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Title: A personal hygiene manifesto Author: Anon Date: 19-7-2021 Language: en Topics: personal hygiene
A personal hygiene manifesto
Something that instantly tells you something about a person, it is their
personal hygiene. Do they go along with the middle-class mainstream,
wearing freshly washed, totally clean clothes, their body fully
de-odorated? Or are they on the other end of the spectrum, having
rebelled against that class pressure by refusing to do anything at all
about their personal hygiene? Are they not necessarily rebels, but do
they work a job that cant help but get you dirty, placing them somewhere
in the middle? Or do they simply lack the resources that PH does take,
in any form whatsoever?
First of all, lets be clear about what personal hygiene is and is not.
Basically, it is the things you do that to keep you in a healthy
condition, and that keep your body and your personal belongings (mainly
clothes) from getting so dirty that it annoys you or other people.
Personal hygiene is important, but it is not a goal in itself: I have
much better things to do, so I do what is necessary, but not more, and
when other interest like the environment ask me to change something
about my PH routine in their interest, I change it. If you want to stuff
that is related to PH, for other reasons than PH itself, like taking a
bath for relaxation or making yourself more beautiful, be my guest! Just
know that for PH itself, actually very little is needed to achieve a
good result.
I think the middle-class mainstream PH routine that kids get brought up
with in the society where I'm from, is like almost anything heavily
influenced by certain types of christianity and capitalism. The
christian angle is that your PH (like almost anything) is a measure for
your personal morality, so the cleaner the better, no limits. As a
result of this christian influence, PH became a great area for
capitalists to sell people lots of consumables (products that run out
and thus need to be constantly replaced, making the seller more money).
So they promote the importance of PH with commercials for PH products
that supposedly help you become a better person, or actually man or
woman, as PH is also heavily gendered. Well, fuck all that.
At some point, I was forced to have a critical look at my own PH, and it
was not because of my anarchist politcs, as at this point I wasn't even
a conscious anarchist. As said, where Im from PH is actually about
morals and about selling products. And so, it is not actually about what
is best for you. I figured that out the hard way, because hot showers
and using soap, worsened my chronic skin condition. That was not the
promised effect of PH, right? But who cares? Not the shower gel company!
Also, I was annoyed by the amount of resources I spent on doing laundry:
lots of time, electricity and water, for laundering and ironing clothes
that were at most a little bit smelly around the armpits. Is this really
the most efficient way to do this? No, but again, who cares, as long the
laundry detergent company gets to sell their product!
So I sat down and had a critical look at my own PH routines, and how I
could change them so they actually achieved their goal, with the
following conditions:
including other animals and humans
around. What this state is actually comes down to differs between people
and cultures, so you should think about this for yourself.
As for me, I do not want to have an annoying smell that people notice
from a distance. A tiny bit of body odour, that another person would for
instance smells when you are having sex and they have their face close
to your body, I think is sexy and completely normal. Many peoples
personal hygiene has gone far, far beyond this: their bodies are
showered and rinsed with soap twice a day, and clothes are washed after
a single wearing. As a result, large amounts of time and money are spent
on this, disproportionally by women. These peoples bodies don't smell of
anything even if you were to put your nose in their armpits, although in
some cases the armpits start overcompensating and become more smelly
than they would otherwise. To me a person smelling of absolutely
nothing, is as weird and unattractive as that would be for a glass of
red wine.
On the other hand, some peoples critique of PH has gone way over the top
and is actually very crude. I'm not sure what they do or not do in terms
of PH, but they smell badly as if they just don't care, which can be
very annoying for other people to have to be around, because you
constantly smell them, even from a distance when you don't want to be
bothered by them. Annoying other people can sometimes be neccesary and
legitimate but when you can avoid it with little effort, I think the
right thing to do is to prevent that. To be clear, I'm talking here
about unwashed body odour on bodies and clothes. Sometimes some people
are a bit more noticeable because they are for instanceon a very
different diet, while they take excellent care of themselves, but to me
that is something completely different and not annoying.
So what did I do? I stopped taking showers. The first reason: water
itself, and more so hot water and water with soap in it, dries out your
skin. Most people can take it, their skin just compensates by producing
more fatty stuff. But when you have a skin condition, it is disastrous,
and makes you have to use all kind of creams to compensate. Then I
remembered what the person at the water company told us when we went
there on a trip with my primary school, in a talk about water saving:
you can clean yourself just as well at the sink as under the shower. So
every morning I fill the sink halfway with cold or lukewarm water and
wash my face, my armpits, and whatever else needs washing at that
moment, as much as it needs washing and not more. I mostly use just my
hands and sometimes a washcloth. The benefits of this: it dries out your
skin much less, you spend much less water and energy to heat that water,
it takes way less time, you have to dry yourself off much less because
your hair and large parts of your body stay dry, and you don't have to
clean the shower. And what you get for free is that you give your body a
close inspection each morning, so you discovery anything that needs
extra attention for instance from a doctor very early on, and you
actually spend more much more attention to yourself than you would by
just standing under the shower with your eyes closed. A minor detail I
also kind of like is that this is how my ancestors washed themselves for
ages. The shower is actually a very recent introduction, at least where
I live. And talking about hair: as said, my hair stays dry. That is
because I don't regularly wash it, sometimes for months. My hair is
doing totally fine with that. And no, it is not overly fatty, not by
anyones standard. That is probably because by not showering, I don't dry
out my scalp, and therefore my scalp has to produce very little fatty
stuff. If you constantly rinse of every last bit of fatty stuff with hot
water and soap, your scalp goes into emergency mode and starts producing
extra fat. The only one who benefits from that in the end is the shampoo
company.
I do take a bath every one or two months, just for relaxation, and then
I sometimes use a medical shampoo for my skin condition, but in total I
would say I use half a bottle of shampoo per year. The other products I
use are toothpaste, toothpicks, a facial cream (also just every once in
a while, about half a tube per year), and a regular bar of soap to clean
my hands or other bodyparts when only water is not enough. It saves a
lot of money over having to buy shampoo, shower gel and cream all the
time, and also makes you more flexible when travelling.
Just as important for PH as cleaning your body is cleaning your clothes.
Clothes can stock up body odours and get really smelly. But that is
easily prevented, without having to use a washing machine all the time.
I learned the trick from some tv series set in 19th century england. How
did they clean their clothes, without washing machines? The trick is
airing. Unless you do work that gets you espcially dirty, like building
or farm work, most of the times after a day your clothes are only a bit
smelly around the armpits or other odourous places. Just hang them out
to air on a clotheshanger for a while, ideally in a well ventilated
place, and these odours are gone. No washing and ironing needed, lots of
time, water, electricity and laundry detergent saved. For my underwear,
and for stains or smells that don't go out, I still have the washing
machine, as I am not a primitivist. It just gets used a lot less. As a
compromise, what you could do is buy a bunch of identical undershirts.
Then you just wash these together with your underwear, and they don't
need ironing if you hang-dry them. An added benefit: your clothes stay
in much better condition for much longer, as washing and drying machines
are not good for them.
Since I changed my PH routine, I have had zero negative remarks from
other people or co-workers, and no, didn't live in any form of social
isolation. So I can recommend anyone to get started and do the same.
Just see what works for you, and if you find it scary, try to ask
yourself: what are you afraid of, why are you doing so much more than is
actually necessary, and who is telling you to do so? Take care!