Posted on 02/26/2020 1:21:19 PM PST by rickmichaels
A third of French people don’t wash their hands after going to the toilet and less than half before eating, while a fifth of Frenchmen change their underwear twice a week at best.
These are some of the unsavoury findings of a new study into personal hygiene in France, which researchers and Gallic doctors say leaves a lot to be desired. The findings stand to reinforce stereotypes that the French take a laisser-faire approach to cleanliness.
The survey by pollster Ifop found the French continued to display “ignorance of basic sanitary rules, despite public health messages and the current [coronavirus] context.”
Only 37 per cent wash their hands after using public transport and 71 per cent after going to the lavatory.
The study was commissioned by Diogène France, a group specialising in cleaning insalubrious housing from sufferers of Diogenes syndrome- a disorder characterised by extreme self-neglect, domestic squalor and compulsive hoarding.
A quarter of the country failed to take a “complete wash” every day, it found.
Women were less negligent than men, with 81 per cent washing every day compared to 71 per cent of males. Rural Frenchmen only managed such daily ablutions in 60 per cent of cases while the worst offenders were the over 65s, on 57 per cent.
Matters have improved since a landmark Ifop study in 1951 for Elle magazine that asked “Are French Women Clean?”
Back then, just over half performed a full toilette daily, but 14 per cent did so less than once a week. At the time, the French used less soap than almost any other country in the developed world – 6.38kg per year compared to 11.09kg per Briton.
A mere 17 percent claimed to change their underwear every day, and 30 percent changed it only once a week or less.
However, 80 per cent wore lipstick. “French women, in sum, knew a lot about beauty; they just did not associate it with being clean,” wrote American academic Steven Zdatny in his 2014 work, “The French Hygiene Offensive of the 1950s: A Critical Moment in the History of Manners.”
Doctor Frédéric Saldmann, a cardiologist and nutritionist said the French no longer deserved their lingering reputation as a smelly nation. “But more needs to be done,” he told Le Parisien.
He said a nationwide drive in schools to educate young French on personal hygiene in the 1960s had changed habits but that bad habits were creeping back in.
For example, the nail brush seems to have disappeared from the French bathroom, he lamented, adding: “Under the nails, it’s a jungle!”
The post ‘Unclean’ French continue to flout basic personal hygiene rules, study suggests appeared first on The Telegraph.
Such a dirty girl.
I think a “complete wash” means getting the bits that need daily ablutions, which doesn’t always necessitate taking a bath or shower. Just soap and water. :-)
In the “no go” zones, no doubt.
What a sickening article. I thought it would be neat to visit France. Now ... not so much.
That is just gross, but maybe they have stronger immune systems now.
"Why do I have to do that? With all the washing, that is the CLEANEST part of my body!"
Of course, I always liked the joke about a cook in Patton's Third Army:
Hahahaha...we guys can be such pigs.
Vive les cochons!
What a filthy creature. I must bathe her. At Once!
And then the spanking!
As soon as I read your post, that Monty Python line just popped into my head!
And Me!
A friend of my son was in the “tip of the spear” when the Marines first went into Iraq in 2003 or 2004. He said THE MOST IMPORTANT thing to get in care packages was new or clean socks. They didn’t get to shower for several weeks, and hiked many miles in hot desert sand. There was some rule about the Marines had to have regulation socks that were the olive green color (even though they did not show at all with their uniforms and boots). We eventually got to where we would just dye athletic socks with Rit dye, and eventually the NCOs relented to allow them in.
“What a filthy creature. I must bathe her. At Once!”
Followed by a spanking and oral sex, Sir Galahad?
Did naughty Zoot light the grail shaped lantern?
If you must know .... a typical and healthy cervix discharges mucus pretty regularly. Not much, but it does. Think of a self-cleaning oven. Add to that the labia is a moist area with little ventilation. Smells happen. Doesn't mean one is dirty. It just means that you need to bathe more often.
Penises don't do that so, of course, the guys wouldn't see the need.
It ‘s not as if their other hand isn’t out and about, touching stuff as well.
I still have vivid memories of gagging around the aroma of people from Brazil, when we visited Walt Disney World, probably 30 years ago. It was AWFUL, and there were MANY of them with that odor.
In 1971, when I was in the USAF, I met a French girl in Istanbul; she was spending a few months traveling and ended up in Turkey for some reason (she said she had not really intended on going there). Anyway, I spent three delightful days with her. She was a cute thing, but apparently deodorant was not something she packed when she traveled. But, I was 21 and randy and thought I’d gone to heaven. Ah, youth.
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