On a typical day the moment I step into the shower, is the time I start to think. And by now, you know what that means. A non-stop pondering of the whys, hows and what ifs of everything around me. But today the thinking did not only start in the shower, it was also about said shower. And more precisely about keeping clean in general.
I mean, have you never wondered how truly dirty a human being is? Really, think about it. I find it unbelievable how much work we need to put in just to keep our bodies acceptable to other people and even to ourselves.
To start, over the course of any given day or night our skin will produce so much oil and sweat that we need to wash every inch of it with water and soap or shower gel. That means face, arms, legs, back, front, elbows, pinkie finger and so on. And if you are female, there’s a good chance you’ll need to rub many of these areas with lotion afterwards. Or that you’ll preface the procedure with an assortment of peeling, scrubbing, rubbing or whatever it is you do with those cotton pads…
Next there’s the issue of hair. With humans, hair falls into two categories: wanted and unwanted. Most of the wanted hair resides on the top of your skull. It will, just like the rest of your body, get dirty but you can take care of that with shampoo. The downside of this, however, is that it results in your hair looking like crap – with descriptions varying from that ‘carpet’, ‘bush’, ‘German helmet’ or ‘bale of hay on top of my head’. So you’ll need to use either gel, wax, spray or all of the above to get it back into an aesthetically acceptable state.
The unwanted hair is a more complex problem, since it’s gender-specific. If you’re male, unwanted hair is found in your nose, ears, on your back and shoulders, and of course on certain regions of your face. We tend to shave these (although opinions on this do vary somewhat). If you’re female, however, unwanted hair is found not only in the aforementioned regions, but virtually everywhere that is not the top of your skull. And here is the bad news: society doesn’t really offer any other possibility than getting rid of it. And mind you, shaving is an option, but you’d better go for a more painful solution like waxing, plucking or epilating. You know, just to be sure…
Moving on, we get to finger and toe nails. Yes, over the course of 25 million years we have evolved from hairy primates to homo sapiens sapiens and basically since then we have not needed to be able to climb trees or kill rabbits with our sharpened nails, but that doesn’t keep them from growing. So every two to three weeks you’ll need to clip these. And just a point of warning: you might want to avoid clipping your fingernails with the same scissors as your toenails. Just saying. (And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about!)
Then there’s the issue with your ears and nose, which also need special cleaning strategies. In the case of your ears it’s relatively simple. You take a cotton swab and clean out whatever shade of yellow, orange or brown is in there. (Oh, don’t act disgusted, as if you don’t inspect the harvest!) The nose, however, is trickier. Actually, you need a delicate technique of applying pressure and holding a piece of cloth in front of it, to get the filth out of there. You may not realise it, but it takes us years to perfect the art of blowing our nose. Just look at how long a toddler keeps walking around with that snail trail on his upper lip!
Additionally you’ll need to take care of your teeth. Two, some say three times a day; and it involves a brush and some kind of minty paste. The minty part – and this I find quite upsetting – is, let’s face it, to get rid of any unpleasant smells. In the mouth for heaven’s sake! If you really want to go to town, you can also get some wire (for flossing) and mouth water (if the smell is really bad).
Finally, there’s the nether regions. You know, that special place where your stomach ends and your legs start. If you look down once in a while, you’ll find two things there (front and back) that’ll need quite some cleaning too. I’m not going to go into detail, just remember these simple sayings: (for the back) One more time can never hurt, and (for the front) If every man sweeps his own doorstep, the city will soon be clean.
Umpf! It was pain in the ass, pardon the pun, just to write all this stuff down, let alone do it. Oily skin, unwanted hair, toenails, bad breath, nasty privates and a smelly bum. We’re a disaster if it comes to cleanliness. And just think about the way food and drink leave our bodies! Really, couldn’t nature come up with a better solution than that? Couldn’t we like, I don’t know, shed colourless and especially odourless cubes from time to time?
Truly, if God created man in his own image, I think the old guy must be one dirty bastard…
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