker 1: Her dad showers every day, right, So she was like,
Speaker 1: my dad is so crazy. Guess what. He showers every
Speaker 1: single day? Remember? And I said, okay, but what does
Speaker 1: he do? That's crazy.
Speaker 2: He's playing basketball And.
Speaker 1: She was like, no, he just hours every day. Isn't
Speaker 1: that crazy? And we were like no, like, we all
Speaker 1: shower pretty much every day at least once at least minimum.
Speaker 1: And it was revealed that the time did not shower
Speaker 1: every day. I think at that point she started to realize, Okay,
Speaker 1: she was in the minority here, I'm the crazy one
Speaker 1: and the rest of us were showering on the daily.
Speaker 1: So we never quite found out how often showered, but
Speaker 1: we do know it was not daily. Now, I will
Speaker 1: say this, she did not stink. It was not a
Speaker 1: situation when we were like.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, it makes sense, Yeah, no, of course not.
Speaker 2: In fact, I think I can recall a pleasant aroma. Yes,
Speaker 2: she smelled clean and perfume.
Speaker 1: Or whatever exactly it would you know if she had
Speaker 1: not revealed herself in that moment, I never know. I
Speaker 1: would have never known. But it bring to mind for
Speaker 1: us this, you know, especially you know, being a black
Speaker 1: man living in America. Sure, I've been learning a lot
Speaker 1: over the last couple of years about other people and
Speaker 1: other cultures living in America and how often they shower.
Speaker 1: So let's start here. All right, I'm sweating bullets, three
Speaker 1: boys in a room. How often are we showering? Many?
Speaker 2: I'm showering at least once a day, so like most days,
Speaker 2: it's just the one time morning or night morning, like definitely,
Speaker 2: not sometimes at night, but like not before bed. Like
Speaker 2: it's not like I need a shower to get into bed.
Speaker 1: Start your day. You're showering, Yeah, when are you showering
Speaker 1: twice a day?
Speaker 2: Twice a day?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 2: I mean it'll be like, all right, shower in the
Speaker 2: morning anyway. But then let's say I go out, if
Speaker 2: I biked here, for example, biked back, worked up a sweat,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to shower right when I get home,
Speaker 2: but like later on, I'll feel kind of like, I
Speaker 2: don't know, crunchy, yeah, and I'll just be like, all right,
Speaker 2: I just want to clean slate before I do the
Speaker 2: rest of the day, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Okay, So it's like you said, it's not right before
Speaker 1: you go into bed, but it's just like, oh, i've
Speaker 1: been you worked out or something. Yep. You just like
Speaker 1: your normal state to be kind of clean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like more comfortable to feel fresh and clean.
Speaker 2: And if I don't feel like that, I'll shower. Okay, No,
Speaker 2: I'm pretty similar. Definitely, at least once a day in
Speaker 2: the morning, that's the default.
Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then it's very similar to Manny. It's like, especially
Speaker 4: if I go out, especially during the summer, warm months,
Speaker 4: and I come back nice refresh, whether it's kind of
Speaker 4: right when I get back or later more like you know,
Speaker 4: eight nine before I start winding down for the for
Speaker 4: the evening. But but yeah, for me, it's like it's
Speaker 4: just a nice way to start the day to actually
Speaker 4: like get up and be like, all right, now I'm
Speaker 4: ready to go. So it's it's kind of just like
Speaker 4: having coffee or something.
Speaker 1: It's like I want to do.
Speaker 4: It's not like it's not like I wake up, I'm
Speaker 4: worried I'm gonna be so dirty or something. But then
Speaker 4: it's like then my hair is in better shape everything. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you just get a lot better anyway. And and just
Speaker 4: the act of being in the shower I like not
Speaker 4: just the end product of being clean. It's like, like
Speaker 4: I like spending time in there.
Speaker 1: That's my thing about it. I also enjoy being in
Speaker 1: the shower. It's like you're sort of forced alone. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't be on your phone for a long time.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I play a little music. Oh yeah, maybe sometimes
Speaker 1: I listen to a little podcast.
Speaker 2: And as we know from a previous episode, you guys
Speaker 2: love hanging out in the bathroom. If I can extend
Speaker 2: my time in there, I'll take any chance, like a.
Speaker 1: Nice little shower. Yeah, I'm I'm at least once a day,
Speaker 1: sometimes two morning shower for sure. Yeah, you know, ideal situation.
Speaker 1: I'm getting up, I'm working out, I'm showering. You have
Speaker 1: to work out start my day, and then when I
Speaker 1: get home at night, I'll shower before I go to bed.
Speaker 1: Speaking of people not showering, so so, there is this
Speaker 1: journalist who was at The Atlantic, James Hamblin, who in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen wrote about his decision to stop showering.
Speaker 2: Every day, no period, period. Oh my god, that's not
Speaker 2: why he's no longer in the Atlantic.
Speaker 1: We read what you just wrote. It just smells, he wrote,
Speaker 1: You know, he ended up. That was an article in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. In twenty twenty, he had a book come
Speaker 1: out called Clean, in which he was still not showering.
Speaker 1: He talks about how it was a gradual thing, right,
Speaker 1: He didn't wake up one day and go from showering
Speaker 1: to not showering. He slowly tapered his way off of it.
Speaker 5: Your body sort of gets into more of an equilibrium
Speaker 5: when you stop doing these things. And I don't recommend
Speaker 5: that anyone do it cold turkey. You know, we've all
Speaker 5: when I was in the same habit as everyone are
Speaker 5: doing a lot of showering and a lot of application
Speaker 5: of So if I went a day without it and
Speaker 5: a day without theodorant, I mean I knew it. I
Speaker 5: smelled terrible, I looked greasy. I felt bad. Over Over time, though,
Speaker 5: if you gradually do less and less, your body gets
Speaker 5: used to it. It's sort of like training for a marathon.
Speaker 1: He does not shower. He hasn't showered now. That was
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: Oh so this isn't really, this is truly I have
Speaker 2: not showered in years.
Speaker 1: I thought, he has not showered in years. Look, he
Speaker 1: may you know, I don't. I don't know the man,
Speaker 1: he may have snuck a shower in here there, you know,
Speaker 1: he've rolled around in some mud, maybe maybe snuck a
Speaker 1: rinse or shower in. But yeah, he's no longer showering regularly.
Speaker 1: He does not use soap outside of his hands, and
Speaker 1: he does not wear yodurant yo.
Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about why, okay, because that's disgusting.
Speaker 2: So no offense to people.
Speaker 1: Yhowers, but no offense to our listeners who haven't showered
Speaker 1: in ten years. We still want you to keep coming
Speaker 1: back to it.
Speaker 2: On the developed country, there's no excuse.
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 2: What's his reason?
Speaker 1: So he talked about in his book in the article
Speaker 1: that he started to calculate how much time we spend
Speaker 1: in our lives showering. Here we go with the time.
Speaker 2: Yep, this is the same thing as sitting standing and peeing.
Speaker 1: Yeap.
Speaker 2: What's the rush, guys?
Speaker 1: And he said, based on his calculations, we spend two
Speaker 1: full years of our lives washing ourselves. And to him,
Speaker 1: it just he doesn't enjoy the act the showering obviously
Speaker 1: like we do. And he was just like, why are
Speaker 1: we doing this? He thought, you know, it's not medically
Speaker 1: necessary for us to shower. We're just doing it because
Speaker 1: that's what we do as a society. And he was curious.
Speaker 1: If he just slowly stopped doing it, his body naturally
Speaker 1: adjusted and it wouldn't be necessary to do it anymore.
Speaker 2: I don't know why we have to pretend that it's
Speaker 2: about like the amount of time at the end of
Speaker 2: your life, you spent two years, how many how many
Speaker 2: years you spend watching TV, or like how many years
Speaker 2: you spend commuting to work. It's a bad way to
Speaker 2: think about things. What it's like, what are you doing
Speaker 2: with those two years?
Speaker 1: That's so so great, that's so much more fun than thanhower.
Speaker 2: We spend two years being you know, like toddlers, Like
Speaker 2: we're not doing like it's not that long. It's not
Speaker 2: that much time to me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, why don't kids start working in the In the
Speaker 4: minds again, it's about wasting time doing other stuff. It's
Speaker 4: like having fun playing factory, do something productive for one.
Speaker 2: I don't like this at all. So what I hear
Speaker 2: about like how much time it saves? I kind of
Speaker 2: roll my eyes. But I am curious about like some
Speaker 2: of his other reasonings that might have more weight to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, he talks a lot about it not
Speaker 1: being you know, medically necessary. There have been a lot
Speaker 1: of conversations about actually we shower too often nowadays, you know,
Speaker 1: like I haven't done any research yet.
Speaker 2: And I could easily believe that we might be showering
Speaker 2: too often. I remember during COVID when when we learned
Speaker 2: that we were putting hand sanitizer on too often and
Speaker 2: how that actually harmed our hands over time.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, yeah, that's what I was curious about, Like
Speaker 4: how much it dries out skin by just doing the
Speaker 4: water and rints and all that with the soap, like
Speaker 4: ye versus I'm assuming I'm imagining by not showering, eventually,
Speaker 4: you're gonna your skin's gonna build up some more tolerance
Speaker 4: maybe or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah some stink ye a nice good sting.
Speaker 1: And I think another aspect of this that we haven't
Speaker 1: really talked about yet is how do we shower right?
Speaker 1: It's not only how often, what are we doing once
Speaker 1: we're in there right by play? So there was another
Speaker 1: moment in culture in twenty nineteen where a user this
Speaker 1: this tweet is now deleted, okay, put out a poll
Speaker 1: asking when you go and shower, do you wash your legs.
Speaker 1: You all remember this conversation.
Speaker 2: I remember this. I thought it was from before twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Now it's twenty nineteen, and it was revealed through that
Speaker 1: pole and subsequent conversation that a lot of white women
Speaker 1: did not wash your legs when they shower.
Speaker 2: So if you do, you have an up opinion.
Speaker 6: I don't wash my legs in the shower. Do you
Speaker 6: wash your legs in the shower?
Speaker 7: We're bacta Taylor Swift who was just telling me about
Speaker 7: washing her legs in the shower.
Speaker 6: I couldn't hear you. Did you say you do wash
Speaker 6: them or you don't? I do?
Speaker 7: Because when you shave your legs, isn't that shaving cream
Speaker 7: is like soap?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean you don't clean their legs well, but
Speaker 7: you're sticking a shower regardless, So I mean it's not
Speaker 7: like it's not getting clean.
Speaker 2: I mean you only got to do washing your legs,
Speaker 2: meaning like going through the effort of actually scrubbing your legs.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, yes, you know you're go in the shower,
Speaker 1: you're soaping up, whether you're using you know, this is
Speaker 1: another thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, we need to get into there's a
Speaker 4: lot of right there's it gonna be a long This
Speaker 4: might be a three parts.
Speaker 1: As you know, as a black band growing up in
Speaker 1: this country and we where I was growing up, we
Speaker 1: had something called the washrag. I know it maybe foreign
Speaker 1: to some of our listeners, but a washrag is exactly
Speaker 1: what it sounds like. It is a rag that you
Speaker 1: would put some soap on and then use the rag
Speaker 1: to clean your body. You know, you would change out
Speaker 1: the washwrag every couple of days because it really, you know,
Speaker 1: it starts to get a little stink to it if
Speaker 1: you don't. But you're using something Some people use loofahs. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know there's an African uh ba bathing that whatever
Speaker 1: you call it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as long as it has some coarse materials that
Speaker 2: kind of exfoliates.
Speaker 1: But and you know, I learned this from an early
Speaker 1: age from sleepovers at some of my friends' houses who
Speaker 1: happened to be white. We don't want to make any assumptions.
Speaker 1: When they would give me, uh, okay, I'm gonna go shower.
Speaker 1: Here's your child, I said, okay, thank you, I need
Speaker 1: that to dry off. Where's the washrag? And they're like,
Speaker 1: wash rag? What is that? You know? Like so a
Speaker 1: lot of white people don't use washrags. They just use
Speaker 1: their hand to clean everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it's like finding out that my white
Speaker 2: friends used to talk back to their mom.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, I didn't know that was an option.
Speaker 2: What kind of that kind of alien world?
Speaker 1: So we say all that to uh bring us to Noah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: no do you Yeah, if you're just listening, you're not
Speaker 1: watching it on Instagram? Do you use a washrag?
Speaker 7: So?
Speaker 4: I use now, but growing up I actually did use washrags,
Speaker 4: like we always did have.
Speaker 2: A small one in there. Yeah, I would use that's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why I never really thought to be I
Speaker 1: didn't know. I didn't want to assume all did, just
Speaker 1: the ones I was interacting with.
Speaker 2: Just to circle back a little bit, I remember that
Speaker 2: discourse online end up being surprised at the amount of
Speaker 2: people who didn't wash their legs or would say something
Speaker 2: along the lines of like, I'm washing my you know,
Speaker 2: kind of the problem areas, and then the soap is
Speaker 2: going to run it down. I remember, Yeah, and like,
Speaker 2: I guess clean my legs on the way down to
Speaker 2: the drain. Yes, which just doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 1: What you brought up a really good point when we
Speaker 1: were talking about this. I don't know if you remember this, Manny.
Speaker 2: No, I fried my brain, you said, since then.
Speaker 1: I think about it once a week now. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things. Well you were like, how actually
Speaker 1: every time I washed my legs I think about this.
Speaker 1: You're like, how long do you think this takes?
Speaker 2: Exactly?
Speaker 1: It takes less than thirty seconds still, wipe your legs.
Speaker 2: Less than that is we're acknowledging soaps running down your legs.
Speaker 2: You need to run, you need to rinse that off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just that it doesn't take much the same amount.
Speaker 2: Of time to make sure there's not still bubbles all
Speaker 2: over you.
Speaker 1: Yes, as to actually watch it and not take not
Speaker 1: It doesn't add that much time to your shower.
Speaker 2: Maybe twenty seconds total. Yeah, how long are your showers?
Speaker 1: By the way, Oh that's a really good question.
Speaker 2: So let's say the primary main shower in the morning.
Speaker 1: My my normal no rush shower about ten minutes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I'm about that. I think the same.
Speaker 2: There are instances where like, maybe it's a night in
Speaker 2: I've got nothing going on, you know, I'll just be
Speaker 2: kind of day dreaming in there.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, definitely, if no one else is around, so
Speaker 4: I know no one's like a way, it's about.
Speaker 1: The something like I can definitely take long.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'd say my standard's probably eight to twelve, yes,
Speaker 4: and then yeah, if it's a nice one I'm chilling,
Speaker 4: then close to twenty probably, yeah, if I'm just going
Speaker 4: to take our time.
Speaker 2: Really, I'm the follower of the method of like, you know,
Speaker 2: really focusing on the quote unquote problem areas right, like
Speaker 2: your your pits, your crotch, whatever, but your butt, yeah,
Speaker 2: and then doing a much lighter version of that for
Speaker 2: the rest.
Speaker 1: Of your boxactly. Yeah, you start with those.
Speaker 2: You know, five to ten minutes this thing. Maybe you
Speaker 2: do a second round. I guess that's what I do,
Speaker 2: Like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: But like you got it once yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I think like, you know, if you only did one
Speaker 2: round in there, which sometimes I'm late or whatever, I
Speaker 2: think you're you're a perfectly hygienic person. Oh yeah, So
Speaker 2: if it's only taking five minutes in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah I could do. If you said, oh yeah, hey
Speaker 1: you only got five minutes to shower, I could do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could do it.
Speaker 2: It could be pretty thorough.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: But maybe that's not exactly what this episode is about.
Speaker 2: Maybe I did a derail.
Speaker 1: No, No, it was good. Well, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of that conversation ended up being too which also came
Speaker 1: to mind from me, which is like the sort of
Speaker 1: like acceptability politics of like what's allowed in certain cultures
Speaker 1: versus what is not allowed, So like black culture is
Speaker 1: very important to always be presenting yourself in the best light,
Speaker 1: which is like your clothes need to be iron right,
Speaker 1: they need to be clean. You can't go outside if
Speaker 1: you stink, right, Like, it's it's a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: some of this is like respectability politics, but it's like
Speaker 1: your parents were always like, you know, when people see you,
Speaker 1: they're not just judging you, they're judging all black people
Speaker 1: exactly based on how you are presenting our family.
Speaker 2: And then also.
Speaker 1: Yes, black people whereas who's dak Shepherd and his who's
Speaker 1: his wife? Oh yeah, Kristen Bell. They came out, and
Speaker 1: the thing I love about these stories is that the
Speaker 1: people just kind of volunteer this information. They said, they
Speaker 1: only washed your kids when they start to stink, so
Speaker 1: you know, like once a weaker some kids, I forgot
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 2: We had to start saying like, hey, when's the last
Speaker 2: time you bathe them? Yeah, forget sometimes.
Speaker 1: Five six days goes along.
Speaker 8: I mean they don't smell, so so you know it's
Speaker 8: hard people.
Speaker 1: Well they do.
Speaker 6: I'm a big thing of waiting for the stake.
Speaker 4: With that's that's biology's way of letting you know you
Speaker 4: need to clean it up.
Speaker 1: And it became a whole thing, right, It's like, so
Speaker 1: I think, like, I think part of this too is
Speaker 1: a cultural thing of like expectations around what is acceptable
Speaker 1: versus what is not acceptable. And I'm not even saying
Speaker 1: that like the black point of view here is correct, right,
Speaker 1: Like I don't believe in respectability politics, but that on
Speaker 1: the pod. Yeah, so I'm not saying like showering every
Speaker 1: day like gives us, you know, a better chance of
Speaker 1: getting equal, right, But I think it is part of
Speaker 1: the equation of you know, not only what we're doing
Speaker 1: in our homes, but also how comfortable we feel sharing, right,
Speaker 1: Like there there's probably lots of black people who aren't
Speaker 1: still doing the things that they were taught as kids.
Speaker 1: But they're not going to go on the internet say
Speaker 1: oh yes, I also don't wash my legs and I
Speaker 1: shower you know, once every two weeks, and you know,
Speaker 1: to make it clear, James talks about this a bit
Speaker 1: and his article in this book about like, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: a white guy, great education, Like I have certain advantages
Speaker 1: that allows for me to go on this journey of him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: without it like completely ruining my status. Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break, and when we get back, we're
Speaker 1: going to hear about a king that only took two
Speaker 1: baths in his entire life, and hear from a dermatologist
Speaker 1: about how often we should really be showering. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're back.
Speaker 2: I'm Manny, I'm Noah.
Speaker 1: This is Devin. All Right, fellas, it's been a few
Speaker 1: weeks since we last chatted about how often we should
Speaker 1: be bathing. So in that time I've spoken to a
Speaker 1: dermatologist who does have an answer. But before we get there,
Speaker 1: I want to take a brief detour and figure out
Speaker 1: how we got to where we are today in terms
Speaker 1: of showering. So we're going to do a little abbreviated
Speaker 1: history of bathing. Okay, So I called up someone who
Speaker 1: read a whole book on it.
Speaker 9: My name is Catherine Astenberg, and I wrote a book
Speaker 9: called The Dirt Unclean and unsanitized history.
Speaker 1: So Catherine came out with the idea for the book
Speaker 1: after a trip to the museum.
Speaker 9: This book first came to me in a museum in
Speaker 9: Toronto where I live, which is called the Royal Ontario Museum.
Speaker 9: And there was one day I was looking at a
Speaker 9: picture of a sort of seventeenth century crowd scene somewhere
Speaker 9: in Europe, and the caption underneath had said the rich
Speaker 9: in this picture, the aristocrats are dirtier than the peasants.
Speaker 9: You know, press a button and learn more, which I
Speaker 9: wasn't doing all that often than those years. But I
Speaker 9: pressed a button because that was so counterintuitive in a way.
Speaker 1: So why was this the case? Well, in the fourteenth
Speaker 1: century we had this little thing called the Black Death,
Speaker 1: which killed between forty and sixty percent of Europeans depending
Speaker 1: on which historian you trust. In this flag was the
Speaker 1: worst pandemic ever and the.
Speaker 9: French king consulted the medical doctors at the Sorbonne and
Speaker 9: they said what caused it? And they said, all you know,
Speaker 9: planets were aligning in bad ways.
Speaker 1: So the king at the time wanted to know how
Speaker 1: to prevent it.
Speaker 9: The people most at risk were fat, very emotional and
Speaker 9: they took warm baths. What was wrong with taking warm baths?
Speaker 9: It opened your pores and the disease entered through the port.
Speaker 9: This is obviously not the case, but as a result,
Speaker 9: a French historian called Jules Michele said that what followed
Speaker 9: were a thousand years without a bath. Wasn't really a thousand,
Speaker 9: It was more like five hundred, but it was a
Speaker 9: considerable number of years.
Speaker 1: So what happens next? They're rich people of European society
Speaker 1: avoid hot water like the plague. See what I did there?
Speaker 2: Nice?
Speaker 9: Those people never got in hot water, never washed anything
Speaker 9: but their hands. King Louis the fourteenth of France, for example,
Speaker 9: was a very athletic king. He did all kinds of sports.
Speaker 9: Every day in his long life. He took two baths,
Speaker 9: but every morning he washed his hands and maybe dribbled
Speaker 9: a little water on his face, and that was the
Speaker 9: extent of his hygiene because his body was the most
Speaker 9: important body in France, so they had to keep it
Speaker 9: away from disease.
Speaker 2: So incredible. How much of like science back then was
Speaker 2: just vibes based.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, I don't know, these guys are kind
Speaker 1: of fat, and I don't know. They like warm water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, So we got King Louie to fourteenth taking
Speaker 1: two baths. Right. At some point English scientists were like, actually, guys,
Speaker 1: walm watar is good. It doesn't spread disease. It could
Speaker 1: actually prevent it. So I was curious how we got
Speaker 1: to today. We're bathing more regularly is the norm, and
Speaker 1: you know, we use a little thing called soap.
Speaker 9: What really made bathing and showering work was advertising. Unfortunately,
Speaker 9: it was a huge success. We had soap to wash
Speaker 9: our clothes and wash our floors. We didn't have what
Speaker 9: was called in the nineteenth century toilet soap, soap to
Speaker 9: wash our body. And so even when people got the idea, oh,
Speaker 9: let's get into warm water, there's something kind of good
Speaker 9: about that, they did that without soap. The soap that
Speaker 9: you'd wash your floor and your clothes with was really
Speaker 9: harsh and it really melted very quickly. But various chemical
Speaker 9: processes were discovered and put into production by the big
Speaker 9: soap makers like Procter and Gamble and palmolive, and transportation
Speaker 9: made it easier to get so all of a sudden,
Speaker 9: soap toilet soap was born kind of in the second
Speaker 9: half of the nineteenth century advertising was born. They brought
Speaker 9: each other up together. And because all toilet soap was
Speaker 9: pretty much the same as every other kind of toilet soap,
Speaker 9: they needed advertising to say that ivory soap was better
Speaker 9: than pal molive soap, for example. They invented all kinds
Speaker 9: of gimmicks and use of celebrities and games and coupons
Speaker 9: and stuff that you could collect.
Speaker 1: Soap brought us some of our first branded content. Sure
Speaker 1: you think got the idea of a soap opera?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: The first radio dramas were sponsored by soap companies.
Speaker 2: That's why it's called that. That's why it's called what
Speaker 2: Great trivia.
Speaker 4: Good morning radio listeners, Clara Lunde, I'm brought to you
Speaker 4: by the makers of super.
Speaker 9: Thubble, and they also advertising. This is invented kind of
Speaker 9: bad things which are known in the advertising trade is
Speaker 9: whisper copy, which was successfully designed to make you feel
Speaker 9: really worried. Are you offending because you haven't taken a
Speaker 9: bath today or a shower? And offending was one of
Speaker 9: their scary words, and they would say, you will never
Speaker 9: know if you're offending.
Speaker 8: After comparing the acts of daily baths with different soaps,
Speaker 8: lay doctors made this amazing statement. Actually, you're clinger. It's
Speaker 8: safer from the old when you bathe daily with Life
Speaker 8: Boy and when you bathe with any other leading soap.
Speaker 2: The point of the ad is so that you don't
Speaker 2: offend someone else with your smell. Yes, well that's why
Speaker 2: soap was new. I guess I've been offending people with
Speaker 2: my smell the whole time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was what they were saying. They're saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: wouldn't move the needle for me. All of you've been thinking,
Speaker 1: we got this new thing to fix that, and everyone
Speaker 1: is going to start using it, so you want to
Speaker 1: be left behind and be the one guy who still stinks.
Speaker 2: I see. It's pretty convincing to me. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, if it's an easy choice.
Speaker 1: If you see everyone around around you start using it.
Speaker 1: It's like it's also.
Speaker 2: Wild to think about how old these some of these
Speaker 2: companies are After and Gramble all the way.
Speaker 1: Back then been around for a bit.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: All right, So the advertising business did its big thing.
Speaker 1: But Catherine called out in her book, not everyone bought
Speaker 1: into this, so you know, many maybe wouldn't back in
Speaker 1: the day. Some of us, some of us are freethinkers
Speaker 1: and you know who else were free thinkers, our European
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters.
Speaker 9: The European countries are extremely different in terms of hygiene.
Speaker 9: It was always kind of a trade off between the historians.
Speaker 9: I was reading what is the Dirtiest Country in Europe
Speaker 9: and it was kind of a contest between France and Spain.
Speaker 9: French people would take a shower four days a week,
Speaker 9: did not think it was necessary to change their underwear
Speaker 9: every day, versus the North American much closer to once
Speaker 9: a day.
Speaker 1: It's funny. I've seen some tiktoks recently of young people
Speaker 1: going to Paris for the first time, and the one
Speaker 1: thing that they constantly comment on is like, oh, a
Speaker 1: lot of these people in France are not wearing the odorant.
Speaker 9: Yeah, people still say that about France. It's amazing how
Speaker 9: I'm regenerate they are. But there's a wonderful book by
Speaker 9: a guy, a historian by I think his name is
Speaker 9: Alan Corbin R b I N. He's French, and about
Speaker 9: the French love of strong smells, the way they hang
Speaker 9: their meat, their wine, their smelly wonderful cheese, and their bodies.
Speaker 9: And it's a kind of somadic atmosphere in which they
Speaker 9: live and which they're not just tolerant of it, they
Speaker 9: they like it, they seek it out. Well, this famous
Speaker 9: story about Napoleon and Josephine that he was on a
Speaker 9: military campaign and he wrote to Josephine, I will arrive
Speaker 9: in Paris, you know, in two nights or on Friday
Speaker 9: or something like that, Nu levpa, do not wash. This
Speaker 9: was part of sexual pleasure for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: That's nasty.
Speaker 1: That is, you know, don't think shame many, all right,
Speaker 1: that's some people are.
Speaker 2: Napoleon cook, I can I can imagine if you have
Speaker 2: that kink, be like hoping that they don't wash, being like, hey,
Speaker 2: don't take a shower. He's like, hey, I'm on my
Speaker 2: way back.
Speaker 1: Hey, I know you've been washing out while being gone.
Speaker 2: That ends today. Put a stop to it.
Speaker 1: And this will circle back to an idea that we
Speaker 1: were talking about in the intro. But this idea of
Speaker 1: clonliness was also used to discriminate against minority groups in
Speaker 1: the US.
Speaker 9: Americans were just as dirty as Europeans until the Civil War.
Speaker 1: So during the Civil War, things like hygiene and hospital
Speaker 1: conditions became a much bigger focus in the US to
Speaker 1: help improve the health of the troops.
Speaker 9: So by the time all these immigrants arrived on the shores,
Speaker 9: arrived at Ellis Island from the south and the east
Speaker 9: of Europe, it was felt one way to make them
Speaker 9: be Americans is to teach them about bathing and about
Speaker 9: seeing themselves.
Speaker 6: So it was a.
Speaker 9: Huge teaching campaign. You can't be American unless you're clean.
Speaker 9: And it had also been used for the blacks after
Speaker 9: the Civil War in reconstruction.
Speaker 1: So going back to the side of respectability politics. During Reconstruction,
Speaker 1: we had people like Booker T. Washington who were promoting
Speaker 1: this idea of cleanliness for black.
Speaker 9: People, and he wrote a book in which he talked
Speaker 9: about what he called the Gospel of the toothbrush. She said,
Speaker 9: once you give a person a toothbrush and they start
Speaker 9: to use it, they're on their way to being a
Speaker 9: full American citizen.
Speaker 1: So there we go. We got our idea of respectability politics.
Speaker 1: Back to Booker T. So early, get your toothbrush. That's
Speaker 1: white people are going to start being nice to us
Speaker 1: if we brush our teeth. Didn't work.
Speaker 2: They had to do some of the strategies after that one.
Speaker 1: Now that we've gotten a little history lesson We're going
Speaker 1: to take a quick break, and when we get back,
Speaker 1: we're going to have all our baiting questions answered by dermatologists.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back in as promise. I spoke with
Speaker 1: a dermatologist.
Speaker 6: My name is Lisa Akintillo.
Speaker 7: I'm a Boort certified dermatologist and cosmetic dermatologic surgeon correctly
Speaker 7: at NYU in New York.
Speaker 1: And, like Noah likes to say, I want to waste
Speaker 1: no time and get right into it. First question, let's
Speaker 1: get right to it. How often do you shower?
Speaker 6: I personally showered twice today.
Speaker 7: Some people may find that extreme, but I've done it
Speaker 7: for years, just because the night shower is part of
Speaker 7: my kind of decompression from the day.
Speaker 6: My night routine.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the wine down, so that's just my personal preference.
Speaker 7: But yeah, twice a day, once if I'm gonna bind,
Speaker 7: but usually it's twice.
Speaker 2: I'm never someone who showers like right before bed. But
Speaker 2: I'm coming around to the idea that like it makes
Speaker 2: sense in the sense of keeping your bed a sacred,
Speaker 2: clean place.
Speaker 1: Yes, people should listen back to our episode about whether
Speaker 1: or not it's okay to wear your outside clothes on
Speaker 1: your bed. That's right, Well, we touched on us a
Speaker 1: little bit, but I like my bed clean, all right,
Speaker 1: so I trusted her already. Right, twice a day. This
Speaker 1: woman knows what she's talking about. But just because doctor
Speaker 1: Akintailo showers twice a day doesn't necessarily mean we should showering.
Speaker 1: There is the Okay, I do this for the scientific
Speaker 1: reasons of like keeping my body clean, and then there's
Speaker 1: the routine, and there's the cultural aspects of it. All right, scientifically,
Speaker 1: how often should we really be showering for, you know,
Speaker 1: for our health?
Speaker 7: That's a good question. How often should we be showering scientifically?
Speaker 7: Because I, to my knowledge, has not been any formal
Speaker 7: studies saying, oh, this is the evidence based number of
Speaker 7: times you should shower in a day. I would say,
Speaker 7: I tell my patients they should shower once a day.
Speaker 7: That probably varies depending on who you talk too. But
Speaker 7: I personally believe you're out in the world, if you
Speaker 7: live in a place like New York, you're exposed to
Speaker 7: the elements, you're exposed to the pollution. It's good to
Speaker 7: at least once a day kind of rinse that off
Speaker 7: of you. And then also you provide hydration back into
Speaker 7: the skin which does tend to get fairly dry throughout
Speaker 7: the day. And then there is the mental health part
Speaker 7: of it too. Like I was alluding to earlier, it
Speaker 7: is like a nice few minutes where it's just you.
Speaker 7: You get to focus on taking care of yourself. But again,
Speaker 7: some people might say less than that. There are some
Speaker 7: other factors at play with how often I recommend people shower.
Speaker 7: Maybe if somebody has eggs, more of that dry, itchy,
Speaker 7: flaky skin, they should not shower too often. But you're
Speaker 7: so right in bringing up the cultural part, because there's
Speaker 7: a huge voice in my head at least that say, well,
Speaker 7: you can't shower. You can't not shower every day. So
Speaker 7: that's my take on it.
Speaker 1: Wow, so once today, Yeah, we should basically be dermatologists.
Speaker 2: I love to hear that a dermatologist recommends you shower
Speaker 2: once a day, and I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: should that to heart.
Speaker 1: Obviously, there's you know, we say for every single person
Speaker 1: in the world, there maybe someone with some condition that
Speaker 1: we're not mentioning here. But yeah, that's that's our general
Speaker 1: recommendation to most of our clients. So the weather is
Speaker 1: actually cooling down in New York, Yeah, right, when we
Speaker 1: started this, it was like a little bit hotter, So
Speaker 1: I was curious how much of this recommendation is based
Speaker 1: on just like where you're living, right, Like I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm showering a little bit less now than i
Speaker 1: was when it was a little hotter. And also like
Speaker 1: someone's activity level does that determine how often they should
Speaker 1: be shower.
Speaker 7: If you're feeling really hot and sweaty and sticky, maybe
Speaker 7: you either live in a warm place year round or
Speaker 7: at summertime.
Speaker 6: That can be helpful just to get all the sweat off.
Speaker 7: And for that reason too, I do recommend patients who
Speaker 7: exercise a lot to also at least do a quick
Speaker 7: rint or spray, you know, certain areas with hypochlorous acid
Speaker 7: or some kind of cleansing spray. It's because that sweat
Speaker 7: staying all the skin for a prolonged amount of time
Speaker 7: can lead to issues down the line like acne, little
Speaker 7: bits of eczema, or dry, itchy skin.
Speaker 1: And this made me a dumb question, but like on
Speaker 1: a molecular level, like what makes us smell?
Speaker 6: Yeah, what's the cause of the body odor?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 7: Yeah, So it's interesting sweat in and of itself does
Speaker 7: not have an odor. Our sweat glands produce this fluid,
Speaker 7: these africrine and acrine glands and the skin. But what
Speaker 7: causes the smell is bacteria that is on the skin.
Speaker 7: So it is interesting to think about. But we all
Speaker 7: have bacteria living on our skin, mites and other things too.
Speaker 7: They're all in symbiosis with us. But the bacteria, if
Speaker 7: the sweat is on the skin for a prolonged amount
Speaker 7: of time, they like it. They kind of gravitate towards it,
Speaker 7: and as they eat it and digest it, that process
Speaker 7: produces an odor that is oftentimes unpleasant for either one
Speaker 7: self or people around someone to smell. But sweat in
Speaker 7: and of itself is not a problem.
Speaker 1: It's yea, it attracts.
Speaker 2: I guess I always assumed like you get sweaty and
Speaker 2: then your arm pits start to emit an odor. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I smell when I'm on the train and someone smells bad,
Speaker 2: I thought that's essentially what was happening.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: This is fascinating though.
Speaker 1: Yes, the bacteria eating up that sweat yummy, yummy, yummy,
Speaker 1: So I want it. Doctor, I can tell Hell to
Speaker 1: walk me through the perfect shower routine. Let's start with
Speaker 1: what soap we should be using.
Speaker 7: So in broad strokes, for most people, I recommend just
Speaker 7: the plain, gentle hydrating cleanser. If someone is more prone
Speaker 7: to sensitive skin, I would probably shy away from the
Speaker 7: fragrance cleansers because that can be pretty irritating to the skin. Now,
Speaker 7: dial or hibocleans is another one, or bends of peroxide.
Speaker 7: They're all the antibacterial washes and soaps. Those can be
Speaker 7: helpful for certain reasons. Right somebody has a lot of
Speaker 7: body owner Sometimes we like the antibacterial soap to decrease
Speaker 7: the amount of bacteria on the skin. If somebody has
Speaker 7: a particular condition where we're trying to decrease again that bacteria,
Speaker 7: maybe acne and those are you, and then we do
Speaker 7: recommend those special antibacterial soaps. But for most people, for
Speaker 7: most of the population, most of the time, just as
Speaker 7: hydrating gentle cleanser as all that's needed.
Speaker 1: She says, no, no need to splurge on an expensive soap.
Speaker 1: And we were talking about bar or liquid. She said,
Speaker 1: both are great. More of a bar guy. You Dove, Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think typically I'll buy a Dove, but I'll kind
Speaker 4: of if something's on sale, I'll try it.
Speaker 1: But well, the fun fact is dove is not technically
Speaker 1: a hope. Excuse me explain dove is not technically a sope.
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 1: It's you know, we don't need to get into the
Speaker 1: weeds here, but it doesn't have certain properties, which is
Speaker 1: why dove is considered to be more moisturizing, because soap
Speaker 1: strip your body of more things. Oh so people use
Speaker 1: dove because it's gentler on your skin.
Speaker 4: That makes sense, because yeah, you do hear about people
Speaker 4: using too much soap. She was alluding to this earlier too,
Speaker 4: just like and then yoga irritated and dry skin doing
Speaker 4: too much cleaning.
Speaker 1: So now you know, we had a good time with dove,
Speaker 1: but I'm about to ruin your lives.
Speaker 2: Oh god.
Speaker 7: I asked her how long we should be showering, So
Speaker 7: showers actually should be on the shorter end, which may
Speaker 7: be breaking the hearts of all your oul because we
Speaker 7: all love our long you know, hot showers that feel
Speaker 7: so good and you know messages the back, et cetera.
Speaker 7: But really, showers should be no more than five minutes,
Speaker 7: and probably cools with the three minutes. So I tell
Speaker 7: my patients, if you're listening to music, it should be
Speaker 7: about a song. Those songs these days are about three
Speaker 7: and a half minutes. Yeah, there should be about that long.
Speaker 7: They should be lukewarm as well, not hot.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Now, I myself am guilty of a hot shower now
Speaker 7: and again, especially in the winter, just because it's so
Speaker 7: cool outside. But that hot water strips a lot of
Speaker 7: our natural oils off of the skin and actually makes
Speaker 7: us dryer as a result. So the water doesn't have
Speaker 7: to be cold by any means, but lukewarm is deespecially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm doing my own research. We're learning that she
Speaker 2: takes basically less than one shower. Actually she just breaks it.
Speaker 1: Up based on the amount of minutes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm on my Maha ship. I don't trust that.
Speaker 2: How hot, How hot are your guys showers? I don't
Speaker 2: go super hot. I'm not scorching, but they're hot. I
Speaker 2: like it hot, I mean not my room steamy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I like.
Speaker 4: But I've cauted it down. I think partly because of
Speaker 4: the skin irritant factor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 4: I do have some dry skin. I don't want to
Speaker 4: irritate it. And definitely, the hotter it gets, I noticed that.
Speaker 4: I'm definitely not lukewarm, but and I have no idea
Speaker 4: what temperature it is.
Speaker 1: I'm probably slightly hotter than I should be, but I'm not.
Speaker 1: I used to be even hotter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I used to my I used like I feel
Speaker 2: like in high school and college. I used to have
Speaker 2: like hot showers just boiling your skin.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So uh, next up our controversial question about whether
Speaker 1: or not you actually need a wash rag.
Speaker 2: Oh hmmm, instead of just your hands, instead.
Speaker 1: Of just yours.
Speaker 7: I just had a conversation with a family member about
Speaker 7: this last week. Because you are not wrong. This is
Speaker 7: where there's a lot of cultural impact. Well disclosure, I
Speaker 7: am of Nigerian descent, and I grew up using a
Speaker 7: lufa or the African nets bonge, and it's just what
Speaker 7: I'm used to. So when I discovered not everybody uses that,
Speaker 7: I was kind of flabbergasted. So basically, the question that
Speaker 7: you're getting to is manual physical exfoliation necessary as part
Speaker 7: of a shower routine.
Speaker 6: The technical answer is not really.
Speaker 7: Sometimes, again, if someone has a particular skin condition, we
Speaker 7: might not want too much physical abrasions to the skin,
Speaker 7: as that can aggravate different rations people may have or
Speaker 7: other issues. But again, I tend to think having some
Speaker 7: kind of exfoliant is nice, whether it be manual or chemical,
Speaker 7: just to help get rid of that top layer of skin,
Speaker 7: because sometimes that is leading to a lot of issues
Speaker 7: as well with dryness and skin irritation. And with just
Speaker 7: gentle exfoliation with a Lufa and African nut sponge honestly,
Speaker 7: hands can work some times too. That can help get
Speaker 7: that top layer off and give a nice glow to
Speaker 7: the skin, especially with moisturizer quite afterwards. So that's that's
Speaker 7: kind of my answer for that. Again, I personally love
Speaker 7: ALOFA and I cannot fathom not using it.
Speaker 6: I travel with one.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's the whole thing.
Speaker 2: I accept the censer. She's back on our good side.
Speaker 2: Yeah she knows what she's talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah she's pro So next up from my white girls,
Speaker 1: do you actually need to wash your legs?
Speaker 6: Let me tell you.
Speaker 7: When I first heard of this debate or discussion a
Speaker 7: few years ago, I was flabbergasted.
Speaker 6: Yet again, takes no time.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that drives me crazy. It's like it
Speaker 1: takes you could do it very quickly.
Speaker 6: It literally takes me ten seconds.
Speaker 7: It's not so you can't tell my answer is yes,
Speaker 7: we should be watching our whole body, including our legs.
Speaker 7: Though soap dripping down is not enough. And when you
Speaker 7: think about it, truly, especially in the summer, but I'd
Speaker 7: say year round, our feet are exposed to a lot
Speaker 7: of different things in the world. Right, even if you're
Speaker 7: wearing socks and shoes and you have your trousers on,
Speaker 7: you still might have a little bit of exposed ankle.
Speaker 7: If it's the summer, you're wearing your sandals, your flip flops,
Speaker 7: that all needs to be washed. Just think about you know,
Speaker 7: if you don't wash your legs and feet, you get
Speaker 7: into bed and all the stuff that's probably sitting in
Speaker 7: your sheets, and it's just to be clean. I think
Speaker 7: it's probably best to wash the feet and legs and
Speaker 7: arms and as you mentioned, all the body parts. Truly,
Speaker 7: it really doesn't take that much time. There are some
Speaker 7: arguments people say where you really only need to focus
Speaker 7: on the hot zones, which would be the groin, in the.
Speaker 6: Armpit and the face.
Speaker 7: I guess too, I understand where they're coming from, but
Speaker 7: I just personally think, and I've seen in my patience
Speaker 7: that people's skin looks much healthier if they do wash
Speaker 7: and moisturize their whole body.
Speaker 1: Just take the ten seconds and wash your legs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it feels nice under the knee.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's a good spot right out. Yeah. All right,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's all we got. Has this changed your
Speaker 1: point of view of showering. I think this is one
Speaker 1: that we all kind of agree on. This is a
Speaker 1: beautiful thing. Doesn't happen all the time with us, but
Speaker 1: we were all doing at least once a day. I
Speaker 1: guess we have some suggestions to our brethren who are
Speaker 1: not doing this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good to know that if I do have
Speaker 2: a quicker shower, I'm not really risking anything. Or if
Speaker 2: I don't use the rag sometimes it's probably fine. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I feel the same.
Speaker 4: It's nice that you know my quick rinses when they
Speaker 4: happen are probably doing the job.
Speaker 2: I'm going to keep my long showers and do them
Speaker 2: every day.
Speaker 1: All right. Yeah that's all I had. Was there anything
Speaker 1: else that you felt like you wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: that you didn't get to touch on.
Speaker 6: No, I think we talked about everything.
Speaker 7: I you know, shower at least once a day, don't
Speaker 7: spend a lot of money.
Speaker 6: Moisture eyes for sure, keep them short, Yeah, keep them short.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 7: The short thing is that's a big change for most people.
Speaker 7: So when I bring up the song reference, that tends
Speaker 7: to help at least you notice like, oh, it's in
Speaker 7: like two three songs.
Speaker 6: Maybe I should give out Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: He's he he heals, heals. After we recorded our conversation,
Speaker 1: I was able to find out that James Hamlin has
Speaker 1: reintroduced a daily rent to his routine, but he is
Speaker 1: still not using any soap, shampoo, or theodor. Just just
Speaker 1: some water. Okay. I want to hear about how often
Speaker 1: y'all are showering? Do you wash your legs? Email us
Speaker 1: at Manny Nolah Deevin at female dot com, or you
Speaker 1: can call the number and show notes if you are
Speaker 1: listening to us on Apple podcasts. I have a favorite
Speaker 1: to ask. Go leave us a five star review, but
Speaker 1: I also want you to tell us in a review
Speaker 1: who your favorite No Such Thing member is. Be honest,
Speaker 1: it's me. No Such Thing is a production of Kaleidoscope Content,
Speaker 1: our executive producers for Kate Osborne and Mangeshkadur. The show
Speaker 1: was created by Manny Fidel, Nor Friedman and me Devin
Speaker 1: Joseph theme in credit song by Manny. Mixing for this
Speaker 1: episode by Steve Bone. Our guests this week were doctor
Speaker 1: Lisa Acintillo from ny You and Katherine Aschenberg, the author
Speaker 1: of The Dirt on Clean, which we'll win to in
Speaker 1: our show notes. All Right, we'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 3: Those those those, those those such thing