Many years ago, I wrote a rather lengthy and in-depth column on what I consider to be the fascinating subject of individual shower routines, and when I was finished, I was pretty sure I had covered just about everything one would ever care to know about how slavish each of us can be to our own personal showering habits. In that column, I discussed in great detail the rather complicated scrubbing and toweling-off procedures each of us seem to have and how they never really change once we have established them. In fact, I bet if you really think about it for a few minutes, you will realize that since you first picked up a bar of soap and a washcloth (for those of us who use a washcloth) you have been using the very same step-by-step showering and toweling off routine forever and that changing any aspect of it is almost impossible to do. I even called a trusted friend and showering fanatic to confirm my theory that our showering routines never change only to be told, “Sorry, Daryl, but anything that goes on while I’m in the bathtub is strictly between me and my rubber duckie.”
Anyway, just when I thought there was absolutely nothing new to be learned about how men and women go about getting themselves clean, the following information was recently presented to the scientific showering community, and it goes a little something like this:
How a woman showers:
She takes off her clothes and puts them in separate “lights” and “darks” hampers; she strolls to the bathroom wearing a long dressing gown. If she sees her husband along the way, she covers up any exposed flesh and steps up her pace; she looks at her physique in the mirror and sticks out her stomach so she can worry even more about how much weight see thinks she has gained; she gets in the shower and looks for a facecloth, arm cloth, leg cloth, and pumice stone; she washes her hair with Cucumber and Lamfrey conditioner shampoo with 83 added vitamins and then repeats the whole process again; she conditions her hair with any number of enriching and enhancing products and leaves them on her hair for 15 minutes while the hot water continues to run and the PG&E bill goes through the roof; she gets extremely angry when she realizes her husband/and or children have been using her apricot facial scrub; she washes the rest of her body with Ginger Nut and Jaffa Cake body wash; she rinses the conditioner off her hair (this takes another 15 minutes to do correctly and completely); she shaves her underarms and legs and notes that bikini line waxing will need to be done in the not too distant future; she screams loudly when her husband can’t wait any longer to use the bathroom and flushes the toilet; she finally turns off the shower, squeegees all the wet surfaces, and sprays mold spots with Tilex; she gets out of the shower and dries off with a very soft towel the size of a small Pacific island; she wraps her hair in a super absorbent second towel and carefully checks her entire body for the remotest sign of a zit and immediately attacks it when found. She also checks very carefully for any new stretch marks; she returns to the bedroom wearing a long dressing gown and a “Queen of the Nile” towel on her head; if she sees her husband along the way, she covers up any exposed flesh and rushes to the bedroom to begin the hour-long process of putting on her makeup and getting herself dressed for the day.
How a man showers:
He takes off his clothes while sitting on the edge of the bed and leaves them in a pile on the floor; he walks naked to the bathroom and if he sees his wife along the way, he moons her; he looks at his manly physique in the mirror, does a muscleman pose and completely fails to notice that his gut is twice the size it used to be; he gets in the shower and uses his hands instead of a washcloth; he quickly scrubs everything in sight, leaving hair on the soap bar for others to deal with; he tries to remember if this is the month he should put a little conditioner on his hair; he quickly rinses off and steps out of the shower, failing to notice all the water on the floor because he left the curtain hang out of the tub the whole time; he partially dries off, admires himself in the mirror one last time, and leaves the wet bath mat on the bathroom floor; he leaves the bathroom light and fan on, returns to the bedroom with a towel around his waist, and if he sees his wife along the way, he flashes her; then he throws the wet towel on the bed and yells, “Hey honey, what’s for breakfast?”