5 ms·

It's true. Europeans of that era did not bathe everyday. My stepfather escaped nazi Germany, and moved to the us in the 40s. He grudgingly adapted to daily bat

It's true. Europeans of that era did not bathe everyday. My stepfather escaped nazi Germany, and moved to the us in the 40s. He grudgingly adapted to daily bathing (my mother's insistence), but remarked how very American that is. He was very 20th century European, for sure.

coldtea 5y ago
>It's true. Europeans of that era did not bathe everyday. Americans of a very close earlier ear didn't bathe everyday either...
- eplanit 5y ago
  That's true. It was the 1970s when we were pressuring the stepfather.
- jhugo 5y ago
  Many Americans of the exact same era probably didn't bathe every day.
  - eplanit 5y ago
    And true in Europe today. Ever been on a train in Germany in the summertime?
    - techrat 5y ago
      Ever been on the L in Chicago in a car without working air conditioning? Spoiler: Everybody stinks.
      - eplanit 5y ago
        Wrong. Try Japan. They're clean, polite, and courteous. Crowded trains in August (like all year) are surprisingly absent of body odor (and litter, and noisy people, ...). Different folks are indeed different in some ways.
        ThePadawan 5y ago
        Well if you want to compare Japan to other countries, you should be aware that the fear of being a burden to others due to one's body odor is a very Japanese phenomenon [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taijin_kyofusho https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taijin_kyofusho
        conceptme 5y ago
        Asians sweat less and their sweat does not stink as much for some reason.
        yarcob 5y ago
        I read that body odor is controlled by the same gene as the one for ear wax. People with wet/creamy ear wax smell. People with dry/crumbly earwax don't smell. I'm not sure if it's true in general, but it's true for me and my partner. One of our kids has creamy ear wax, and the other has crumbly ear wax. I'm curious if only one of them will need deodorant once they get to puberty... Genetics is fun.
        trepanne 5y ago
        https://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mythearwax.html https://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mythearwax.html
        wrycoder 5y ago
        Didn't the Asians refer to the Portuguese as "garlic eaters"? When one eats garlic, the scent comes out in the sweat - so you can smell them coming. From my own experience, if I eat garlic and later scrub my head with a wet washcloth, I can smell the garlic on the washcloth.
        mixmastamyk 5y ago
        Sweat doesn’t smell. Bacteria strains common in Asia don’t produce stinky compounds.
      - ThePadawan 5y ago
        As a German, I want to add that on German trains, "in the summer" implicitly means "without working air conditioning" ;). (Sort-of-jokingly. On ICEs, you're most likely to actually freeze body parts off due to the harsh AC. On local trains, you'll dehydrate due to excessive sweating. There is no middle ground.)
tinco 5y ago
(European here) my grandparents bathed I think once per week, we often joked about this in the family. My uncle who is a commercial construction inspector/engineer arranged for a full bathroom model a couple years before they died. When we went to sell the house he complained the bathroom was unused and looked the same as the day he signed off on it. Despite this, they never smelled bad to me, they certainly had a recognizable smell, but it wasn't foul. Contrasting with myself, if I don't shower for a day, I'll get remarks from my girlfriend the next afternoon, and on the third day I smell so foul I can smell it myself. I also get more randomly itchy. I wonder if by showering daily I'm somehow tampering with my bodies ability to fend off some foul smelling bacteria or something. Besides fearing to smell bad for a couple weeks (months?) to find out, I also enjoy showering to start my day fresh and I like the way it makes my hair feel.
- fouc 5y ago
  There might be other factors too, like changing into pajamas at night (possibly changing underwear or no underwear), and then fresh clothes in the morning? As for hair, there's a whole "no shampoo" movement, takes a few weeks for the scalp to adjust.
  - 0des 5y ago
    To what extent is someone's "smell" a product of their local dermal biome and what they've been inoculated with, so to speak, via sharing deodorant, clothing, activity level, diet, etc?
- viburnum 5y ago
  Yes https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/hygiene-is-overrated/612235/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/hygiene...
- sgerenser 5y ago
  A young Steve Jobs famously thought that as long as you ate a certain diet, you could skip showering/deodorant and still smell ok. His coworkers/manager at Atari did not agree and put him on the night shift: https://techpp.com/2017/02/24/steve-jobs-facts-you-might-not-know/#4-He-had-to-work-night-shifts-at-Atari-because-he-rarely-bathed https://techpp.com/2017/02/24/steve-jobs-facts-you-might-not...
zorked 5y ago
About 1/3 of Germans still don't bathe every day. 1/6 of the French don't bathe every day.
daddylongstroke 5y ago
To this day I don't bathe or shower everyday (maybe once a week, or two weeks?). I can't understand this American obsession with running away from your own real self. Why all this intollerance of being and smelling like a human being?
- vb6sp6 5y ago
  This isn't rocket science. Bad odors are offensive. If you stepped in dog shit, you'd (hopefully) clean you shoe and wouldn't get on a soap box about "running away from the true natural smells of nature" or some other nonsense.
  - daddylongstroke 5y ago
    Meh! It's just shit homie! I'm surrounded by it all day every day (no I don't clean shit off my shoes either). "Bad" odors are entirely subjective. Soap box? Last I checked this is an internet forum for seemingly highly sensitive people.
    - vb6sp6 5y ago
      That's gross
      - daddylongstroke 5y ago
        Maybe? Gross is not a concept I was raised with. I also raise goats and am often told I smell like a buck in rut (because I do, as I'm always around them). Was always confused after I moved to the US what all the "ewwww!" screaming from my peers was about. What is hoped to be achieved by expressing something like that I wondered? Putting a person in the "other", or "not good enough", "not clean enough", "not wealthy enough" category? Bizarre anti-social behavior in my opinion.
        vb6sp6 5y ago
        Having dog shit on your shoes is gross. Smelling like a goat is also gross.

coldtea 5y ago

>It's true. Europeans of that era did not bathe everyday. Americans of a very close earlier ear didn't bathe everyday either...

eplanit 5y ago
That's true. It was the 1970s when we were pressuring the stepfather.
jhugo 5y ago
Many Americans of the exact same era probably didn't bathe every day.
- eplanit 5y ago
  And true in Europe today. Ever been on a train in Germany in the summertime?
  - techrat 5y ago
    Ever been on the L in Chicago in a car without working air conditioning? Spoiler: Everybody stinks.
    - eplanit 5y ago
      Wrong. Try Japan. They're clean, polite, and courteous. Crowded trains in August (like all year) are surprisingly absent of body odor (and litter, and noisy people, ...). Different folks are indeed different in some ways.
      - ThePadawan 5y ago
        Well if you want to compare Japan to other countries, you should be aware that the fear of being a burden to others due to one's body odor is a very Japanese phenomenon [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taijin_kyofusho https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taijin_kyofusho
      - conceptme 5y ago
        Asians sweat less and their sweat does not stink as much for some reason.
        yarcob 5y ago
        I read that body odor is controlled by the same gene as the one for ear wax. People with wet/creamy ear wax smell. People with dry/crumbly earwax don't smell. I'm not sure if it's true in general, but it's true for me and my partner. One of our kids has creamy ear wax, and the other has crumbly ear wax. I'm curious if only one of them will need deodorant once they get to puberty... Genetics is fun.
        trepanne 5y ago
        https://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mythearwax.html https://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mythearwax.html
        wrycoder 5y ago
        Didn't the Asians refer to the Portuguese as "garlic eaters"? When one eats garlic, the scent comes out in the sweat - so you can smell them coming. From my own experience, if I eat garlic and later scrub my head with a wet washcloth, I can smell the garlic on the washcloth.
        mixmastamyk 5y ago
        Sweat doesn’t smell. Bacteria strains common in Asia don’t produce stinky compounds.
    - ThePadawan 5y ago
      As a German, I want to add that on German trains, "in the summer" implicitly means "without working air conditioning" ;). (Sort-of-jokingly. On ICEs, you're most likely to actually freeze body parts off due to the harsh AC. On local trains, you'll dehydrate due to excessive sweating. There is no middle ground.)

tinco 5y ago

(European here) my grandparents bathed I think once per week, we often joked about this in the family. My uncle who is a commercial construction inspector/engineer arranged for a full bathroom model a couple years before they died. When we went to sell the house he complained the bathroom was unused and looked the same as the day he signed off on it. Despite this, they never smelled bad to me, they certainly had a recognizable smell, but it wasn't foul. Contrasting with myself, if I don't shower for a day, I'll get remarks from my girlfriend the next afternoon, and on the third day I smell so foul I can smell it myself. I also get more randomly itchy. I wonder if by showering daily I'm somehow tampering with my bodies ability to fend off some foul smelling bacteria or something. Besides fearing to smell bad for a couple weeks (months?) to find out, I also enjoy showering to start my day fresh and I like the way it makes my hair feel.

fouc 5y ago
There might be other factors too, like changing into pajamas at night (possibly changing underwear or no underwear), and then fresh clothes in the morning? As for hair, there's a whole "no shampoo" movement, takes a few weeks for the scalp to adjust.
- 0des 5y ago
  To what extent is someone's "smell" a product of their local dermal biome and what they've been inoculated with, so to speak, via sharing deodorant, clothing, activity level, diet, etc?
viburnum 5y ago
Yes https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/hygiene-is-overrated/612235/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/hygiene...
sgerenser 5y ago
A young Steve Jobs famously thought that as long as you ate a certain diet, you could skip showering/deodorant and still smell ok. His coworkers/manager at Atari did not agree and put him on the night shift: https://techpp.com/2017/02/24/steve-jobs-facts-you-might-not-know/#4-He-had-to-work-night-shifts-at-Atari-because-he-rarely-bathed https://techpp.com/2017/02/24/steve-jobs-facts-you-might-not...

zorked 5y ago

About 1/3 of Germans still don't bathe every day. 1/6 of the French don't bathe every day.

daddylongstroke 5y ago

To this day I don't bathe or shower everyday (maybe once a week, or two weeks?). I can't understand this American obsession with running away from your own real self. Why all this intollerance of being and smelling like a human being?

vb6sp6 5y ago
This isn't rocket science. Bad odors are offensive. If you stepped in dog shit, you'd (hopefully) clean you shoe and wouldn't get on a soap box about "running away from the true natural smells of nature" or some other nonsense.
- daddylongstroke 5y ago
  Meh! It's just shit homie! I'm surrounded by it all day every day (no I don't clean shit off my shoes either). "Bad" odors are entirely subjective. Soap box? Last I checked this is an internet forum for seemingly highly sensitive people.
  - vb6sp6 5y ago
    That's gross
    - daddylongstroke 5y ago
      Maybe? Gross is not a concept I was raised with. I also raise goats and am often told I smell like a buck in rut (because I do, as I'm always around them). Was always confused after I moved to the US what all the "ewwww!" screaming from my peers was about. What is hoped to be achieved by expressing something like that I wondered? Putting a person in the "other", or "not good enough", "not clean enough", "not wealthy enough" category? Bizarre anti-social behavior in my opinion.
      - vb6sp6 5y ago
        Having dog shit on your shoes is gross. Smelling like a goat is also gross.