My wife showers almost every morning. I do not. At publication time, I am actually unclear on the last time I showered. I know I took one Saturday. I think that was the last time.
Joining me in skipping a Sunday shower was Syracuse football coach Fran Brown, whose team gave up 313 yards rushing in a 37-31 loss to Boston College on the same day I took my most recent shower. During a Monday press conference, Brown revealed that after losses, he is so despondent he does not shower. “I just brush my teeth,” he said. “I don’t deserve soap. I don’t deserve to do all that … winners get washed.” Brown says he can’t sleep in the same bed as his wife because he smells after losses. He finally showered Monday morning.
My wife has not banished me to the couch this week, and my Saturday actually went pretty well. But I sympathize with Brown all the same. The reason I do not always shower is because I have a son who has been controlling my life and schedule for the last 11 months. It has been indescribably rewarding, but my life is different now. Showering is now a luxury rather than a habit. It’s not about punishing myself after losses so much. I now shower after victories.
The wins do not have to be major, but my son dictates my shower habits. I might even plan to take a shower after I put him down to bed, or when my wife is playing with him and I have a spare moment. But then a loss happens. My son has had kennel cough since starting day care in the fall, and maybe he coughs and all the food comes up and suddenly it's like I've allowed him to rush for 313 yards against me. Maybe he won’t go down for his nap. Or maybe after he goes to bed, I decide I am too freaking tired to do anything but lie down on the couch and see if the two women who live in a van on 90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way have figured out their internet situation yet. (They have.)
Regular bathing has only been a part of U.S. history since indoor plumbing. “In the early nineteenth century few Americans bathed, and according to popular sentiment those who did risked dissipation and ill health,” Jacqueline S. Wilkie wrote in the 1986 Journal of Social History article “Submerged Sensuality: Technology and Perceptions of Bathing.” There were attempts to convince people of bathing's utility once it became habitual for some. In 1803 Count Rumford, who said he bathed every three days, wrote that warm bathing was a treat: “I regularly found that I had a better appetite for dinner on those days when I bathed, than on those when I did not bathe—and also that I had a better digestion; and better spirits; and was stronger to endure fatigue; and less sensible to cold in the afternoon and evening.” Rumford was a loyalist commander during the Revolutionary War. He was rightly ignored.
Wilkie writes that it was rich people in England—like, say, the traitor Rumford—who first began to exhibit more regular bathing habits. Rudimentary showers were an option by around 1830, and influential writers soon began encouraging regular washing. They generally also espoused quack theories about diseases, and soap was almost universally discouraged. The masses didn’t deserve soap. But they were right on the big issue.
Bathing caught on for other reasons, though. Wilkie convincingly argues it won acceptance not because of worries about cleanliness but because of American prudishness. “Cold water spas provided female communalism, sexually charged atmospheres, and an acceptable method of satisfying submerged sensuality,” she writes. “Similarly, the cold plunge that bath advisors lauded made one acutely aware of one’s body without seeming self-indulgent.” This is going to be my new excuse for not having showered in a few days: I do not want to be too self-indulgent. I'm not sure this will convince anyone who has read my work.
The Orange are 6-3 this season, so Brown is showering more often than I am. They head to Berkeley this weekend to play Cal. For his players’ sake, I hope they win and Brown can grab a shower after the game. It’ll make the flight home a lot more pleasant for everyone. Hopefully by then, I’ll have had the chance to become more acutely aware of my body, too.
