LL-L "Lifestyles" 2005.08.19 (02) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 19.AUG.2005 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Lifestyles" 2005.08.18 (08) [E]

Yes, nowadays, everyone under sixty or so takes a daily shower here
(in the Netherlands), but only about 25-30 years ago, when I was a small
kid, I think we went to the bath tub only twice a week or so.
But that didn't mean we didn't wash ourselves, we just used a wet
washcloth and some soap to do the job.
I think very many elderly people still do it this way.
I don't remember how often we changed our clothes, but probably not so
much more often.
In the eighties, this changed, and we started to have daily showers in the
morning before going to school or work.
And that counts for everyone I know, so a silent cultural bathing
revolution must have happened in the mean time.
Not that it's so much healthier... skipping a day once in a while is much
better for the skin, and other things, but maybe not for the odor...

Ingmar Rordinkholder

>From: Ben J. Bloomgren <godsquad at cox.net>
>Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2005.08.18 (02) [E]
>
>I meant it litterally, people that don't wash themselves ;) Or maybe once
a
>month.
>
>Diederik, your post made me think of an experience that a former coworker
>had with his Dutch great-aunt. She and her husband visited their family
here
>in Arizona. They stayed for six weeks, and they took a grand total of one
>shower. He said that it was unbelievable to smell their place. He said
that
>the young people in the Netherlands know how to use bath tubs and showers,
>but he said that his great-aunt and great-uncle are in their eighties.
What
>is your experience with that as well as the others on the list?
>Ben
>
>----------
>
>From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Lifestyles
>
>Hi, Ben!
>
>I hope you don't mind me jumping in here.
>
>As far as I know, this bathing thing or the scarcity thereof is an old-
time
>thing, preserved especially among elderly rural inhabitants who didn't
>change old-time ways despite modern conveniences.  It is not
>country-specific, though Americans (including most Latin Americans),
>Canadians and Australians notice it most often with Europeans, especially
>with North Europeans, that they bathe and shower less frequently.  But
this
>will soon be a thing of the past, since people middle-aged and younger
take
>advantage of modern facilities and have hygienic habits like those of
their
>overseas relatives.
>
>In the olden days, very few people had bathrooms, and showers were even
>rarer.  They had outhouses if they were lucky, hardly ever had running
water
>inside their houses even less than a hundred years ago.  Bathing used to
be
>a real pain in the buttensky: you'd have to drag the old metal tub inside
>the house, usually into the kitchen, lug water from a well or pump, heat
it
>in large pots on the wood or coal stove, pour it into the tub ... It was
>such a production that it rarely happened more than once a week, usually
>Saturday nights in preparation for church the next morning (and thank
>goodness for that). More than one family member tended to use the same
>water, usually just topped up with some more hot water ...  Why more so in
>Northern Europe?  Well, it's pretty darn cold there much of the year, and
>many people didn't have enough fuel for that sort of "luxury."  Until the
>late 19th century the same applied to the aristocracy and the wealthy,
hence
>much need for perfumes and other masking agents.  You'll find very similar
>conditions among other cold weather cultures, especially in arctic regions
>and among desert and steppe nomads as well as in high altitude cultures
>(such as the Himalayas and the Andes), as I have had to learn on several
>trips (such as on crowded overland buses).
>
>It is not as though it was much different in North America and Australia.
>European pioneers lived pretty much the same way.  Many of those pioneer
>cabins stood in the middle of nowhere in icy, windswept places of, say,
>North Dacota or Alberta.  You wouldn't have found bathing facilities in
>them, or even outside them.  Why, some old-time physicians even went
around
>telling people that too much bathing was bad for their health!  Cowboys
>tended to take a real bath at the end of a cattle drive, when they were in
>town and had a couple of dimes for booze and for a shave and a bath at the
>barber's.  Americans were just ahead of Europe later on, in the early 20th
>century.  In the warmer parts of the Americas and in most of Australia a
>great deal of sweating called for more bathing, and it wasn't a big deal
to
>take cold dips in the old billabong or whatever.  Indigenous Americans and
>Siberians tended to be tougher lots.  They took cold dips in icy rivers
and
>lakes, and they also tended to be less afraid, or not afraid at all, of
>nudity, thus did not have to sneak around to find rare moments of privacy
>and then consider several remaining layers of clothing "undress" ...
>
>You still find remnants of an ancient sweat-lodge and cold dip cultures, a
>type of religious bathing culture, among Finns, Karelians, Estonian,
>Livians, Veps and Saami as a part of their ancestral Siberian heritage,
thus
>non-European heritage, anomalies in old-time Northern Europe.  I strongly
>suspect that North Europeans owe the Finnic peoples (and probably also the
>Hungarians) thanks for their influences in this regard.  (I've never felt
>cleaner, healthier and more rested than when I stayed in Finland. Jumala
>siunatkoon Suomea!)
>
>Regards,
>Reinhard/Ron

----------

From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Lifestyles" 2005.08.18 (08) [E]


Ron wrote in reply to our Ben Bloomgren:
"As far as I know, this bathing thing or the scarcity thereof is an old-time 
thing, preserved especially among elderly rural inhabitants who didn't 
change old-time ways despite modern conveniences. It is not 
country-specific, though Americans (including most Latin Americans),
Canadians and Australians notice it most often with Europeans, especially 
with North Europeans, that they bathe and shower less frequently."

I cannot see this applying to any Europeans who migrated to any of these 
places after the 1950s, after internal bathrooms with plumbing had become 
commonplace. Obviously slurs have long life spans, but I do not think it is 
accurate to say that North Europeans "bathe and shower less frequently" than 
Australians. In my experience there is little difference between the two 
groups in relation to overall hygiene attitudes - in fact, if anything, 
Northern Europeans shower more frequently than Australians in their fi! rst 
few years, because of a need to cool off in what is to them a hot, sweaty 
and sticky climate.

One cultural difference between North Europeans and Australians (and North 
Americans) in relation to bathing I have noticed is that Australians (and 
North Americans) take unnecessarily lengthy showers, usually about twenty 
minutes (in the case of Australians) and half an hour (in the case of those 
from the United States). (Most North Europeans I know take between five and 
ten minutes). In a country as dry as Australia, this is a particularly 
mindless abuse of water. But then in relation to water my experience is that 
Australians do not feel they should conserve, and that to suggest otherwise 
to them is an insult to the Australian way of life.

Perhaps the "pommie shower" characterisation has persisted because North 
Europeans take shorter showers than dinky-di Australians - i.e., in Au! 
stralian minds, short showers are associated with uncleanliness?

Go raibh maith agaibh,

Criostóir.

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Lifestyles

Críostóir,

I didn't say or mean to imply that there are differences *now*, was just 
guessing that the folks Ben was talking about were "dinosaurs."  What Ingmar 
writes above is also pretty much my experience, and I guess it's a worldwide 
thing, only that some areas and people change faster than others.

I personally know a Mongolian (from "Inner" Mongolia), a few Tibetans and a 
Yupik family from the Alaskan north coast, all of them in the Seattle area, 
and I have been to their native environments, very harsh environments 
indeed.  All of them grew up "old-style" but have totally adapted their 
bathing habits to the "modern" one in this area.  If you live as a nomad on 
the Mongolian or Tibetan plains, out of reach of rivers and lakes, icy winds 
howling across the land most of the year, I bet you wouldn't relish the 
thought of bathing very often even if there's a brook running somewhere 
close by.  And this is how it is now and will be for quite some time to 
come.  In most cases only urbanization with its modern facilities can change 
this.

However, on the whole, I believe that most of the talk about other people's 
hygienic habits is based on prejudice-laden rumors.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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