I think we all know the cliché. I don’t even need a cite. People in France rarely bathe. Or so they say.
I remember my religion teacher in RC high school recounting his trip to France in the early 70’s. He said people there even smelled different. I also remember someone around the same time, possibly a media person, saying that the French rarely bathed because of the inaccessiblity of hot water.
But is it true? Was it ever true? And is it still true?
Someone I know who worked in France told me the banter directed at her as an American when the discussion turned to this topic…
French guy: “That’s the trouble with American women. No taste…” [smacks lips loudly]
Her: “I should hope not!”
The idea I heard was that in places where running water, and heated running water, was less reliable and full baths less common, using the bidet and washing the more smelly areas (and hopefully, armpits, face etc. too) substituted for full-on bathing. But France was not alone in this, and that’s a century old issue not something recent. The same could be said of country people way back when on the farm who still got water from hand-pumps and got hot bathing water by heating it on the woodstove. Also have heard that North Americans with antiseptic soaps and high strength deodorants seem to have a fetish about avoiding body odor.
I spent the summer of 1969 in France and I had the same experience as your teacher. The French also (noticeably) washed their hair less frequently than your typical American. Our guides also noted the lack of hot water, and centuries-old plumbing in general.
It was shrugged off as one of those cultural quirks, like the American fetish for ice in our soft drinks.
I have no idea whether it’s still true.
It’s not.
I have a number of French friends and colleagues, they have hygiene standards no different from anyone else.
This is up there with Germans not shaving their legs and British having bad teeth. If it was ever true, it isn’t - at least the norm - now.
I was in Paris last year. I was close to a few French people and can say they smelled just fine.
Oui, Oui; all the things Americans suppose about foreigners are true ! The very French themselves acknowledge American superiority in cleanliness, just as they acknowledge it in every other aspect of life.
But they are grateful when you give them chewing-gum, and are eager to learn when you explain how they can do things as you do.
My Frenchie ex girlfriend was much cleaner than I was. But I’m a Brit, so what do i know?
Here’s some numbers to mull over.
The French are on par, if not slightly higher, at number of showers per week (both over 6) and what %age showers every day, at least according to those two surveys. But the French seem to shampoo a little less often (Americans just under 4 times a week. French around 3 times a week).
I’ve heard many stereotypes about Americans from non-Americans, and as an American myself I can say most of those are true.
I know the “eliminate body odor fetish” is accurate. I’m sure I’d fall under that. I wash daily (all over), clean my teeth morning and night, use underarm deodorant every morning and a (small, one squirt) bit of cologne (which by the way is a French term, and my particular brand is also French, so there!).
The problem is that when you’re in a culture that seeks to eliminate body odors, the slightest odor becomes noticeable, so it’s like a self-perpetuating situation. I’m sure if I lived somewhere that it didn’t matter I wouldn’t even notice it anymore.
I should imagine Baltimore in the 1840s niffed a bit.
And I was right ! I was mainly thinking of the horses and the breweries and tanneries which Edgar Allen would pass when half-cut, etc. etc.; but apparently Baltimore has a special place in the history of smell — just like then-contemporary London, and oddly enough Cologne City —
One hundred years ago, Baltimore had the dubious distinction of being one of the largest cities in the world without a comprehensive sewer system. What we did have was some 90,000 cesspools and a hodgepodge of private sewer lines that drained without fanfare into the nearest body of water. The never-reticent H.L. Mencken wrote in his book of boyhood reminiscences, Happy Days, that summertime Baltimore “smelled like a billion polecats.” Making matters worse, the cesspools would often overflow, requiring a visit from a brave crew of workers operating a wagon-borne pump-and-hose contraption called an “odorless excavating apparatus” (which, old accounts suggest, was a bold-faced bit of doublespeak on par with anything in 1984.)
It probably has evolved over time.
A survey from 1985 finds:
And an article on the topic in 1998 notes:
All right, but have you ever been to Hollywood? There’s some weird hygiene going on there for sure.
A friend of mine worked on a production with a well-known actress. (American, not French.) This actress had demanded that no one on the crew use any products which contained any sort of scent (because of her allergies). She got a key grip or some other tech fired because he walked by her and she claimed she could tell he had used Irish Spring. There were lots of smelly people on that set, but it was a natural smell (she reported). She said she didn’t wash her hair for three weeks while they were shooting because she was afraid of getting fired for smelling like Prell.
The item is named after a German town, though.
Does everyone realize just how inaccurate and questionable statistics like this are? How does one find out how often people bathe? Put a monitor in their shower? Probably not. It’s just a survey. How is the survey conducted? How representative is it? How did you pick your sample? How honest are people going to be if you ask them intimate questions like this?
In short, surveys like this are worthless.
Is it possible that Americans are more likely to use deodorants/antiperspirants than the French? My memories of doing business in France was never to leave the meeting room unless you intended not to return. Otherwise, be prepared for the bombshell when you came back through the door!!
They’re a reasonable first-order approximation. At the very worst, even if respondents are lying, they are lying in the direction of what they expect hygiene standards for their locale are. For places that don’t care about daily bathing, I wouldn’t expect respondents to claim they bathe daily, even if they don’t. If it’s the social norm where they’re at, they have no pressure to lie. So even if you for some reason don’t think most French bathe daily, most French appear to think they should bathe pretty close to daily.
In other words, I expect the surveys are a pretty reasonable ranking of cultural bathing practices, even if the exact numbers are skewed by people lying for whatever reason. You don’t need bath monitors and invasive survey procedures to get a good idea of where bathing is culturally emphasized and done and where it’s not. Anecdotally, from my experience of living in Europe for five years, bathing is pretty much on par as in the US. And armpits are shaved. And other parts of the body are shaved (perhaps even moreso.) But, yeah, I understand that Europe is a big place, but we’ve gotten to a point where there’s a bit of a monoculture about things like this.
On that note, based on surveys over the years, it appears that the cliché was largely true as late as 30 years ago, but French hygiene habits have become more mainstream recently.
I misread the title and saw do the French rarely breathe? :smack: I then thought are the French more likely to be zombies? :eek: