Amused
Elite Member
- Apr 14, 2001
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Originally posted by: dullard
Showering too much is bad for your skin. Washing your hair too much is bad for your hair.
~1000 years ago, you rarely bathed.
~500 years ago, you bathed once a year.
~50 years ago, you bathed once a week.
~25 years ago, you bathed several times a week.
~20 years ago, you bathed daily.
Now: "You didn't bathe in the last 5 minutes! Ewww! Gross. Not showering every 3 minutes is bad for you."
You have to cut it off at some point. I think every other day or every third day is about right for most people. Of course, if you sweat or get dirty, then wash regardless of the amount of time from your last shower.
If you bathe/wash your hair daily, you train your skin and scalp to constantly be oily since you have to keep replenishing what you washed away. But if you do it less often, you'll be far less oily as your skin and scalp learn that they don't need to produce much oil. From that point of view, you may be "dirtier" by doing it daily than by doing it every other day.
Your time-line is fubared.
Daily bathing came into vogue at the turn of the century.
People took daily showers/baths 25 and 50 years ago.
They also did during Roman times.
Regular bathing fell out of favor because of the Christian religion and it's equating nakedness and bathing with sin. It lasted that way from the fall of the Roman empire until the turn of the 20th century.
Thankfully, germ theory was discovered and that, plus some creative marketing by soap companies ("cleanliness is next to godliness" was an advertising campaign) brought back the practice of regular bathing.
It took Europe quite some time to catch up with the US, though and regular bathing is far newer in Europe than it is here. Probably because of the presence of the Catholic Church there.