There's no need to shower every day – here's why
bbc.com
bbc.com
This is not why I shower every day. I show every day because I exercise (and sweat) every day, and because showering and being clean feels good.
Good for those who can skip it, but as a member of society, I prefer to stay clean.
Meanwhile I'm sweating like a hog in my tank top just existing. God forbid I move.
The only explanation that makes sense is that articles like TFA are written by those in the former group, so showering daily really is performative.
When I moved to a place with much warmer summers, the first year was awful. I could barely go outside without looking like I just came out of a sauna. Several years later, living without air conditioning and mostly walking everywhere, I was one of those people wearing pants and long sleeves in the peak of summer without sweating. 100F was just another warm day.
Since then I've moved to somewhere much cooler. I sweat profusely when it gets to a mere 75F. I just never trained my body to adapt.
To pivot back to the original topic about showering, people who shower every day strip off the body's natural oils that keep the skin moisturized. In response, the body produces more oils to maintain the integrity of the skin. And then some people want to shower more for that "clean" feeling and the problem gets worse.
In a sense, your body adapts to your daily showering, so when you abruptly stop, you're gonna smell.
In a similar sense, people with long hair are regularly advised to only wash their hair occasionally, because washing removes all the oils that their body generates, leading to dry hair that breaks easily. But people with short hair claim they have to wash their hair regularly because it "gets oily" when they stop.
I've lived in hot places my whole life from Texas to Mexico to the beach, the latter two I never even had A/C for 10+ years. Clearly some people are like me and some people aren't and it has nothing to do with acclimation.
Meanwhile my girlfriend who barely sweats certainly didn't train for it, come on. Though she immediately overheats in the sauna which is the only time I feel some satisfaction on the matter.
Brushing teeth, masturbating or just plain "enjoying warmth" is quite wasteful.
Funfact: In ye olden days peasants were cleaner than nobility. Because they got dirty every day and had to wash (with cold water in a stream). Nobility never got dirty and baths were cumbersome luxuries inside a palace (takes a lot of buckets to fill a bath).
This got so bad that the french had to invent perfume to make Versaille livable.
> Why are we washing? Mostly because we're afraid somebody else will tell us that we're smelling
I'm actually much more concerned about people thinking I smell bad but not telling me. Which has a tremendous social and romantic cost. And is also, to my mind, plain rude. Being part of society still means sharing physical spaces with other people a lot of the time. The least I can do is make sure I don't stink when doing so.
> Some experts believe that everyday showering is based more on a 'social contract' than actual need.
Social contracts are good, actually.
A couple years ago, my wife and I thru-hiked the Long Trail and got one (1) shower in 20 days. It was pretty rough despite availing ourselves of every opportunity to get a dip in a stream or pond (no soap). A day or two removed from a shower, we both felt pretty scuzzy. Everything got greasy and gross.
For context, we both thru-hiked the AT before we met; we are used to going without showers for days at a stretch. 10 was too many in the early summer humidity.
After a month or two, the smell is pretty well settled into everything. Nothing really gets clean until it's had three or four trips through the wash. It should be added that synthetic fabrics stink differently from natural ones too. Don't know why, but it's not a stink most folks are accustomed to.
Even if you do as little as 30 min of elliptical trainer per day as I do atm, not showering is completely out of the question.
There's also a hell of a lot of people who swear up and down that they don't need to shower everyday and aren't greasy or smelly and are very, very wrong.
Animals that are on the top of the food chain, like us, have no pressure to select for less body odor, contrary to defenseless preys or pets bred to be hypoallergenic.
Humans, like most great apes, smell naturally.
If I wear one of the latter for a workout, if I don’t take a shower immediately, then I at least change into a cotton or wool shirt afterward.
Edit: typo
A message I _would_ like to see more of though, is that there isn't an everyday reason to wash your hair more than once a week. In fact, it's bad for your scalp.
Work from home = twice a weeks seems good
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