Laundry day epiphany

[eyesup]

Unless you are sweating, a normal day’s wearing will only result in accumulated dead skin on the clothing. Which can be shaken or brushed out. Soiled clothing is a different matter. I’ve heard advocates of water and energy conservation stick to their guns on bathing and clothing. Both have a direct effect on people’s self image which a bigger roadblock to innovation than most of us realize.

I find it sort of humorous.

Duane

[eyesup]

Also once upon a time, a once a week bath was considered sufficient.

This reminded me of a movie, “Will Penny” (one of my favorite movies) that illustrated this in a conversation between Charlton Heston and Joan Hackett.

Catherine:  How often do you bathe?
Will:           Well, eight or nine times. It depends.
Catherine:  On what?
Will:           The weather.
Catherine:  Eight or nine times a month?
Will:           Eight or nine times a month? A year!
Catherine:  A year?
Will:             Well sure. You have a real good one when you finish the shove up north, like at the                   
                   hotel in Alfred. Then one or two in the winter, if you don't catch your death. Then a
                   couple in the spring and one more good one before you start the shove up again. The 
                   rest depends on what kind of water you hit on the drive. Well, what's wrong with that? 
                   That's as much as anybody!

Heston played a rider on a cattle drive in the late 19th century American west. So bathing only eight times a year was probably common only on the frontier. I have read, like BlueTrain, that once a week in a developed area was a regular practice.

Duane

[eyesup]

I ran across this a long time back. A Short History of Bathing I’ve forgotten why I needed it. But there it is.

Some strange rituals regarding the bath.

Duane

[Greenbare Woods]

The 202 arguments

I'm lost.  What's a "202" argument? 

tell us of reports of women in the British isles greeting and entertaining guests nude, eve strangers passing through. They had stripped off by a warm, dry fire, in a cottage in the countryside and stayed that way. Guess who generally had to wash the clothing by hand?
Jbee

European peasants and even more wealthy folks often went around naked until the invading monotheists "put clothes on the natives" as they have done everywhere. 

Laundry has always been claimed by women.  My old feminist wife still gets some sort of emotional satisfaction doing laundry.  The laundry room is HER TURF!  And don't you forget it. 

Bob

[jbeegoode]

The 202 arguments

I'm lost.  What's a "202" argument? 

tell us of reports of women in the British isles greeting and entertaining guests nude, eve strangers passing through. They had stripped off by a warm, dry fire, in a cottage in the countryside and stayed that way. Guess who generally had to wash the clothing by hand?
Jbee

European peasants and even more wealthy folks often went around naked until the invading monotheists "put clothes on the natives" as they have done everywhere. 

Laundry has always been claimed by women.  My old feminist wife still gets some sort of emotional satisfaction doing laundry.  The laundry room is HER TURF!  And don't you forget it. 

Bob

  I think that his was during the 18th century, early 19th. I need to dig in to be sure.

SOrry! Sorry!  "205 Arguments and Observations In Support of Naturism"
http://www.naturistsociety.com/tns/resources/images/205ARGUE.pdf

[BlueTrain]

"European peasants and even more wealthy folks often went around naked until the invading monotheists "put clothes on the natives" as they have done everywhere."

Doubtful.

[Peter S]

Religion generally gets the blame for any moral system that gets imposed, and certainly moral dictat (in the name of whatever god is involved) is a useful control mechanism for the priesthood to employ. The monotheists do seem to be stricter in this regard - if there are multiple gods available then there’s a worshippers’ market; don’t like one set of rules, move to a different lot. While I don’t think everyone was running around naked before the missionaries arrived, not in Northern Europe, at any rate, too cold, it seems likely that being naked or being seen naked was no big deal. A lot of battles were fought by naked troops, swimming would not involve cover-ups.

However, the peasantry would probably not be allowed to see their betters naked - the story of Lady Godiva, for instance, is that while she was riding naked through Coventry the populace were told to turn their backs (all did except “peeping” Tom). But we need to be wary of word usage and translations, and the “nakedness” of Lady G is these days often taken to mean without all her finery and jewels that stood her apart as nobility, and her nakedness was just dressing down to show solidarity with the poor.