When I was a kid in Italy, we’d go to the beach on a regular basis. The bidet was a wonderful device for washing the sand off your feet!
Personally, I grew up using a bidet to wash my underside after doing #2 and not washing with water and soap seems to me pretty disgusting. For women a bidet is doubly useful.
I cannot understand not washing and using just toilet paper… I mean, when your hands get dirty do you just wipe them on a paper towel or do you wash them?
My home in DC does not have a bidet so I am forced to either: (a) balance on the edge of the bathtub (almost impossible), (b) use a 5 gallon bucket filled with water (only slightly less inconvenient) or © just fully undress and get in the shower (this is what I do if I can).
Of course taking a full shower always feels good but I hate it when an hour or two after taking a shower and being fully dressed, I get the urge to do #2 and have to get fully undressed to take another shower.
Americans, of course, love all the stereotypes about how people from other countries don’t wash. Never mind that these stereotypes are patently false and only very ignorant people repeat them with a childish sense of superiority. “Yeah, I might be trailer park trash but, by golly, I am an American and I know that makes me superior to all foreigners”
There is a similar stupid feeling of superiority by Americans joking about women in other countries who do not shave their armpits or legs.
Of course, better educated Americans have travelled a bit more and found that the USA has at least the same percentage of slobs, idiots etc, as any other country.
My friend went to San Francisco earlier this month where she had arranged to stay at a private home for the entire month. The second day she called me in terror and said she had to get out of there. The woman she was staying with was a slob and a pig and there was no way she could stay there one more day. I did not need to hear the description of the bathroom and kitchen. Anyway, my friend had to leave in a hurry and she came over to DC.
Personally I do not think Americans are any cleaner than Europeans (or viceversa). What I do think is that Americans are more uptight and less natural about their bodies and more insecure when it comes to matters of personal hygiene. You can see on TV there is a common theme for deodorant and other products: “What if you would “perspire”? What will others think if you don’t use it?” They want to shame you into using it.
I used to do construction in the summers.
Last summer, we were finishing up a house for a very rich couple. They had had a bidet installed in their bathroom.
So I’m supposed to be cleaning the house up to get ready for the carpet to be laid down, when I see one of the inbred hicks I worked with in the bathroom.
He’s standing over the bidet, looking mystified. He turns a knob, and water shoots up and sprays him in the face.
Oh, it gets better. He decided that this was a drinking fountain. So he turns the water off, adjusts a few knobs, and turns the water back on. Now it’s too weak for him to drink from.
So he turns the water back off again, adjusts a few knobs, and turns it back on, and it shoots a jet all the way to the ceiling, spraying the whole room.
It must have freaked him out, cuz he took off and I had to go over and turn the bidet off.
–Tim
Let’s see if these links work. Older models were open (no lid) and had a vertical jet in the center. Newer models seem to have no jet (I guess this makes the plumbing easier and so, cheaper) and they have a lid similar to the toilet.
Bidet with no lid
Bidet with cover
another Bidet with no lid
[Bidet with lid
Bidet with lid
Another style
yet another style Bidet
If I had the space in my bathroom I’d install one but the space isn’t there 
well, 6 out of 7 ain’t bad. Here’s the missing link:
I think the idea of a bidet is great. Speaking from a relatively sedentary female perspective, the only things that NEED to get showered daily, for me, are armpits and genitals. That stuff gets ripe fast, but a long shower everyday is wasteful, for crying out loud (but it pretty much the only option in most American homes).
And I hate having to hang wet swimsuits in the bathtub.
In India, they wipe their butt with water from a teapot type of thing. They use their hand, but its not the one you shake hands with I think.
Same in Islamic countries - you wipe with left hand and then wash your hand. The teapot is great, but I haven’t had much success in using the litre bottle. It helps if the bathroom is Turkish [hole in ground] rather than with a toilette.