Image credit, Getty Images
- author, Matilda Wellin
- Role, Match Features BBC
Is it necessary to wash frequently? Some experts believe that showering every day is more of a “social contract” than a real need.
A few years ago I stopped showering daily. Working from home due to the pandemic, moving in with a partner who showered less than me, and the sheer laziness of adulthood led me to abandon a nearly three-decade-old habit: As long as I don’t exercise, now I exercise. Shower only about three times a week.
Some of my friends also shower less or less often – some only once a week in winter, sometimes because of skin problems or because they don’t like to have their hair wet – but others find it difficult to adapt to my rhythm, or do so even with disgust. They say: “I can’t wake up properly without showering in the morning.” “Every day should start with a shower and a cup of tea. It is impossible for me to lie in bed.” [sans me doucher] After moving to London. “Three times a week? Gross!”
People who do not shower are often viewed with suspicion. This applies not only to nature-loving hippies living in tents, but also to TikTok users who don’t shower often and even celebrities.
Last month, British broadcaster Jonathan Ross made headlines when he said he showered less than once a week, and in 2023, actress America Ferrera surprised her Barbie co-stars during an interview by admitting that he sometimes didn’t shower.
In 2021, a small uproar erupted when actor Ashton Kutcher horrified commentators with his routine of washing “armpits and groin every day and absolutely nothing else,” and his co-star Jake Gyllenhaal said he thought showering occasionally was “less necessary” (only later). He claims he was being sarcastic.)
Other celebrities joined in, and the excitement became so great that actors Jason Momoa and The Rock had to explain that they showered too much.
“I’m not the only one who doesn’t shower every day, but I’m the only one who wants to talk about it with courage.” – Donachad McCarthy
But while frequent hand washing is essential to prevent the spread of germs, most doctors believe that daily showering has no inherent benefits for physical health. In fact, it can be harmful to your health by drying out the skin and weakening the immune system. However, studies show that more than half of Americans and Britons shower every day. Is it time to go back?
Image credit, Toby Madden
It’s not easy to find someone willing to speak publicly about their choice not to shower. In 2015, chemist David Whitlock made headlines when he announced that he had not showered for 12 years. Instead, he infused himself with good bacteria and launched a skincare brand based on that philosophy.
The following year, physician James Hamblin recounted how he too had stopped bathing. In 2020, when he wrote his book Clean: The New Science of Skin and the Beauty of Doing Less, he told the BBC: “I smell, and my wife says it’s familiar. But she likes it. Others say it’s not bad.” .
When I emailed him for an interview, mentioning my three-times-weekly shower habits, he replied that he was too busy to chat, but added: “Tell those who make fun of you that you don’t have a scent: “Tell everyone who makes fun of you that they are cheating.” Profound ignorance of the skin microbiome, and then they leave.
Finally, I find ecologist Donachad McCarthy. “I’m not the only one who doesn’t shower every day,” he told me. “What I can do alone is be willing to talk about it with courage.”
Eight years ago, McCarthy wrote an article for The Guardian about his weekly baths, which he completed in the tub. He said admitting that he rarely showered was scary, because he knew he would be the target of a barrage of insults and ridicule.
But after the article was published, people whispered in his ear that they were doing the same thing as him.
Image credit, Toby Madden
Until his injury, McCarthy was a professional ballet dancer and had average bathing habits. After spending two weeks with the indigenous Yanomami people in the Amazon rainforest, he decided to do his part for the environment, by installing a rainwater harvesting device and solar thermal installations for hot water at his home in London, and monitoring his water consumption.
Over the next few years, he started bathing less and less. Today he does this only once a month. He washes in the sink every day, uses a washcloth to clean his entire body, and shaves with a cup of water. No one says it smells bad.
“If you go into an old building, you will see beautiful wooden tables in the bedrooms with bowls placed in them,” he explains.
“People were using water from bowls and had a towel for their face and body. … Obviously having running water is a big advantage. But it means we’re using a lot of it.”
“Performative” shower.
Our passion for the everyday birth of soap and water is also a surprisingly rare topic of academic interest. So much so that a report from 2005 still sounds like a household name in bathing research circles. According to this report, it is common in Britain to shower once or sometimes twice a day. For many, “washing has become such a normal routine that it is socially and physically uncomfortable not to wash often.”
Dale Sotherton, professor of consumer sociology at the University of Bristol, is one of the report’s co-authors. “We wash a lot more than before,” he explains to the BBC. This change has occurred mostly over the past 100 years, and was not planned. In fact, it seems to have happened almost by accident.
“The social contract aspect of frequent showering becomes clear when we place ourselves in environments such as cruise vacations or music festivals.”
Traditionally, people cleaned themselves by bathing. The culture surrounding bathing is rich – from soaking in the therapeutic waters of a spa town to the more modern relaxation of a bubble bath with a glass of wine or cup of tea and a book. (The choice between bathing and showering, which requires less water, is cheaper and more environmentally friendly, depends on how long you shower. While some argue that showering is cleaner because dirt is evacuated, others suggest that the difference is too small to matter.)
Southerton says that in the 1950s, Britons had access to running water in bathrooms. Quickly, a new invention appeared: a tube connected to the faucets, covered with a plastic barrier – the shower head. Today many houses are being built, and university dormitories are being rebuilt, so that each room has a bathroom.
“If you only have one bathroom for a family of five, it prevents you from showering,” Southerton says. “But if you jump out of bed and into your bathroom…”
The simple availability of showers – once installed to facilitate hygiene – today encourages us to shower more often.
The simple shower also took on a new meaning. During the twentieth century, the burgeoning advertising industry brought new symbolism to our bathrooms.
The shower was marketed as a tool to save time, but also to freshen the soul, explains Southerton. Around 1970, advertisements for bathing consisted of simple drawings of a bathtub with a shower head, but by the 1980s, images still depicted a woman relaxing and surrounded by steam.
Bathing has become a leisure activity. It also helps us change the context. We often move from one role to another: the office worker, the tennis player, the parent, the friend who comes over for dinner. Bathing is a threshold activity. The shower cubicle is a portal that takes us from one character to another.
“If you go back 100 years, we weren’t bathing every day, because bathing wasn’t normal,” Professor Christine Gram-Hansen, from the university’s Department of Built Environment, told me. “We don’t shower for health reasons. We shower because it’s natural.”
She adds that the “social contract” aspect of frequent showering becomes apparent when we place ourselves in environments such as cruise vacations or music festivals. This is where other norms come into play, and suddenly it becomes acceptable to shower less.
What does the future hold for us? Will we all soon be avoiding the shower stall? This is unlikely. Academics do not see a noticeable trend in people bathing less for environmental reasons. It’s not a phenomenal story that expands and expands, and then we all say, “Oh, that was a bad idea, let’s stop.” “We cannot turn back time. Norms around bathing are now ingrained in our society.”
It seems that lower daily showers will continue to attract the attention of some. McCarthy gives me courage. “I think too much showering leads to performance,” he says. “Why do we wash? Because we are afraid that someone else will tell us that we smell bad… I faced this fear and I am still living.”
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