Cleanliness can sometimes clean you out

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/01/2012 (5204 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SOME people, although perhaps not very many, think that body odour is a natural aphrodisiac, containing pheromones that make one irresistible to the opposite sex.

This has not been my experience on either side of the odour, which may help explain why most people, in Canada at least, wash on a daily basis.

This has not always been the case. There was a time when people didn’t bathe much. In fact, from the Middle Ages up until the beginning of the 19th century, almost everyone had matted hair, dirty skin and stunk like a skunk.

It was considered normal. Baths, in fact, were considered to be not just unhealthy — they sapped the body of its vital juices and made it vulnerable to disease — but sinful as well because of their sensual and sexual connotations.

This wasn’t true just of the homeless and the poor. Even the English aristocracy, as late as the 18th century, didn’t wash very often, if at all. Instead, they soaked themselves in perfumes and colognes so they would stink of something other than themselves. It’s hard to know which fragrance would have been worse.

Those days are, fortunately, gone. Or maybe not so fortunately.

I was sitting watching television the other night when my youngest daughter, Katie, came by and said, “Dad, I’m going to spend $1.75 of your money.”

What she meant is that she was going to take a shower. That is the price of the average hot shower, according to a recent study — cold showers are apparently cheaper because most of the cost comes from heating the water; cold showers would, as well, probably mean fewer children and lower costs all round.

My oldest daughter, Jen, had taken a shower earlier in the morning and I had take one after her. Their mother had taken one in the afternoon. At $1.75 a wash, that works out to $7 of my money that had been spent that day. And since everybody showers almost every day, by my calculations, it costs about $200 a month just to keep the family clean. Not long ago, we had seven people living in the house, which adds up to about $12 a day or, monthly — well, you can do the math. It’s much too distressing for me.

It’s no wonder they say cleanliness is next to godliness — after all, blessed are the poor.

…by Tom Oleson