81–89 of 89 posts
I don't mean this as flamebait but my pet theory is that showering and washing your hands is the 1800s version of wearing covid masks (except it stuck around as a permanent feature). It's more of a public safety thing you do for other people than for yourself and doing it twice a day is probably way excessive. It's probably closer to once every two days or less depending on how easily you generate body odor.
Thanks for this poll, I'm baffled to see people not showering every day, but what do you know !
I've been led to believe the daily shower is a mostly American thing. Myself, I shower most days, but that's largely because I'm either in the gym or cycling most days. Sometimes, that means 2x showers, because I'll hit the gym in the AM and cycle in the PM.
Now there's a related interesting topic. If you shower once a day, do you do it in the morning or evening?
Sadly because of mental and physical illness, not as much as I should
Is this making a distinction betweeb bath and shower? If yes, I bathe almost never. If no, I bathe (shower) everyday. I came from a South Asian country and we normally have showers every day. I'm continuing to do the same in the Netherlands. Can people sleep without having a shower?
I don't mean this as flamebait but my pet theory is that showering and washing your hands is the 1800s version of wearing covid masks (except it stuck around as a permanent feature). It's more of a public safety thing you do for other people than for yourself and doing it twice a day is probably way excessive. It's probably closer to once every two days or less depending on how easily you generate body odor.
I think you should have social status in your theory. Having access to hot water daily in sufficient quantities to fully bath yourself was not something most could afford, so it definitely made a very obvious class distinction at some point.
I'm pretty sure this is why people used a lot of perfume at some point; if you can't bathe to remove the stinks, you can try to cover it with a stronger and (hopefully) more pleasant smell. But as much as I dislike body odor there is a lot to be said about strong perfumes. Some people find it reasonable to cast their odor of choices to a 2-3m perimeter around them; they might be worse because at least in their case we know for sure they had a choice...
Cold showers in hot weather actually makes you hotter, as your body raises its temperature when under the cold shower Whilst a hot shower makes your body try to lower its temperature to cool off
That seems over simplistic. Surely there must be some cross-over point between environmental temperature and shower temperature, so you could take a completely neutral shower that won't affect your temperature at all? Also, I doubt that you could get hypothermia by using close to boiling water in a shower.
I don't mean this as flamebait but my pet theory is that showering and washing your hands is the 1800s version of wearing covid masks (except it stuck around as a permanent feature). It's more of a public safety thing you do for other people than for yourself and doing it twice a day is probably way excessive. It's probably closer to once every two days or less depending on how easily you generate body odor.
On the positive side, water is abundant in tropical climates. My family of five showers 2-3 times a day, and the water bill comes down to ~$2/month.