✩
FEATURE
---
LET'S TALK
Bathing habits and the idea of "dirty"and "clean vary throughout history and from person to person
// FRANCESCA CHAMBERS
Cleaning flops: Though the idea of snaring public showers halls scares some off from showering as regularly as they would normally, experts say the showers are more or less clean.
Photo illustration by Jerry Wang
At least three times a day, Najibullah Wardak, Wichita senior, takes a shower. He washes his hands each time he enters his house and every time he touches his shoes.
"I just think that's good, clean habits." he savs.
When questioned about their bathing habits in e-mails and personal interviews, about 50 KU students said they bathe once a day for seven to 10 minutes. But in her book Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality, Elizabeth Shove says what one person sees is normal bathing habits, another person often does not. Like hairstyles and clothing, bathing is a fashion statement that has changed throughout time and differs among contemporary societies.
Today, bathing is an individual experience in the United States and is an activity used for both hygienic and stress-relieving purposes. This was not always the case, though.
Although the idea of a group of males and females bathing together, naked, for fun, brings to mind the word "orgy" these days, in ancient Greece and Rome, communal bathing was a non-sexual, social activity. Even baths in private homes in ancient Rome were clearly designed to accommodate more than one person, says Garret G. Fagan in his book, Bathing in Public in the Roman World.
Then, for more than a century, bathing went out of style completely. People often survived their entire lives without washing. When the Roman Empire crumbled, so did their system of bathing. In her book The Dirt on Clean, Katherine Ashenburg says the Germanic tribes that conquered Rome preferred to wash in streams. Later, in the Middle Ages, people washed only their hands — a necessity considering they were still eating food off of them. Fagan attributes the decline of bathing during this time to the spread of Christianity and the religion's disapproval of nudity.
Regular and public bathing customs resurfaced in Western Europe after the Crusades. The religion that had once discredited bathing brought it back to popularity in the form of Turkish baths. The most lavish of these baths resembled high-class parties — without the clothes. Musicians performed, guests gorged themselves on fruit and women wore elaborate make-up, jewelry and headdresses, all in the baths, Ashenburg writes.
At first, the prostitution that sprang up in and around the public baths at the end of the Middle Ages was ignored. However, in 1538, bathhouses were prohibited in France as rumors grew that women could become pregnant and infected with sexually transmitted diseases by swimming in the water. Ashenburg writes.
The spread of the plague led to the decline of bathing yet again, Shove says in her book. Medical experts in the 16th century led the public to believe that dirt-filled pores decreased the ability of the plague to enter the body.
Bathing re-emerged in the late 1800s because of the successful creation and marketing of soap, Ashenburg says, and flourished with the advent of modern plumbing, which poured hot water over the body for extended periods of time with a simple touch of the hand.
Bathing was a symbol of a person's status in society, both economically and racially, during the Industrial Revolution. Janice Boddy, a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto, says in the book Dirt, Undress and Difference that advertisers used cartoons of monkeys to portray those who didn't bathe and referred to the unwashed as "jungle people."
If bathing in the 1900s was a mark of the upper-class society, today it is a mark of belonging to society, period, Shove says in her book. Additionally, she says bathing has evolved into an activity about comfort and self-indulgence, with a sense of self emphasis on the type of soap or "body wash" one uses.
THE DORM SHOWERS — IT'S WHAT YOU CAN'T SEE THAT COULD HURT YOU
Although outdoor, mixed-sex, nude baths have lost their flavor, remnants of the practice have subtly persisted in our communities.
At the University, women and men use separate bathing facilities in the dormitories, but same-sex group bathing is still acceptable. Students don't necessarily enjoy showering in close proximity with strangers, though. Not to mention, the dormitory showers are far from the high-roller saunas promoted in the Middle Ages.
"They are just dirty, and some of them are moldy," says Felicia Powell, a Lee's Summit, Mo., senior who lived in McCollum Hall her freshman year. "Then there are strands of people's hair, and it's just gross, even though they're cleaned daily."
SHOWERING AROUND THE WORLD
LAVEZ-VOUS UN CORPS CHAQUE JOUR?
About 51 percent of French women and 55 percent of French men do not shower or bathe every day, Katherine Ashenburg says in her book, *The Dirt on Clean*.
"The French seem to have a perverse national pride in their own unconcern about cleanliness," she writes.
But that's just not true, says Olivia Prouvost-Allen, Lilles, France, graduate student. Prouvost-Allen says people have a lot of misconceptions about French hygiene. She is often asked if she shaves and showers regularly, she says, and the answer is yes. All her friends bathe every day, too. The only people in France who do not are the people in their 60s and 70s, who she says are still not used to the idea of having indoor plumbing and unlimited access to water.
DAILY SHOWERS ARE A PRIVILEGE
Ian Cummings, Overland Park graduate student, has spent the last few years living in Honduras and Columbia, where the temperature of the water is extremely unpredictable, he says.
"Where I am now, the water usually starts out piping hot and then unpredictably turns ice cold," he says. "This means that my showers have frequently become wild, frantic affairs. It is impossible to become accustomed to the cold water when it refuses to appear predictably."
In Honduras, not only is water temperature spotty, so is the availability of water. Cummings says sometimes he had to take his baths in a concrete water tank — a pila — behind his house The pila was used as an all-purpose water source, he says, excluding drinking out of.
Whenever he visits the United States now, Cummings says he takes long, hot, wasteful showers.
LOOKING FOR A NEW WAY TO EXFOLIATE? TRY TREE BARK
In Slavic culture, it was once customary to bathe after every sexual encounter, says Eve Levin, professor of history. Bathing itself was a non-sexual activity, though, Levin says. Like Europeans of the time, Russians bathed in mixed-sex bathhouses that were used solely for the purposes of becoming clean and patrons used birch twigs for exfoliating. Levin, author of Sex and Society in the World of Orthodox Slavs 900-1700, says traditional bathhouses in Russia still offer the tree bark to customers today.
09 10
24
09
.