This feels connected somehow to the Linda Hirshman arguments. Like, on top of the primary issues being discussed in those arguments, there was an emotional undercurrent where some people felt that women were being shoehorned (voluntarily, but under circumstantial pressure) into a role that had been pretty thoroughly despised in the recent past, and others felt as though the first group were enforcing the characterization of that role as worthy of being despised (I'm not sure why, but 'despicable' doesn't work in that sentence).
There. Any sentence with LH in it counts as trolling, right?
But a leading sociologist of the day warned that a helpful father might be suspected of "having a little too much fat on the inner thigh."
"Too much fat on the inner thigh" is my new favorite expression.
Ha. After just having read the first sentence, I thought "Hey, LB's giving trolling a go!"
Does anyone understand the connotation there? I mean, from context it clearly means effeminate or something, but why fat inner thighs?
I actually read that and went straight to the Iliad -- isn't that what you burn for a sacrifice, the fat from the thighs? Not that it makes any sense, and I haven't read Homer for fifteen years or so which means that I'm probably wrong in detail.
I have no idea what it means, but I've never been happier about my spindle legs.
4: No, that's right. One burns "rich thigh pieces" or whatever it is for the gods to sniff. But I think your first instinct is correct -- somehow this means "effeminate" -- maybe to do with curvy, succulent lady flesh?
I just took it to mean 'womanly' because it's a distinctively female place to store fat.
4: No idea, not even the whiff of one. The very best I could come up with is maybe it's something to do with homosexual intercrural sex, but that's a hell of a stretch.
Oh man, intercrural outdoes my recent favorite, interurban, for Rural Jurer unpronouncability.
I just took it to mean 'womanly' because it's a distinctively female place to store fat.
Real men store fat on the outside of a bowl filled with ice.
Sheesh you guys. I've got one other article that's possibly better trollbait, but I honestly don't see anyone being genuinely stupid enough to take the bait. Should I trot it out? Or is it too soon?
At the Norman Rockwell photos exhibit I saw a Saturday Evening Post (8/30/1947
) with the following headline:
"Should Husbands be Babysitters? A Debate."
Were women driven like workhorses more in 50s than in previous decades?
I suspect that the timing of the The Feminine Mystique and the resulting wave of feminism had more to do with rising expectations caused by economic growth than an actual decline in working conditions for women. Basically, everyone was seeing a lot more luxury, but the men were hogging it all.
Would I have had access to valium in previous decades?
Yeah, I'm not certain that driven like workhorses is exactly the right characterization for how middle class women not working for pay were treated -- they were certainly doing more household labor than anyone does now, but I'd assume much less than women were doing back before WW II.
13.2: Related possibliities -- technology made keeping a house less time-consuming, so women had more time to be bored and to complain.
Possibly, also there were more highly educated women.
Actually, I think that the specific narrative I'm thinking of says that everyone was able to work less outside the home for the same standard of living because of the economic boom, and society responded by inventing more work for women to do at home.
I also recall an unrelated narrative about mild opium teas being marketed to women up through prohibition. In fact, these women's teas were especially popular with temperance advocates. So there's your valium right there.
I'm not sure that my grandma in the California suburbs worked harder than my great-grandma did on the farm in Utah. (She raised 13 children, and chickens.)
1, 16, 19: Are you paying attention, LB?
Typical of the invective against homemakers in the 1950s and 1960s was a 1957 best seller, "The Crack in the Picture Window," which described suburban America as a "matriarchal society," with the average husband "a woman-bossed, inadequate, money-terrified neuter" and the average wife a "nagging slob."
I've mentioned here before a fascinating collection called Women's Magazines 1940-1960: Gender Roles and the Popular Press, which reproduces, among other things, articles about "momism."
One piece of the puzzle: some of the shift to depicting stay-at-home mothers as inadequate was a function of advertising, really getting up steam at that time: advertisers began to press the notion that women must be ever-neat and pretty, not a hair out of place, keeping a house free of clutter or distress, a 'perfect gal', the dream gal he married, not the frumpy, harried woman you've turned out to be ... gals.
Part of what we now recognize as standard psychological manipulation on the part of the advertising industry: push the narrative that your target audience is inadequate in some way, in order to introduce the notion that this product, or this one!, will solve your problems. Hence hairspray, cleaning solutions, stockings, cosmetics, even shampoo (which was introduced to a wide audience in its modern version later than you'd think).
I think there are (at least) two separate issues here: the amount of work people had to do around the house and societal expectations for how much work housewives should be doing. The former definitely declined massively in the period between 1900 and 1950 due to electrification and other technological innovations, while the latter probably fluctuated from decade to decade as social norms and economic conditions changed.
even shampoo (which was introduced to a wide audience in its modern version later than you'd think).
I remember being deeply shocked when I told my grandma we were out of shampoo and she told me to use the bar soap. I assumed she'd either say I could wait until mom and dad got home before I washed me hair or she'd go to the store for shampoo.
I don't actually know what happens if you wash your hair with bar soap. I have a vague belief that it would tangle instantly into inextricable knots, but I'm not sure why I think that.
Were women driven like workhorses more in 50s than in previous decades?
I suspect that the timing of the The Feminine Mystique and the resulting wave of feminism had more to do with rising expectations caused by economic growth than an actual decline in working conditions for women. Basically, everyone was seeing a lot more luxury, but the men were hogging it all.
and
Yeah, I'm not certain that driven like workhorses is exactly the right characterization for how middle class women not working for pay were treated -- they were certainly doing more household labor than anyone does now, but I'd assume much less than women were doing back before WW II.
These strike me as both sort of right, but missing the heart of it. Generalizing broadly, the historic arch was from (i) an agrarian society in which everyone worked like mules to (ii) an early industrial society in which men went to factories and worked like mules while women stayed home and worked like mules to (iii) rising living standards over time lessening the mule-work that everyone did, although economic growth and increased labor rights, etc. decreased the men's mule-work vastly more than new labor saving home applicances decreased the women's mule-work. This basically culminated in the 1950/60s. Since then, more women have said "to hell with this". But a lot of men liked that unequal division of labor, so they idealize the period, so much that it's believed to be right and just and even natural, and as such persists (to a lesser but still very real extent) today.
I don't remember what happened to my hair, so I suppose nothing much.
17: Actually, I think that the specific narrative I'm thinking of says that everyone was able to work less outside the home for the same standard of living because of the economic boom, and society responded by inventing more work for women to do at home.
I think this is roughly right; and the economic boom brought with it technological innovations in the form of the clothes washer (and dryer, which came a bit later, if I remember correctly), the dishwasher, the vacuum cleaner, and so on.
I remember being deeply shocked when I told my grandma we were out of shampoo and she told me to use the bar soap.
I am deeply shocked that there are people who haven't ever used soap as shampoo. No your hair doesn't go into a tangled mess, yes it's not as good as shampoo.
On the OP, my impression is that among upper middle class educated people in the big coastal metropolises, working at a professional type job carries higher social status than being a stay at home mom.
But a lot of men liked that unequal division of labor, so they idealize the period, so much that it's believed to be right and just and even natural, and as such persists (to a lesser but still very real extent) today.
This seems right, plus at this point that period is just long enough ago to count as "the good old days" for a lot of people and thereby tap into a more general sense of nostalgia.
I've often washed my hair with bar soap when shampoo hasn't been readily available. It works fine.
Before WWII middle class moms generally had full time help, which cut down on the amount of work.
I don't actually know what happens if you wash your hair with bar soap.
It gets clean, IME.
If you have a scalp condition that benefits from stuff they put in shampoo, then that goes on hold for a bit, but otherwise, it makes no difference. Shampoo is just dilute detergent with some trace chemicals added. If you have very sensitive skin bar soap is probably better.
Retrieving the reference to the Women's Magazines collection from a previous discussion here on the same topic.
There's a link there to a (relatively short) 1945 article in Ladies' Home Journal: "Are American Moms a Menace?"
Fascinating!
Is there anyone here who's ever washed their hair with bar soap when the hair was more than three inches long?
Just don't use laundry soap.
Your hair will come out white.
I'm with LB. My hair would go rat's nest instantaneously.
36 I did back when I had long hair.
36. I've used it quite happily when my hair was a couple of feet long. It's a bit of work, but you end up with clean hair.
Before WWII middle class moms generally had full time help, which cut down on the amount of work.
Or at least shifted it down the class (and, in many parts of the US, racial) hierarchy.
I've used bar soap for my hair on many occasions, although I've never had really really long hair. Of course, I am losing my hair, although unlike Moby, I do remember what happened to it, mostly.
curvy, succulent lady flesh?
I love the sound of that phrase. Now I just need to figure out how to incorporate it into my next divorce complaint.
Divorce complaint or fanfic. Whichever.
I am guessing that the pay is significant better for the complaint. Plus, I wouldnt have to pay royalties to oudemia. Right, Halford?
I used to wash my hair with bar soap all the time.
I'm confused about why you think it would tangle, exactly?
Yes, but the question of the paradox of declining female happiness since the 1970s still remains.
Some interesting things in that paper: big drops in marital satisfaction, larger for women than men. Big increases in life satisfaction for stay-at-home spouses since the 1970s (easy to explain if you think it is now a voluntary luxury).
Cheap shampoo makes my hair tangle easily. Anything with a faintly sticky residue, which soap could have, is going to tangle the hell out of hair.
Is there anyone here who's ever washed their hair with bar soap when the hair was more than three inches long?
Yes, I had 5 to 6 inch long hair for a long stretch of my life and used only bar soap. Was fine. But I have pretty oily hair by nature.
Also I think nowadays, highly religious people who report fantastic life satisfaction no matter their objective situation are overrepresented among the stay-at-home wives who aren't doing it as a voluntary luxury.
Is there anyone here who's ever washed their hair with bar soap when the hair was more than three inches long?
Depending on what kind of bar soap you use, it can be a lot harder to get fully rinsed out than shampoo.
52: And even among stay-at-home mothers who don't think of it as a voluntary luxury, I think there's likely to be a strong representation of women who think that staying at home is emotionally the best choice for their family as a whole, and so who are committed to thinking of themselves as happy as part of the reason for their choice to stay home. Someone working for money can dislike their job without making the endeavor pointless and counterproductive, but it's a little trickier for someone choosing to stay-at-home-parent.
If I use bar soap, my hair feels like straw.
53 is correct, and like Annelid I have naturally oily hair so that minimized the frizziness that might result for those with dry hair.
I really wish the author of this op-ed would credit Joanne Meyerowitz who actually came up with most of the theorizing for this idea. Anyone interested in where she heavily borrowed her ideas from should read this: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2080212
58: JSTOR is less than perfect, but it saved me so much time that I don't care.
You'd be surprised how much less time it would save you if you didn't work for an institution that has a subscription.
Lauren, that looks like an interesting paper, but not everyone here has JSTOR access.
"A little too much fat on the inner thigh" has got to be a euphemism for "You have a vagina, you big girl." I think it's supposed evoke the fatty tissues of the vulva.
60: I'm guessing that without JSTOR, my life would be harder and yours no easier. Unless you live for spite.
That's not fair, Moby. It's just that the more you suffer, the funnier you are, so JSTOR indirectly lowers my quality of life.
hmm, sorry. well you can read some of it in the book she edited, Not June Cleaver: women and gender in postwar America, 1945-1960.
Her essay--and the book in general--does much of the work that Stephanie Coontz draws on, and I've been surprised that she hasn't paid her intellectual dues...
Dish soap. If, like most people, you use shampoo to get your hair to be less oily, then correct substitute if you are out of shampoo is dish soap, not bar soap. A friend of mine once explained why this was, but I forget the exact reason. I think it had something to do with this: Commonly, "detergent" refers to alkylbenzenesulfonates, a family of compounds that are similar to soap but are less affected by hard water.
65: Thanks. I'm interested in the topic.
7 is both correct and obvious, and all these other suggestions are insane.
You're dead sure it's not a coded reference to Homeric Greek sacrifices?
I mean, I'm sure you're right, but I still wouldn't have gone to the inner thigh for a place where women put on weight more than men. Outer thigh/saddlebags are much more gendered, aren't they?
Looking for that phrase and I've only really found other references to Coontz's article, but it did turn up a longer version of the OpEd which she gave as a talk last November.
I think it's supposed to evoke the mound of Venus, which is gender-specific in a way that saddlebags are not.
70: The "fat thigh pieces" of Homer aren't so specific as "inner thighs," which pretty much invariably read as sexual -- if you aren't kidding, which you probably are.
I am kidding. Genuinely bemused by the turn of phrase, but not seriously thinking that the writer had visions of tripods dancing in his head.
bemused by the turn of phrase
Eh, it's no weirder than "a little light in the loafers".
Momism is really fascinating (even if Coontz should do a much better job of citation and write a less clumsy tacked on conclusion). The first time I encountered it (in a seminar on US Cold War history) it seemed like garden variety misogyny with some pop-Freudian castrating mother stuff stuck on top. But one you know to look for it, you start seeing it everywhere in books and movie from the late 1940s and 1950s in a way that's simply not as prevalent or specific at other times. (Manchurian Candidate: Lady Macbeth recast as foreign agent/overbearing mother plus hypnosis; Psycho: castrating mother kills from beyond the grave).
Which I've always found a little amusing as well.
If, like most people, you use shampoo to get your hair to be less oily...
Isn't that the whole theory behind the "100 strokes of the brush" per day? You would eventually redistribute the oil from the scalp to the dry ends of the hair.
Coontz has been writing along these lines since 1992, hasn't she?
These primary sources are really shocking. I thought the word "mom" wasn't used until 40 years ago at the earliest.
79: So it would seem. She could certainly have folded passing acknowledgement of the directly relevant work of other scholars into this piece, but, yeah, in terms of Lauren's objection, it's not like this isn't her field.
Sorry, I meant to link to her CV.
Parsons and Bales, 1956: "inner side of his thigh".
83: Talcott Parsons, nice find. Apparently discussed as part of his instrumental-expressive theory:
The instrumental-expressive theory is another one of Parsons' well known theories. Parsons explained how normally, the male in the family has the role of taking care of the instrumental tasks. Such tasks include providing for the family, being responsible for supporting his wife and children, be the official head of the family and must hold a job. Furthermore, the male of the family (usually the father), must carry out the primary function of bringing income into the house of being the "breadwinner." Women, Parsons rationalized, manage the role of taking care of the expressive tasks in the household. These tasks consisted mainly of providing emotional support for the family, nurturing the family, and taking care of other household duties. Also, the woman (usually the mother) only holds a job before she has to take on child caring responsibilities; and even if she does work, the job holds a lower position than that of the male. Moreover, as described in Family, Socialization and Interaction Process, "...the warm, giving 'Mom' stands in contrast to the 'capable,' 'competent,' 'go-getting' male" (Parsons and Bales 1955). The book goes further to state that, "The more expressive type of male, as a matter of fact, is regarded as 'effeminate,' and has too much fat on the inner side of his thigh" (ibid).
76, 80: Yeah. It strikes me that my own mother, born in 1938, would have been pretty well steeped in this kind of rhetoric by the time I was born, but it was more apparent in my father (a military man to boot): he felt a strong need to cast himself as provider, masculine role model. It affected my brother more than me in the end, as the whole he-man schtick really wasn't my brother's style, though my dad tried to shoe-horn him into it; my mother took a lot of the 'blame' on herself when my brother turned out to be gay. Boo.
An ex-roommate of mine was doing her doctoral work on the popularization of Freudian thinking in American pop culture -- film, chiefly. Watching films from that era with her was educational.
26
... rising living standards over time lessening the mule-work that everyone did, although economic growth and increased labor rights, etc. decreased the men's mule-work vastly more than new labor saving home applicances decreased the women's mule-work. This basically culminated in the 1950/60s. Since then, more women have said "to hell with this". But a lot of men liked that unequal division of labor, so they idealize the period, so much that it's believed to be right and just and even natural, and as such persists (to a lesser but still very real extent) today.
This isn't consistent with my childhood memories, I don't think my stay at home mother worked harder than my father.
re: 86
I don't think -- being glib -- the problem with being a 50s-style stay at home mom was that necessarily it was particularly hard work, but that it was, for a lot of people, something they didn't want to do (or wanted to do on different terms), but where society made the pursuit of other options much more difficult than it was for men. One doesn't have to be poorly off in some absolute sense to be conscious of, and angered by, an obvious inequity.
Housework needn't be that time consuming -- the rampant lies told about it in surveys are a perennial source of annoyance for me -- but if you are the one doing all of it (and most of the childcare), and that's basically all you do, then that could rankle, no?
FWIW, I've been shampoo- and soap-we for a couple months now, based on a Sean Bonner post linked on Boing Boing. After a couple-three weeks of oilyness, my hair and skin settled down, my since-puberty dandruff issues cleared up, and almost all BO went away.
88.last: Who did you ask to test that?
Mrs. Chopper. Who still complains when I fart in bed or skip brushing my teeth, so she still has her sense of smell.
88: I don't want to tell you how to run your life, dude, but I'd think twice before allowing an entity affiliated with C/ory D/octorow to dictate my grooming habits.
90: I think some smoke alarms will trigger if they read methane.
Leaving aside the beef with Cory Doctorow that I'll confess to not getting, it makes intuitive sense to me that the human body not need space-age emollients to avoid stench, so I figured I'd give it a whirl on the assumption that the worst that could happen was a few wrinkled noses. So far, no problems to report (to be clear, I still use soap to wash my hands after using the bathroom, prepping mat, etc.).
HUMAN BODY NOT NEED EMOLLIENTS
HUMAN BODY RATHER NEED EMOLUMENTS
CAN MALE HUMAN BODY SIBLING SPARE A DIME?
That is why people say whatever it is they say about you being subtle/cryptic/confusing.
Oh come on, anyone who read 94 should be able to understand 95 no problem.
Would it help if I'd read Doctorow?
Maybe if you knew the definition of "emolument"?
Maybe if I knew the definition of "emolument" and remembered Depression Era music better.
Leaving aside the beef with Cory Doctorow that I'll confess to not getting
Somebody somewhere nicely captured his relentless self-promotion as "someone writes a book, someone won't shut the fuck up about it".*
*A reference to his book title, if you didn't know. Or the title of one of his books. Has he written more than one? Who gives a rat's ass?
Has he written more than one?
In a sense yes, but in a sense no.
Actually, I have no idea if that's a fair charge.
In a sense yes, but in a sense no.
Ding!
Oh sure, he's a whore, but that's kind of Boing Boing's thing, right? I generally find the signal-to-noise ratio to be quite high, where signal = "shit I find at least vaguely interested enough to click on." I think a BB link led me to CT, which led me here, FWIW.
I can forgive Cory Doctorow quite a lot for writing a young adult science fiction novel that has as it's underlying theme "don't mourn, organise".
It is a terribly bad novel, though. Doctorow would probably be my favourite SF author if only he could write. If only there was some way of blending him with a technically competent but politically horrible author, and then discarding the residue. (Orson Scott Doctorow?)
Generalizing broadly, the historic arch was from (i) an agrarian society in which everyone worked like mules to (ii) an early industrial society in which men went to factories and worked like mules while women stayed home and worked like mules to (iii) rising living standards over time lessening the mule-work that everyone did, although economic growth and increased labor rights, etc. decreased the men's mule-work vastly more than new labor saving home applicances decreased the women's mule-work.
This would fit with the observation that revolutions don't happen among completely immiserated populations, but among populations who have started to see a bit of improvement and want to see more.
I think the class/servant issue might also be worth looking at; one of the big changes from the 20s to the 60s is that middle-class women stopped having servants, because working wages rose so much that they became unaffordable. Even if your workload remains the same in terms of hours, don't underestimate the psychological bonus to a middle-class woman (or indeed anyone) of having someone else to order around and do the more unpleasant work.
it makes intuitive sense to me that the human body not need space-age emollients to avoid stench
Does anyone have a link to the post we're talking about? I'm very curious, and, somewhat, alarmed, that Chopper has, been, soap and shampoo free for months. As for the quote above, pretty much all mammals need space-age emollients to avoid stench, don't they?
I haven't used soap or shampoo in a year, and it's awesome: personal experiment update
Clean, Soap-Free Living: Here Comes the Science
What exactly is it that you do in the shower? Just wipe yourself down with a wet washcloth?
I think John Fowles expresses the worldview of one minor Victorian Mrs. Grundy-type character in The French Lieutenant's Woman as "Civilisation is soap."
an early industrial society in which men went to factories and worked like mules while women stayed home and worked like mules
I am pretty unsure about this. Did working-class women in industrial cities really all stay at home rather than going out to work as well (demands of child-bearing and child-care permitting)?
It might be interesting, if it were possible, to compare daily physical exertion and stress in a particular region/culture, from aristocrat to untouchable, across historical periods. One would assume that the mean/median daily demand in 1700 would be enormously higher than 2000, but one is pretty ignorant about the relevant stuff.
113. Good point. See here, not omitting the note at the bottom. The idea of the "family wage" was a Union demand from the early 19th century, but it wasn't widely achieved till the 20th.
I wonder what job in 1700 required the most paperwork, and comparable to what job today?
re: 113
I think it's basically false for working class women, yeah, although I think there's some disagreement among historians. A significant percentage of women worked, definitely.
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/burnette.women.workers.britain
or the period 1787 to 1815, 66 percent of married women in working-class households had either a recorded occupation or positive earnings. For the period 1816-20 the rate fell to 49 percent, but in 1821-40 it recovered to 62 percent.
116: Seneschal? Vizier? Equerry? Master of the Rolls?
Do you use soap to shave, or not then either?
On a scale of 1-10, how confident are you that you don't have a noticably foul stench?
Do you still use deodorant?
Sorry to pry but I'm genuinely curious.
116. Today, do you include on line reporting as paperwork?
116: Some kind of clerk-type job keeping records for a merchant?
I wonder what job in 1700 required the most paperwork, and comparable to what job today?
I'm thinking customs official here.
Do you still use deodorant?
This. I've been digging through the links via Boing-boing, and this never gets addressed.
Also, do you ever do anything that gets you genuinely dirty? If so, does just water get you sufficiently clean?
Do you ever swim in chlorinated pools? What about salt water? No shampoo after either of those?
127: You can't use that word! That is our word!
it makes intuitive sense to me that the human body not need space-age emollients to avoid stench
I already asked about deodorant, but also: do you still use toothpaste? What about toilet paper?
127. You and whose army? It goes back to Middle English.
129: Toothpaste isn't an emollient, really -- fluoride aside, natural mild abrasives like salt, baking soda and birch or willow twigs word pretty well.
I've heard the self-cleaning thing re: hair and water lots of times, and at various points in my teens/early-20s friends tried it. I can't believe you can keep acceptably body-odour free if you do any sport or anything that requires you to sweat much. I don't think water alone is quite enough.
Although I do agree with people who complain that we are paranoid these days about perfumes, deodourants, showering twice a day, etc.
My own bug-bear is boxing glove stink, which is resistant to a lot more than just plain soap-and-water.
116: Insurance broker? Accountant? Company secretary? Probably not futures and options trader, that was mainly done on a handshake basis.
Probably "copyist".
I am unconvinced that brushing one's teeth with salt would "work pretty well", but I might just try it.
re: 130
Scrieve is still a Scots word, although it's one of those words I've only seen written, it's not used in the area I grew up in ordinary speech.
131: I loved that word so very much when I was a (very lonely) child, when first encountered in the dialogue of Archie Goodwin in one of the Nero Wolfe books. Perhaps as much, even, as the word "archipelago."
129: Please, please, please don't let anyone talk urple out of using toilet paper!
136: Leaks like a scrieve, needs a shrieve.
135: I tried baking soda for a while once (can't remember why). It seemed to work just fine, but tasted unpleasant.
140: I've brushed with baking soda. I don't think salt would work as well, but I could be wrong.
Seneschal? Vizier? Equerry? Master of the Rolls?
An equerry doesn't do very much paperwork at all; he's a glorified horse-holder, hence the name. The Master of the Rolls is a senior judge and would have a clerk to handle paperwork; so would a seneschal and a vizier.
141: or use the Arab method, which is fine as long as he can reliably tell left from right.
Please, please, please don't let anyone talk urple out of using toilet paper!
Go for it Urple. A wet sponge on a stick, you know it makes sense.
My dentist tells me not to use toothpaste; says it's better just to use a clean toothbrush with nothing abrasive. I ignore him.
I'm asking lots of questions because I could easily be convinced to stop using soap and shampoo, if there's a chance it wouldn't be insane. By which I mean smelly.
I went through a period in high school where I didn't often use shampoo, and I sort of remember a lot of excess greasiness. But maybe I was using shampoo just exactly too often, with the worst possible degree of infrequency.
Also, my armpits smell now, and I wash then with soap daily, and I almost never sweat. (I've actually toyed with the idea that they stink because I don't sweat enough, which I think might actually be possibly right.) Point being: I wouldn't want them to smell worse.
I'm at the beginning of summer vacation, which is probably the best possible time to undertake such an experiment. I'm super-tempted. But I need to get more clear on the rules regarding deoderant, toothpaste, etc. I'm not sure at all about scrapping antipersperant.
My dentist and his assistant have this passive aggressive thing where they are always seem just half a second away from calling each other shitheads.
149. Have you asked your wife? She has a stake in this.
She has a stake in this
Does she? If I'm going to smell enough for her to have a meaningful stake, I'm probably not interested in this experiment.
153: I would think that answering that question is the experiment.
149: You could try taping a dryer sheet under each arm in the morning.
Do any of you do the kind of cleaning where you add oils to the skin (or hair, if applicable)? We've started using liquid black soap on Mara, with the major ingredients being honey and shea butter, and her eczema has cleared up. I sometimes will just wash my face with water and then add jojoba oil, but I've never had a consistent plan.
Mara has the kind of skin and hair where she needs a lot of added oil, though, so I wouldn't recommend that, say, heebie start washing HP's hair with conditioner only and only doing it every week or two. I just know there are also white (and Asian) people who do the oil-for-faces thing and I'm curious about it.
Grr, sorry about the messed-up link. Please fix it, someone!
Body odour is dried sweat and bacteria, no? I'd guess some people are more or less naturally smelly but I can't imagine that you can really become entirely non-smelly without using soap, or similar. I'd worry about one thing that comes up in the BoingBoing comments: people [and their partners] quite quickly get desensitised to their own smell after a while.
Body odour is dried sweat and bacteria, no?
Plus ass-smell.
To be the devil's advocate, does she actually need added oil? Or is that just to compensate for the soul-sucking soap?
I probably wash my face only a few times a year, right now, and don't put anything on besides sunscreen.
160.2: If you like ribs the way I like ribs, you couldn't do that.
I'm not trying this, but I'd guess that hot water and scrubbing with a loofah/bath-scrubby-thing would de-smell you quite well -- you'd need to have soap in reserve for visible dirt like, to pull an example from my own life, bicycle grease.
I shampoo only once or twice a week, after seeing it suggested somewhere, and for my hair it's a huge improvement (means I also don't use conditioner any more, and don't need it), and not noticeably smelly. I do rinse it out in the shower daily, which I figure gets the sweat out.
Body odour is dried sweat and bacteria, no? I'd guess some people are more or less naturally smelly but I can't imagine that you can really become entirely non-smelly without using soap, or similar.
Well, unless you have some other way of getting rid of the bacteria. As sunlight is an excellent disinfectant one might say "No soap? Irradiate.".
I probably wash my face only a few times a year, right now, and don't put anything on besides sunscreen.
You don't wash off the suncreen?
I use it before soccer, and then I shower after soccer, but I don't put soap on my face in the shower.
It took every bit of self restraint I had not to put 164 in all caps.
re: 162.last
Yeah, when I had very long hair I'd get it wet in the shower most days but only shampoo once or twice a week as otherwise I looked like a Freak Brother. I wash it much more often now that it's short.
I knew a guy who couldn't use soap for medical reasons, and he used to soak in a hot bath for a couple of hours every day. Which seemed to work fine, but Christ what a time sink!
156: I have very dry skin, and I put on a lot of Aquafor -- a lighter version of Vaseline -- in the winter to keep my skin from itching. Everyone I know finds this gross, but they all have oilier skin than I do.
I am horrified enough by 165 that I think this whole experiment is probably not for me.
169: Me too. I've been able to avoid that only if I live in a building without forced-air heat.
171: I absolutely could not deal with putting something like sunscreen on my face and not washing it off. The thought is making my skin crawl. I very rarely use sunscreen, though
160: Yes, or her skin gets ashy. We already only used oil-based bubble bath, but now all her cleaning products are oil-based. Plus Aquafor and similar lotions, including Will Smith's ex-wife's brand, Whoop Ash.
You can feel it a couple hours later?
174: Makes sense. How often do you guys bathe her? That sounds accusatory but I'm really just curious. We wash the kids on Wednesdays and Sundays, because we're really fucking lazy.
When I lived in the woods in Maine, I only bathed once a week or so, using 2 gallons of water. The thing with armpits is that they tend to oscillate in stinkyness for a couple of days, but then settle back to a base level. But my hair didn't really get that bad, just a little scalp itchieness from dried sweat.
You can feel it a couple hours later?
Yes.
174: She gets to choose now. Minimum of weekly, preferably twice a week, but sometimes she'll want it a few days in a row. Getting her hair washed still gives her a panic attack, but she does like baths!
Last night Jammies wrestled Hawaiian Punch into the bathtub, wailing the whole time, because she hadn't had a bath since last Wednesday. Total meltdown the whole time.
Then after that clusterfuck, I started to wash Hokey Pokey. And so Hawaiian Punch got right back in the bath to help out. Then after he was done, she wanted to stay put and "NOW ME!" meaning, lay down on his little mat and have Jammies wash her the particular way we'd been washing Pokey. Fucking kids.
We were so hopelessly unsystematic -- we washed the kids when it occurred to us or seemed like an entertaining way for them to spend the evening, but there were occasional moments when Buck or I would notice that one of the kids was looking or smelling unusually bedraggled and we'd have to check in "You wash her lately?" "Nope, you?"
Luckily, being unclean doesn't seem to hurt them much. And Sally's now reached the age where she can't be removed from the bathtub without violence -- she takes more baths than Cleopatra. (Although with less asses' milk.)
In my experience, the feet get ripe first on a kid.
And Sally's now reached the age where she can't be removed from the bathtub without violence
This describes both my kids since birth. They would play in there all day if we let them.
I once had to tell a co-worker/employee that he stank. That was not a good conversation. Especially when he thought I was drawing him aside to ask him about his frequent absences from his desk, which, it turned out, were because he was 'cutting'. Fun.
184: Find a type of soap that is painful to use and kill two birds with one stone.
"Have you considered pumice?"
First I tried searching for "razor-sharp soap" and didn't find much. Here's the first GIS result.
Were strigils sharp? Because that's what you really need: olive oil, a strigil, and a well-trained bath slave, and soap is entirely superfluous. (Admittedly, this comes from a people who collected pee from public urinals to bleach their togas.)
188: about as sharp as a table knife, I think. You wouldn't want to be cutting yourself.
To answer the questions above:
1) No deodorant/antiperspirant. I'd been cutting back for years as it made my armpits itch if I used it too much. The whole theory Bonner puts behind the experiment is that soap/cleansers/conditioner jack up your natural skin pH, which isn't naturally hospitable to odor-causing bacteria.
2) Yes to toothpaste. If I had cut refined sugars completely out of my diet, I might consider it, but associated acid build-up from the bacteria feeding off sugars seems like it needs an offset. Plus I live in hippieland which doesn't fluoridate it's water, so it seems like a generally good idea--I'm approaching this as an experiment, and the peer-reviewed evidence behind flouridation is good enough for me.
3) Yes to shaving cream. I've toyed with the idea of trying olive oil as a substitute, but am only incorporating weird ideas one at a time.
4) Yes to sunscreen and chlorinated pools. I rinse with water and seem to be fine afterwards.
5) Yes to toilet paper. If I was shooting perfect fiber-filled floaters (Have you ever wiped a kid's ass that mysteriously didn't have any post-dump shit? Like that.) every time, maybe I'd consider skipping it. As it is, TP is a part of the process.
6) I shower shortly after working out most of the time, so don't notice a particular stink build up beyond that.
If I was shooting perfect fiber-filled floaters
May we all be that lucky.
Thanks. But you missed the most important question:
On a scale of 1-10, how confident are you that you don't have a noticably foul stench?
This was asked in light of 158.last: "people [and their partners] quite quickly get desensitised to their own smell after a while".
The no-deoderant/anti-persperant is the part that makes me the most uneasy. I don't like having sweat rings. I can believe that they wouldn't stink, but they'd still be visible on my clothes.
Is there a known solution within the no soap movement?
Have you ever wiped a kid's ass that mysteriously didn't have any post-dump shit?
All the damn time and I envy their incredibly low-maintenance escape hatches.
The whole theory Bonner puts behind the experiment is that soap/cleansers/conditioner jack up your natural skin pH, which isn't naturally hospitable to odor-causing bacteria.
Roughly how long is it supposed to take for your natural skin pH to right itself? (I.e,. how long would it take for me not to smell like a buffalo?)
I'm far too prim to brag about my own butt, here. But feel jealous.
re: 190
FWIW, I already use a low-PH soap, which I find helps avoid sweat rash from sport. It doesn't seem to have entirely magic body-odour defeating powers, though.
I believe I've already emailed out my ass photos.
There's a whole curly-headed no-shampoo movement. I did it for a while, and while my hair was definitely smoother and with better-defined ringlets, my scalp just felt grody and I couldn't abide it.
Baby O gets his baths in an amusing bucket, in which he looks like a big, fat pickle.
I did not realize that the ass photos were intimate enough to demonstrate the enviable fiber content of your droppings.
Baby O
Wait, *you* had Ogged's baby!?
Oudemiogged Superallah Miglioranzi-Tabatabaei will turn two this July, Apo.
201: They're in there, but they actually aren't me. I used an asshole-double.
Shoot!
Make that:
Oh sure apo. Ogged's baby . . .
The no-deoderant/anti-persperant is the part that makes me the most uneasy. I don't like having sweat rings. I can believe that they wouldn't stink, but they'd still be visible on my clothes.
Is there a known solution within the no soap movement?
Following apo's links all the way back to Richard Nikoley's original blog post, he says "I do use an Old Spice stick deodorant. Never, ever an anti-persperant in my life."
So, I don't think it's forbidden.
I used an asshole-double.
I used a double asshole for a while but just couldn't get the hang of it.
How much do you all buy into the anti-perspirant scares? I like anti-perspirant better than deoderant.
208: Those were your nostrils, buddy.
No, your asshole is in your butt.
Your asshole is what allows you to comb your butt.
The thing with anti-perspirant for men is that it winds up caking on to your undershirts. And it won't wash out. Yuck.
How much do you all buy into the anti-perspirant scares?
Enough not to use either a/p or d/o. Again, no complaints from any quarter. I do have an office job tho.
I put vinegar on the underarms of my favorite shirts before washing them to keep the stuff from caking in place.
192: with 10 being absolute certainty, maybe an 8? There's some odor, but nothing unpleasant as long as I shower 1 or more times per day.
193: antiperspirant has never been sufficient to keep me from having sweat rings. I wear undershirts at work and change out of sweaty clothes at home if I care.
195: the hair took 2-3 weeks to settle down, the skinniest a few days.
There's some odor, but nothing unpleasant
What does this mean? While I don't personally find the smell of other people unpleasant in social settings, as long as they're women, enough people do that I would think even a not-unpleasant-but-noticable odor would be sort of frowned upon in polite society.
I suppose it depends on how sensitive your sense of smell is. I can smell a clean person wearing deodorant (or not wearing deodorant) if they're standing near me. It's not unpleasant at all, people just smell like they're a large living thing. I don't think 'no odor at all' is really achievable unless you shrinkwrap yourself.
I can smell a clean person wearing deodorant (or not wearing deodorant) if they're standing near me.
Well, that's why I asked what chopper meant in saying "there's some odor, but nothing unpleasant". I mean, of course there's some odor; that's how bloodhounds track people. I thought his statement might imply something like to "there's more odor than you'd have if you washed with soap, but it's not unpleasant". And I think I'd consider a noticeably stronger odor a problem (for me personally) even if it weren't unpleasant, which is why I asked for clarification.
221: Some odor, but smelling like a person and less like Sport/Hi-Endurance/Fresh Breeze/Old Spice. Less odor overall, that is.
Is there any reason to think I'd be undermining the experiment if I kept the antiperspirant in use?
Hey, it's your experiment. Do what you want. I'm just telling you my experience. I would be interested to hear your results.
Well, I want to hedge my bets. The theory doesn't technically seem to conflict with antiperspirant, since I'm not stripping anything away. On the other hand, if someone has already discovered that antiperspirant alone will cause me to be a gunky mess all summer, I'd like to not reinvent that wheel.
What is it about your antiperspirant that you're so afraid to lose, heebie?
I'm afraid I'll gain visibly wet underarm rings on my clothes.
Shirts are born clean, but everywhere pit stains.
HG lives in Texas. Where does Chopper live? In any case, summer seems like the least cautious time to test this.
I think having a hypersensitive sense of smell would be like getting a really large christmas present, and then finding out it was only a year's worth of paper towels.
I have a basement, a small boy, and a hatred of kitchen towels. I'd love a year's worth of paper towels. Unless they were the shitty single ply kind.
We probably have a year's worth of toilet paper. There was a sale and that doesn't take as much room. A year of paper towels would require several trips to the store.
229: Chopper's in California now. If heebie can smell him all the way in Texas, I'd say his no-soap experiment has failed miserably.
I have used neither antiperspirant nor deodorant for more than 20 years, and I have neither sweat rings nor anything but the most alluring of odors.
I don't use either in the winter, but I always have in the summer.
Which is probably the same thing because I don't think you have a summer there.
I find the feeling of wet clothing against my skin super unpleasant. I love antiperspirant.
We do have summer here, but it's not usually very humid.
I find the feeling of wet clothing against my skin super unpleasant. I love antiperspirant nudity.
Don't you people have air conditioners?
I have central air, but I need to go outside from time to time.
The AC on the bus isn't very good either.
I'm very tempted by all of this. I didn't know that I was unhappy with the fact that I use soap, but I think an experiment may be in order. I have a feeling my spouse will not be happy about this.
That came out oddly phrased.
The trick is finding good timing for two-weeks of potential stink, I think. I'm not sure when that's going to be convenient.
Yes, if I had a long one planned any time soon. But all my vacation is already slated for other things.
I don't always use deodorant/antiperspirant, but I do take 2-3 showers a day (usually before working out, after working out, later if the day has been long and/or sweaty). I do use d-o/a-p if I have to dress up for a meeting or gathering or something.
OT: I don't think 6-8 messages/texts/e-mails per day telling me that you'll never contact me again because you hate me so much and, by the way, I ought to send you a check for the tolls/tickets you incurred while raging at me make a particularly fair case, but the offensive is certainly damaging. I think I've cracked a dental crown grinding my teeth under the stress.
Golly. What'd you do to make her that mad?
246: Wow, I've never made anyone so mad that they got a ticket. And I really tried.
247: Being myself, I gather from her extensive work in the critical mode.
Have you considered a two week camping trip?
6-8 messages/texts/e-mails per day telling me that you'll never contact me again
"I eagerly await the fulfillment of your threat. Have a nice day."
Flippanter, that sucks. I didn't say this when I saw your original break-up comment, but I was sorry you're going through it and am now even more sorry. Plus, grinding teeth because of stress is just awful.
Have you considered a two week camping trip?
I'm considering everything from faking my own death to one of the multi-month European pilgrim trails. I'm presently canvassing my friends for couches to sleep on in foreign jurisdictions.
248: If you carry a little book of carbon paper forms and issue tickets yourself when you think someone is inappropriately mad at you, you can often push them to the point where they'll go out and get a real ticket.
252: Thanks. It was very odd to find myself with a mouthful of ceramic fragments yesterday. I don't think I've been Alan Alda-sensitive and perfectly considerate, but I don't think I've done anything to deserve the unpredictable hostility and rage that she's dishing out. Yesterday her messages were strangely apologetic and even-toned, but today she's back up on 11.
And I was attempting to be funny above, but that really does sound awful.
Sounds too intense to last long, though -- if you keep your head down she'll probably chill out in a couple of days.
If you went camping, you could try the soapless thing and kill two birds with one stone. I'd hope you wouldn't do that while couch surfing because there is an adjustment period.
Aw, Flip. I'm sorry, dude. I want to say something helpful, but all the suggestions I can come up with are probably illegal. Or at least inadvisable.
one of the multi-month European pilgrim trails
I hear that the Appalachian Trail is nice.
I'd recommend hut-hopping in the Swiss Alps. It's relatively cheap once you're there, quite social, and from what I gather you like hiking. For an extra feeling of accomplishment, find yourself a group going up one of the easier 4k-ers. It's also right next to Northern Italy with all the pretty old buildings and art. You would need to wait til the end of June so that some of the snow melts.
It was very odd to find myself with a mouthful of ceramic fragments yesterday
Reading the thread backwards can be badly misleading...
My first thought was 'fuck, at least in my bad break up there was never a direct hit on the head'.
but all the suggestions I can come up with are probably illegal.
Lopping her fingers off will stop the texting but it's probably easier to block her number or something.
261.last was my first thought, too.
I hope things ease up, Flippanter. If you haven't already erased them you might hang on to her voice messages for a bit. If the corpus is sufficient you can snip out bits, autotune them, and make the next great viral hit.
A video in this spirit would be ideal.
I am on day one of this experiment, and so far am not considering it a success.
168: Must be a pretty small guy. I would need a time tub.
