In the United States today (and I’m only limiting it to us because I can’t speak for other cultures) Women shave their legs and armpits. Men occasionally obsess about baldness. By world standards, from what I understand, Americans shower more, brush their teeth more, and use more deodorant than just about anyone else. Not only that, there is a fairly common social stigma attached to breast-feeding in public.
The question is, why are we so uptight about all this stuff? Hey, it’s natural for women to grow hair on their legs and armpits, and for guys to lose it on their heads. Why should it matter? Same for breast-feeding; it’s what breasts are for, after all. Why should anyone care if they’re used for their natural purpose?
It’s just that the more I think of this stuff, the more illogical a lot of our public attitudes and practices seem. How did we get into all these irrational habits, and why?
We’ve adopted many of the ideas shown on TV. In the old days, a scene in the bathroom was forbidden, much less anything more than a kiss (ok, I’m being a bit extravagant)…So people grew more personal and what they thought to be self-aware…
Anyway, I think the hair thing is for the feeling. I absolutely detest extra body hair…so anything that can be removed without generating gay comments goes…The showering and brushing is hygien…When you consider it…do you like to be sweaty after a long day of work?
And the breast feeding. For a while in the late 20th cent., most babies were not breast fed. I’m not sure why, but it wasn’t recommended. In the past 15 years or so, that has completely turned around, but people are still uptight about it…One man was making a fuss about a woman breast feeding at a park, and she asked him ‘What do you think they’re hanging there for?!’…which goes back to my original point…people think that they must be covered all the time, etc, etc. However, more open groups and practices (liberals, nudism, &c.) are emerging, and this is definitely relaxing from the older decades.
We’ve adopted many of the ideas shown on TV. In the old days, a scene in the bathroom was forbidden, much less anything more than a kiss (ok, I’m being a bit extravagant)…So people grew more personal and what they thought to be self-aware…
Anyway, I think the hair thing is for the feeling. I absolutely detest extra body hair…so anything that can be removed without generating gay comments goes…The showering and brushing is hygien…When you consider it…do you like to be sweaty after a long day of work?
And the breast feeding. For a while in the late 20th cent., most babies were not breast fed. I’m not sure why, but it wasn’t recommended. In the past 15 years or so, that has completely turned around, but people are still uptight about it…One man was making a fuss about a woman breast feeding at a park, and she asked him ‘What do you think they’re hanging there for?!’…which goes back to my original point…people think that they must be covered all the time, etc, etc. However, more open groups and practices (liberals, nudism, &c.) are emerging, and this is definitely relaxing from the older decades.
meh, you think there are cultures that don’t have such lists of crazy taboos?
find a country where they don’t shave and you’ll nodice they have some crazy taboo about some other sort of thing no one else cares about.
its not like america invented taboos and everyone else is free from them, every culture has them by the boat load, you can look at some cultures and say “look! look how free they are!” because they don’t follow taboos that you would, but they have their own, just as strong and silly as anyone else
Mike, FYI, the trend toward bottle-feeding was mostly in the FIRST half of the 20th century. Starting in the '60s more and more women began feeding naturally. It has been recommended by most doctors for at least 50 years.
If Americans brush their teeth more than others (and I don’t know if that’s the case or not) I imagine it’s for the purpose of avoiding cavities as much as for avoiding bad breath.
However: Lots of things are “natural” that I think we’re just as well off without seeing them in public. Defecation and urination are natural but I’d just as soon they were kept private, wouldn’t you?
Ditto to what owl said. Americans don’t mind seeing hair, arms and legs exposed, but many Muslims prefer to cover up.
Ok forgive my ignorance here … but why DO Europeans bathe a lot less than Americans?
Or is this actually a stereotype and Europeans do indeed bathe frequently?
I ask because in high school I made friends with the Finnish exchange student. Rumors went around that she bathed about once to twice a week … I never noticed any bad smell coming off of her so she either adapted while in America (or the rumor wasn’t true to begin with) or she covered it up with something.
Sure, there’s a reason. Much of it has to do with advertisers’ success in making us feel ashamed of ourselves.
It wasn’t until around th 1920s that women began to shave their legs and armpits. Dress style had evolved to the point where these parts were visible for the first time. Disposable razor companies realized that if they could convince women to shave, it would mean twice as many customers for their products. So, efforts began to convince women that their body hair was disgusting with remarkable success.
You should see some of the early deodorant ads. A lot of them focus on one fictional character whose life was ruined by their “B.O.” The ads strongly hinted that if your social life wasn’t as busy as you might like, it was probably because you stank so badly people wanted to avoid you, but were too polite to tell you.
Feminine hygeine products have also exploited shame to sell their products. By convincing women that they smell bad, they created a whole new product line. Any gynecologist will tell you that douching is unhealthy, but legions of women tremble before the idea of being “not so fresh.” For most women, a simple wash on the exterior with soap and water is suffecient to avoid unpleasant odors, but the product manufacturers have convinced them that they must wash internally as well.
It depends, but in some places, well, yeah, they shower much less.
Now, often enough people can go a day or three wthout bathing and not smell horrible, particularly if they rinse their sweatier parts. Fortunately, although humans can smell pretty foul, humans also lack a very good sense of smell.
It is a sterotype, but also (generally) true. The reasoning:
Higher water costs.
Higher energy costs for heating water.
Much lower standard of living in many areas* (*as defined by the tight definition of “outfitting and comfort level of home, energy use of, and appliances in such”).
Tradition. IIRC, Americans had similar rates of bathing/showering until the 1950’s-60’s.
I’m European and I shower once or twice daily, depending on what I’ve been doing that day. Brush teeth twice a day and floss. Have my legs waxed, and I shave my armpits.
Don’t use deodorant, because I don’t like their chemical smell. I use neutral base oils with esssential oils to moisterize and scent my skin.
I don’t know anyone personally, who doesn’t at least bathe or shower once a day.
So i don’t know where you’re getting the idea that Europeans don’t bathe regurarly.
Just to add a little fact. Yes, foot binding was practiced among the upper class (not the peasants to which the vast majority of the population were part of). Foot binding essentially died out following the ending of the Qing dynasty (the last emperor) in 1911 and was pretty much gone by the 1920’s. Not sure if it wasn’t made illegal until 1949 but it was not widely practiced among the upper class decades before.
I have never seen women in their 50’s with bound feet. Actually it is very rare to see a woman in public with bound feet, and they are ancient. The city of Kunming for some reason had a enough so that it was not so unusual in the 1980’s to see a very elderly woman hobbling along with a cane and bound feet. In the past five years of living in Shanghai, I can recall only one instance of seeing a woman that still had bound feet, and she was quite elderly.
“Recently” and “many” are not words I would have choosen if any one gives a fig.
Your Location indicates Dublin. By any chance did you grow up there as well? The “non-bathing European” stereotype I’d always heard refers to the continental types. Given that the first-hand accounts I’ve heard relate mostly to Germans, I don’t think a lower standard of living has much to do with it, as Anthracite claims.
>> Same for breast-feeding; it’s what breasts are for
Is that so? Hmmmmm. . . interesting theory. How come I never thought about this?
>> we don’t like to associate the human breast with a cows utter
Can someone explain this one in detail. I am totally lost. Breast feeding is bad because “we don’t like to associate the human breast with a cows utter”?? Am I being whooshed? I don’t get it.
I think this prudishness predates television - lets blame the Victorians, or in fact earlier. I mean - you don’t really red about Jane Austen heroines ever requiring the bathroom etc
Thank you for proving that these various social taboos are so irrational that it is not possible to defend them with more than spouting one-liners and spewing badly-spelled rubbish.
Worst thing I ever smelled was “room freshener”. I visited a house where a woman must have been chemically dependent upon the stuff, from the strength of the smell. I have had to deal with decaying animal bodies (maggots and all), cleaned up rotting piles of vegetation, and cleaned out blast cabinets of 40-year-old ethers. I would rather do any of the above than be subject to the pain of that “fresh-scented” house again.
