This is a product for people who are concerned about the possibility of drying their face or other bits with bits of their towel which has recently dried their bits or other bits. Website here. I heard about this product through a list of 2010’s most OTT commercials over at AdWeek. (Their ad makes an analogy with using an ordinary towel and rubbing a shedding, disembodied scrotum over your face.)
I wonder if there is a significant market for this concept - and this is as someone who does take care in this regard.
First, on a rational level I know that it’s pretty silly to be preoccupied with what bits your towel has touched. After all, they are freshly cleaned bits. I don’t take a shower without cleaning up my balls and even The Spot, and don’t have the impression that as soon as my feet hit the bathmat those areas are instantly Unwholesome Vectors of Contamination. Still, I like to maintain some separation, even if it’s totally irrational.
As someone who does suffer from this admitably inexplicable aversion, it has never occurred to me that maintaining the desired separation was a problem that required anything apart from simple attention in order to solve. I use a corner of the towel to dry my scrotal sack, willy, and perineum. I avoid the corners at other times. I figure this prophylactic measure reduces my chance of contracting conjunctivitis by ~.00003% or so each time it is employed.
I note that the True Clean towel suggests that you basically reverse this method, and reserve the dead center of the towel for your Taboo Areas, which doesn’t seem terribly practical to me.
It seems to me that the only real market for these would be as gag gifts purchased by people wishing to take the piss out of those poor unfortunates unwise enough to make public declarations about their borderline-OCD towel hygiene hang-ups.
It’s idiotic pandering to germ- (and other kinds of) phobia.
My tongue has been in those places (on other people, of course, and only when I’m sure they are clean). Why should I care which parts of my freshly-laundered self hit which parts of the towel first?
Now, at the gym, when I am using other people’s stuff, I use two towels, one for the top half and one for the bottom half. This is more for convenience and modesty than hygiene, though.
Roddy
I dry my face and head first. It’s on top. Nothing is going to drip down on it. If I dry the bottom first, then my face and hair will drip on it while I’m drying them, necessitating another go on the body. Since I dry my face and head first, I don’t need to worry about getting nad germs on my face, even if I were the type to worry about such a thing, which I am not.
If you were that OCD, wouldn’t it just make sense to use a different towel every single shower? (It would be a lot of laundry, I admit, but if someone were that worried about it, I doubt they’d object.)
I use a bath towel once and wash it. I then have a clean towel that doesn’t make me smell like mildew the next shower. I would never buy that towel and I’d never use it if received as a gift.
I also have an aversion to smelling like mildew, but am equal parts frugal and lazy. I slap all the excess water off my body before stepping out of the shower, and carefully fold my towel bilaterally (so that every surface is able to wick out to open air) before placing it on the rack over the baseboard heater to dry. I could probably get a week’s use out of a towel before it started to get whiffy.
My wife, on the other hand, mops up immediately and stuffs her towel in a bunch behind the bar, so it never quite dries out. She sees no connection between this habit and her chronic yeast infections, and it is perilous to attempt to persuade her that they might easily be avoided by adding <2 seconds to her shower routine. Heart o’ my heart; Oscar to my Felix.
I am continually amazed at what people come up with. I couldn’t help thinking back to when I had three children under five…some days I couldn’t remember if I had gotten a shower that morning due to sleep deprivation, let alone worry about what bits had touched what part of my towel. Good grief. Someone needs a life.
I use a turby towel on my hair [it is fairly longish, and that sucks the water off of it and keeps it up off my body temporarily] and then use a terry robe that I just put on. I don’t rub as the thick terry sort of gently soaks the water up without stretching or scratching my skin. The water on my face gets patted off with a hand towel. I try to wash the robe and turby after the second or third shower. Between showers they get hung up near the woodstove which dries them pretty quickly in the winter, adding the humidity to the air, or on a hanger on a bar in the laundry room - where they air dry pretty quickly because the water heater keeps it pretty toasty in there even in the summer [and it is handy to the spot on the deck with the hot tub.]
I do have OCD, but contrary to popular belief, mysophobia (dirt and germs) is not a requirement nor a commonality. I adhere well to the 5 second rule, unless I can’t get to it in time, in which case it’s the 10 second rule…
Anyway, I use towels unless they stop drying, and keep the ass end away from the head end because it’s trivial to do. Most towels have tags on one end, so I use it as if the towel were a shirt and the tag is at the back of the neck. Inside top for head and chest, inside bottom for junk, and outside bottom for legs. Outside top doesn’t get used much I suppose.
No, I wouldn’t buy it, because it’s ridiculous and unnecessary. As others said - pandering to idiotic germophobia. Like those automatic soap dispensers, in case (shock, horror!) you get germs on your hands right before you wash them.
