Posted on 02/25/2015 12:21:22 PM PST by beaversmom
If cleanliness is next to godliness (which I doubt), then the following should also be true: the more you boast about it, the more suspect you are. I’m amazed by the number of people who insist on telling me they take two showers a day, as if they’re the Mother Teresa of personal hygiene. What manner of grime are they washing away? It’s hard not to think of Lady Macbeth’s frenzied attempts to scrub the blood from her hands. So when I read of a survey that stated 4 out of 5 British women don’t shower every day, I applauded our common sense. If you live in a cold climate, aren’t a fishmonger and do little more arduous of a day than pop to Sainsbury’s, why waste all that water? As my granny would say, “You’re just scrubbing off all your essential oils and replacing them with muck.”
The compilers of the survey, however, seemed scandalised. And horrified by the admission from two thirds of women that they tumble in to bed with their faces still slap-coated. The reaction is hardly surprising, when you realise the data was collated on behalf of the skincare range Flint + Flint. Manufacturers of unguents can’t flourish unless womankind is in a constant state of malodorous paranoia: lathering, toning and moisturising every last inch of their epidermis. Stubborn slatterns like me can halve their profits in an instant by simply going on soap strike.
But being grubby and proud is part of a British woman’s heritage. We are internationally famed for our insanitary ways. I was a guest once at a dinner party in California where the hostess was deploring the personal hygiene of her son’s latest girlfriend. At which point a friend said gallantly, “She can’t be worse than Rowan...
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Yes, flew from Paris to Bucharest once and the dude in the seat behind me smelled like he hadn’t showered or put on cologne in well over a week.
Uncouth hardly describes Euro’s sometimes.
I’m half American and English so I have lots of battling DNA in me which one wouldn’t think being the case as we as Americans share a language and heritage with the Brits.
I can confirm that when visiting my English grandparents in the 1970s that they didn’t bathe as much as I was used to. For one thing, their toilet facility was on the back porch and their bath was a tub in the kitchen covered by a wooden board! To heat up water for a bath, you had to heat up water for a bath! There was no plumbing into it. And not just one person used that bath water. It wasn’t too pleasant to be the second person taking the bath. At the time of those visits at 6 and 10 years, I wasn’t so much concerned about the used bath water, but the luke-warmness of it.
My mom came to the U.S. when she was 21 so she lost some of her English ways along the way...infrequent bathing being one. I can remember her telling me when I was an adolescent that as a teen she washed her hair once a week! I was horrified! So I fluctuate between one to two showers/baths a day, but sometimes I revert to my primitive English heritage. It’s fun to go a little Neanderthal at times!
Another thing that was totally odd to me was that my grandparents had no refrigerator. They had a pantry. Milk and drinks were luke warm. No refrigeration so perishables had to be used up fast. As an American, I love my ice!
My mom did confirm that my grandfather finally joined the 20th century during the 1980s. She went back to visit and he had a tiny fridge with the tiniest ice cube tray. :)
One funny story was that my grandparents came to visit my mom and dad while my dad was still stationed in England. Grandma wasn’t overly concerned with aesthetics or hygiene to say the least, but she did try to be thoughtful in her own way. She had packed in her suitcase a dead chicken with the feathers still on it for the meal. :) Good ole g-ma. :) Glad I got to meet her that one time when I was 6. She had just passed before my 2nd visit. Rough and grumpy and a little bit lazy at times, but she and my grandfather got their family through WWII. She knew how to make do and survive.
We had a teacher who’s entire family didn’t use soap, for anything. They showered, but didn’t use soap. They washed their clothes, but didn’t use soap.
They, smelled, bad. Strongly, aromatically, shockingly, bad.
Can you imagine what it was like in Henry VIII times? They must have been humming something fierce!
Lol...you’ll have to share that one.
OCD much?
“... putting the soapy cups and plates into the drainer without rinsing them...”
Ah, I didn’t know that was a national tradition. I saw a Brit doing the same thing. I was always told that the dish soap would give you diarrhea.
share a language?
Hardly! When I was in Britain I could barely understand what they were saying. I had to ask them to speak slowly and even then had to concentrate to understand.
The “t” in water is not silent!
It depends on the soap. It’s a good way to lose weight.
LOL, you must have seen this movie too.
‘Don’ You Go Rounin’ Roun to Re Ro’
https://screen.yahoo.com/british-movie-000000971.html
hehe
Try Ireland, especially in smaller towns!
From the piece:
In the bedroom was a pitcher and a bowl and a towel, and soap. You stripped to the waist and washed your upper body, then put your shirt back on and stripped off (or lifted your underskirt) to wash your lower body. Voila! Simple, fast, easy, private, and clean. You could wash off at the wash basin several times a day if you wanted.
Me talking:
I'm reminded of Kelly McGillis playing the Amish woman Rachel bathing this way in the movie Witness.
Your grandma couldn’t get away with that dead chicken in the suitcase here and now. The TSA would be all over her.
Unless....she could plead traveling voodoo priestess. Yeah, that would work.
Can’t say that I have. But I did hang out with a lovely British girl in Dover. After the bar we went walking around the town. I mentioned that I had to pee as we were passing a cemetery. She said to just piss on the graves and that they wouldn’t know anyhow. She was quite the colorful character and rather fun! Much more to that story but not for open discussion!
Never mind the differences in the cultures....its good to shower every day.
Washing off the dead skin, feels great, wakes you up. Why would you deny yourself? I find the whole europe thing is always moving backwards...cleanliness for the primitive man was not an easy habit to get into.
My wife is from Philadelphia and had one hell of a time understanding people when we moved to Texas. I had to translate when she spoke to my mom.
Darn! We will have to use imagination. :)
I agree it does feel wonderful, but sometimes have to go a little grimy to feel the full effect. :)
Soap is cheap, and I really can’t stand myself if I don’t bathe daily. I love the smell of soap and clean linens, it is a simple pleasure. I do have a problem with the advertising industry making us paranoid in the service of selling $200 little jars of goo, but in addition to feeling as though my intelligence is being insulted by some 22 year old pushing wrinkle cream we also have the very basic fact that I’m frugal/cheap/of-Scottish-descent.
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