Did you ever take two or three showers in a single day? Have you ever been asked, in all seriousness, “Hey man, when was the last time you took a shower?” It’s likely most of us live somewhere between these two extremes and when in doubt, my hope is that most of the people I know and come in contact with err on the side of more bathing.

But some scientists in England claim that modern-day humans are “over-bathing” and that, they say, can dry out and irritate skin, wash away the good bacteria and even heighten the risk of infection by causing small cracks in the skin. They say that as long as you wash your hands (and your junk) often enough you can skip showering most days, maybe cutting whole-body bathing to just twice a week.

They also contend that babies get washed too much and that if you don’t let the little bastards get dirty then they’ll grow up with overly sensitive skin.

It’s true that we probably shower to excess because we consider it something society demands, but there are other more practical reasons why we get wet and dry off so frequently. The most obvious is that showering is the trigger that gets the day started. Only a lazy ass rolls right out of bed and onto the Ventura Freeway. No, I’m pretty sure it’s a legal requirement, that a day does not technically commence until one has showered.

Another fairly obvious reason for showering every twenty-four hours or so is hair. Sleeping ruins hair. The only way to fix it is to get it wet and start all over. In bald societies, showering rarely happens. In a bald society no one would really ever know if you showered or not, but in a hairy society, flat, greasy hair is a dead giveaway. “Hey, have you seen Greg today, he looks different?” … “Oh yeah, his hair’s all plastered to one side of his head, he must not have showered this morning.”

So I guess everyone now needs to pick sides: A) take a shower just about every day and have your skin get infected and then fall off, or B) bathe on Mondays and Fridays only and keep your skin with all of its good bacteria. How far will you go to have nice smooth skin? Are you willing to become a lazy, smelly bastard?

Actually, I think most women shower often because they want dry skin. Yep, it’s because they all seem to really, really like putting on lotion.

I think there are a lot of things in life worse than dry, flaky skin … and most of those worse things start to happen when you tell people that showering is optional. When a guy starts to consider Christmas and Easter, not as holidays, but as the year’s only mandatory shower days, well,  it won’t matter how your skin feels because it will smell so bad you won’t want to touch it.

People will start sleeping in their clothes and that will mean that clothes washing won’t be a thing anymore. So sales of washers and dryers will tank and the last seven Sears stores will close. People will then start to consider a bunch of other things as optional. The guy that doesn’t shower doesn’t brush his teeth, he stops going to work, he goes off his meds because the catalyst for doing all of these things – the morning shower – doesn’t exist anymore. He for sure stops paying the water bill because he can’t remember the last time he used any.

Fingernails will go untrimmed. Once guys get desensitized to the stench of the unbathed human the disgusting dominoes will fall. Trash won’t get emptied and then the in-house trash can just won’t be used at all. The animals will all start living in the house, vultures and coyotes will continuously circle the residence thinking there must be roadkill nearby.

Occasional-shower guy will essentially become twinsees with homeless guy, but at least homeless guy has an excuse – he was abandoned by his parents, he’s clinically insane, he was horribly wounded in the war … occasional-shower guy has no excuse, he just wanted softer skin.

People are already highly likely to adopt antisocial behaviors, so it’s a bad idea to give them scientific permission to go off the grooming grid.

A world filled with universally soft skin and dirty little babies? It all smells a little funny to me.

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