Or anyone else who’s never had access to such a thing?
I’m basing this on my assumption that some folks have never had the luxury of bathing.
Peace,
mangeorge
The closest I can give you is this: After living five months in a tent in Qatar, I flew home and had to overnight in Baltimore. I damn near ran the hot water out of the boiler in the hotel.
I would say that yes, a bedouin would enjoy a shower.
Tripler
Of course, I don’t really know how bedouins bathe. :dubious:
Wouldn’t a Bedouin rather have a cold shower?
From our POV it would seem so, but maybe not. I take tepid to cool showers in the summer when the weather is really hot. I don’t like really cold showers.
Okay, this is too hard. I’ll make it easier:
Would an Inuit back in the day have enjoyed a shower.
I’m asking if these folks would enjoy getting clean, more than whether they’d enjoy the temperature.
I feel icky if I don’t bathe, but I don’t want to assume it’s the same with everybody.
How about indians who lived in the desert far away from plentiful water?
Geronimo frequented the hot springs at Ojo Caliente in northern New Mexico. Additionally, it’s possible to take a dirt or sand bath. Just simply rub handfuls of dry dirt or sand vigorously on oneself to take the sweat, oils, and funk off. It’s not like that nice ‘fresh from the shower’ feeling, but you don’t reek. A rinse in the river helps. Soldiers in WWII reported that they were much colder in the Ardennes after they had bathed. Still, a dip in warm water would be welcomed by all; even monkeys do it in Japan.
Welp, I think you’d have to poll the populations in question to get a meaningful answer, but here’s my not-worth-a-whole-lot contribution. I believe modern Westerners and USians in particular are comparatively fetishistic about cleanliness. I believe a lot of the “feeling icky” is more connected to what you’re used to than to what is actually good for you, or at least, least likely to give you itchy skin. In particular, that “clean hair” feeling is demonstrably bad for hair; shampoo is as merciless as paint stripper and conditioner is a weak palliative. Through much of history people have “cleaned” their hair with oils rather than with soap. Nowadays that’s unthinkable; the idea of oil being used as a cleaning or grooming agent seems absurd to most of us, especially teenagers, to whom evident oil of any kind is a social disaster.
I’d love to see an impartial chemist’s thorough analysis of the most functional way to address the cleaning of hair and skin.
When I lived in Germany, I was surprised to find that few, if any, older apartments had a shower or bath…and the toilet was outside of the apartment, unheated, down the hall, and shared by the people who lived on that floor! No fun to go pee in the middle of the night in January, trust me! I did pay to have a shower installed in my kitchen, which was quite a luxury at the time. And there was lots of hot water - strange little contraption hooked up to gas heaters that created hot water only when you needed it.
However, every neighborhood had public baths…and I can remember paying a small fee to have a private little room, with a huge bathtub, with hot water, and climbing into it, relaxing and reading my book. You paid about fifty cents for half an hour, and I would pay in advance for at least an hour.
So yes, I believe almost everyone on earth would, and does, appreciate the feel of warm water cascading over their naked bodies.