And then the human race died from exposure to day old clothes...

[annwfyn]

This is a ramble, as Sally's LJ entries often are.

Yesterday I was bimbling about the internet, and I came across this massive piece of TMI about personal hygiene. In this entry there is an extended discussion on whether it is unhygienic to go to the toilet at 'one's time of the month' without changing one's tampon (because urine may get on the tampon string', and it then deviates at one point into whether it's icky to wear a bra more than once without washing it.

I'm not particularly going to get into the hygiene debate, but one thing that did occur to me was how terribly spoiled most western people have become in the last fifty years. We have this notion of what is acceptable personal hygiene which is entirely based on:

1) lots of labour saving devices being available to us. I am entirely sure that the 'it's gross to wear a bra two days running' crowd would not be saying that if they had a big tub of water in the kitchen and a scrubbing board.

2) an assumption that it's normal to have a lot of disposable sanitary products which are cheap and can be just thrown away. Again - this whole tampon thing is based on the assumption that tampons are easy to buy, and you'll be changing them over a flushable toilet, I'd guess.

3) the environment not having fallen over just yet. As far as I'm aware, nappies, tampons etc are really quite bad for the environment and I'm sure upping your usage of them beyond the standard 'one per X hours' isn't going to be any better.

4) access to a lot of chemicals such as aerosol cans, which let us maintain this level of finickiness about sweat, for example. We douse ourselves in chemicals daily in order to maintain these artificial collections of scents and sterility and call that 'clean'.

I'm not saying this is bad. At the end of the day, I wash my hair every couple of days, wear deodorant etc. I do buy into this too, but it is odd realising how much we've created this world in which that is the norm, when I don't think it has been for most of human history. I also wonder to what extent it is as important as we think it is.

The human race has survived wearing the same clothes for more than a day without washing them. It doesn't actually increase our chances of dying from dysentry and I'm fairly sure that no one has ever found themselves less capable of functioning if they do wear the same pants for two days running. I'm also pondering how this exaggerated notion of what basic cleanliness is has tied into the horrible determination to keep consuming, rather like a swarm of locusts, that seems to have befallen our society. We want more energy, more food that we really need, more resources than are reasonable. We are running through fossil fuels at a rate of knots because we really need to keep the endless gadgets and electricity running and running. And why?

Apparently because it's really gross to wear the same bra two days running.

Oh, in other news, I managed to break my glasses last night. As I am currently without contact lenses, due to my last set of soft lenses doing something horrible to my eyes and nearly killing me, this means I'm rather blind at the moment. I'm heading up to the optician's in a bit in the hope that they can provide me with something that I can wear which will get me into college, but otherwise I may be slightly screwed.

So, if I'm not about hugely or if I seem strangely detached from the world when you do see me, it may be blindness.

Comments

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I hear your rant about notions of 'hygiene'.

To be honest, I largely ignore current notions of cleanliness. I only have a proper bath and wash my hair once a week (though I do a fairly thorough wash at the sink every day), and I wear the same bra two days running.

And I hope my friends would tell me if the stench became intolerable...

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

Anyone who wants to give me a grant for bra purchasing can then insist on daily changing. Sure, if the weather is super hot and sticky, I might choose to do so, but my size changes so often that I rarely have more than a couple of well-fitting bras, so 'what bra to wear' is primarally governed by the colour of the top I'm wearing that day (or vice versa, if bras are going through laundry).

I spent £76 on bras last month - one black, one white, one sports bra - since at 34G/34FF, there's no way in hell I'm getting on an exercise machine without one. Of course, regular exercise will no doubt change my bra size again...

Not changing socks & knickers on a daily basis, on the other hand, IS skanky. Feet get sweaty - and other bits, well, nuf said really...

(Oh, and I'm wincing at the tampon thing - they get changed when they require it, and if you've got a mental squick about that, use smaller ones so they *are* ready to change more often! Remove them prematurely all the time and you're asking for extreme soreness & probably increasing your likelyhood of thrush or something)

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

But she had to change them every time! Otherwise she got pee on her tampon!

Which is why she was being mocked. Some people are crazy.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

What scared me was how many people then started saying "but I change my tampon every time I go to the loo".

THE CRAZY WAS NOT ALONE!

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

No, I know. That scared me too. Of course, if they only go to the loo 3 times a day (like one girl who said that if she needs to go to the loo, it's usually time to change it as well), then that's fair.

If they go more? CRAZY PEOPLE TALKING. What you should remember is that about 1/3 of s_f joined because they were featured. Some of them appear sane most of the time, but every now and then you can just see the crazy coming through. :-)

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Yeah...I then wondered how many were secretly camels.

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

Um. Lots? I think several, at least. There was a wonderful bit of extra drama on the other comm, as one of the men decided to tell us all that not changing your bra daily was yuck because it was in your armpit. Cue much "have you ever seen a woman in a bra?/You are very wrong" catcalling, and him copypasting "it's nice to know you can see bacteria" to almost every comment. SO ODD.

[melsner.livejournal.com]

I would totally change my tampon every time I went to the loo.

I think I fall heavily under the crazy neurotics who have to shower and change regularly, brush teeth after every meal and do an awful lot of laundry. And handwashing. a lot of handwashing.

Mind you, after I've been camping for a few days, I start thinking, "sure, the meat fell on the ground, but the ants haven't gotten to it yet. it's still good."

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell the 'you change your underwear and socks every day' thing is fairly standard. What's interesting to me is that it's quite a modern standard tho. I remember my mother telling me (years ago) that when she was a child in the early 1950s, she was expected to change her knickers every week, I think.

Of course, that was as a child, and pre-pubescent girls are going to produce less ick than grown women. I may also, of course, be misremembering horribly, but I think that the old Victorian saying of 'always wear clean knickers when you go on a train, in case there is an accident' also carries with it the definite assumption that under normal conditions you may well not be wearing clean underwear. And it's interesting how drastically things have changed.

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

If I don't change my socks every day my feet start to blister. It's atsonishing how fast they fill up with skin cells and dust mites.

[castorlion.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Socks and pants get changed daily, and I change bras as often as I feel the need to, rather than sticking to a strict daily schedule.

The rest of my attire entirely depends on a) what state they are in, b) how they smell, and c) how sweaty I got whilst wearing them the day before.

I change Tshirts far more often than I change trousers.

[pmp.livejournal.com]

I suspect, and this is based on sterotypes here, that you're asking the entirely wrong set of people via your LJ about hygine :)


That said, to my mind, being clean is about being comfortable, both for yourself and within a social environment. Our upbringing is such that we are told to equate dirty with bad and thus we wont' feel comfortable when we are unclean.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

As far as I'm concerned, underwear is wearable right up until the point where you have to break the crust on them like a creme brule.

[quisalan.livejournal.com]

I was going to make some great, erudite comment on this entry, but you waylaid me with ick.

I'm not sure whether to curse or congratulate you ;)

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I'm special like that - had you not noticed?

[twisted-times.livejournal.com]

I tend to wash my hair every day or two on the outside, but that's because my hair gets greasy really quickly; it tends to look rather bad by day two and leaving it for three days is just gross for me.

Personally, I hardly ever bother with deodorant, unless it's very hot and muggy weather. Even then, I don't use a lot of it, as natural and fresh sweat tends to smell a lot better than most stuff you get out of a can. What smells bad is stale sweat which just reeks. If you're whiffing of eau de stale sweatyness, you really do need to take a bath/shower.

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

To be fair, a_d, who was the main person shrieking at the wearing bras more than one day, did state later on the other s_f comm that she wasn't actually being that serious about it, she didn't think we were all vile and it wasn't actually serious business. It's just that she only wears them once.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

*nods*

I wasn't actually that hideously offended by the entire entry. It just struck me as random and odd and got me thinking about the weird way times have changed.

I've also got the slightly odd perspective of actually having lived in a country without mod cons. When I was in Nepal I got to wash under a cold pump in the middle of the school playground if I wanted to wash, and laundry happened once a month in a giant washday.

I actually gave up wearing knickers whilst I was there (I was wearing a floor length sari, so I felt it safe to assume no one would be sneaking any peeks) and mostly just washed the essential areas in a bowl of water once per day. To wash properly I had to hoik my petticoat up to my armpits and wash in that, in public, or I had to go into Kathmandu and book into a youth hostel for a night to get a cold shower there.

It gave me a different perspective on life.

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

I imagine that would. See, this is why I'd love to go to these places, but would only actually stay in hotels. I fully admit that I start to twitch if I go a day without showering, even if all I'm doing is lying around the house. I have some kind of mental ick about it, I know it's almost OCD, I don't care. I must shower.

I suspect it's a reaction to when I was much bigger and had many more sweat problems. Whilst the issues are no longer relevant, I remain OCD about showering. And washing my hair.

[quisalan.livejournal.com]

*beam*

Nice icon, btw :)

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Re health - actually, not changing underwear daily (and more frequently under some circumstances, like if you've been exercising) does increase your chances of aquiring various illnesses, particularly a wide variety of entertaining fungal things.

[sea-cucumber.livejournal.com]

I have a bath two or three times a week, and change my top half underwear and trousers after when I have a bath. Pants, socks and T-shirts I change every day though!
I'm probably very unclean :)

[castorlion.livejournal.com]

I have a bath two or three times a week, and change my top half underwear and trousers after when I have a bath

Well, yeah - they're probably quite wet by the time you've finished washing. :-)

[sea-cucumber.livejournal.com]

Exactly! :) :) :P

[childofcrow.livejournal.com]

Ouch! Tampons come out when they are ready! How chaffed is that person?


I wear my bra more than once before washing it and often go without washing jeans for a week or so. Unless it smells/looks dirty, why should I wash something that's only been on my body a few hours?

People wonder why they get so sick - they over anti-bacterialize.

[cage-this.livejournal.com]

I couldn't possibly -afford- to not wear my bra more than one day in a row! I only have 3! Poor university students cannot afford such luxuries as switching bras every 24 hours, haha.

I make a habit of changing my undies daily, but I shower every three days or so (sooner if my hair has gotten particularly greasy). During the summer months, I change clothes far more often than in the winter, just because shirts and the like tend to get sweatier and are in need of a wash sooner. But pants? I can go a week switching between two pairs of jeans, maybe longer if they aren't warped from falling asleep in them lol.

I seriously think that this is why so many children are born with allergies though. All this craziness involving antibacterial soaps and such, over cleanliness. I wonder how many people know that there are essential bacterias on their body that they are killing off, making room for infections and sickness.

[melsner.livejournal.com]

By and by, your Subject Line evokes thoughts of one of the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker books where an entire planetary population died because they banished the people who sanitized their phones.