Coming Out Stories Pt. 1: Cleanliness is Next to Godliness

This is Part One is a series of three essays that I wrote maybe a year ago. They have nothing to do with food, or cooking, and even farming is a little bit of a stretch. But Fish in the Water isn’t just about food and farming, it’s about getting back in the water, about being truly ourselves again. And in that sense this fits in perfectly. Apologies in advance for the length.

Though I’ve stopped shaving, stopped wearing makeup, and more or less stopped wearing deodorant, I still shower. Not very often, given, but often enough- twice a week, usually- and I think this is a lot. If I had my way, I’d probably shower once a week or so. I know plenty of people who do, and when I’m around them it’s perfectly normal to have dirty feet and smell like a human.

But this is still apparently not enough to satisfy the general population with which I regularly interact. Often I am sitting with a group of people and the subject of showering comes up, typically with girls, and they will all say how glad they are that their boyfriends shower three times a day because god, can you imagine? Otherwise they would just be sweaty and then they would smell. Boys are hairy, and this apparently means they smell more.

I typically fail to mention in these conversations that I sweat heavily almost constantly, no matter the weather (it’s a family thing) AND I don’t shave, and yet, somehow, manage not to smell. At least, no one remarks on my smell, at least until such time as I’ve mentioned that I only shower twice a week. And then the looks of shock, I think, prove that indeed, I smell no worse than any other person. I imagine if I am smelling, people would have a sudden look of understanding rather than shock when I reveal my hygiene habits.

But after I do reveal my habits (typically when I am staying at someone’s house, and they will leave towels out for me to shower, and after three days discover the towels untouched), people constantly feel the need to remark on my hygiene. Not strangers, certainly. But many people I know, who seem to be personally offended by my choice. “When’s the last time you showered?” they will ask pointedly. “Have you washed your hair recently?”

Well, no. But what the hell do you care? I puzzled over this question for some time. Why DO people care if I don’t shower, especially if I barely smell any different from them? (And in my opinion, smell much better. I prefer not to smell like chemical bath.) I can only imagine that there is something engrained in our culture’s psyche that places a high value on cleanliness (and I’m sure all the brainwashing advertising doesn’t help). After all, cleanliness is next to godliness… which means what, exactly? That you are closer to God if you shower? God wants you to be clean? I doubt this is a major factor in the minds of most modern people, and yet the phrase is still in common use.

I was thinking about it one morning (when I hadn’t showered for perhaps a week and a half and was wondering if this made me dirty- I didn’t feel particularly dirty) and it occurred to me that this is another of those holdover Western world hang-ups from long before Christianity even came into existence. Ever since people have become obsessed with rationality, order, control over the natural world, and all the other trappings of civilization, they have done their best to place themselves in very distinct contrast to the natural world they’ve strove to leave behind. Think of it this way. If you aren’t showering, you aren’t actually dirty, unless you go out and roll around in the dirt, in which case, by all means, wash the dirt off. Otherwise there is nothing on you but sweat and the oils of your skin. You aren’t going to smell like anything but yourself. Yet to do so places you in the same category as an animal- animals don’t wash (actually many of them do, cats come to mind), animals smell like musk and sweat and skin. But humans aren’t animals, of course, humans are above all that, humans are supposed to be somehow better than that- something which we feel the need to prove by smelling like a rainshower (we’ve labeled this a “clean” smell). Not to mention that if you have dirt on you, by which I mean actual dirt, you are probably a laborer, and unfortunately we still carry the age-old prejudice that rich and important people are the ones who can stay the cleanest, because they can afford to pay someone to do all the dirty work for them.

But this is all artificial- as artificial, in fact, as staying inside all day, never seeing the sun or feeling the effects of the weather, because by god we’ve got air conditioning and we’re going to use it, we want temperature control, control over the lights, over when we sleep (pills), how our bodies function (more pills), where we go and when and how, and with God as our witness we will gain control over the way we look and how we smell, by surgery and any other means we can invent (have you stopped to think about some of the extremes people go to in order to remove hair? Lasers? Having it all yanked out by machine on a regular basis?).

There is really only one time I can think of when sweat is considered not only to be acceptable, but down right attractive. During sex, so far as I know, very few people stop to think, “by god my partner smells awful, they are so sweaty I just can’t stand it.” If they are thinking this they probably don’t enjoy sex very much either. But even in movies, when sex is glorified to a point that looks completely unrealistic, the actors have been sprayed down to look gloriously sweaty in the midst of their passion. And during actual sex, the smell of your partner is intoxicating. And by that I mean their actual smell, which is their pheromones coming through their sweat.

That’s all well and good for sex, I imagine most people will say, but not the rest of the time. Well, why not? Are we afraid that if we smell like that all the time, if we can meet one another and smell not all the same, like rainshowers or flowers or steel or whatever body sprays are supposed to smell like, but like very distinct and individual human beings (as members of the animal kingdom), we would just be thinking of sex all the time? This probably has quite a lot to do with it, because even though sex has sneakily made headway at regaining its status as an acceptable and enjoyable human behavior (so long as it’s being used to sell something), it’s still frowned upon to be open about it. You would never call into work and tell them you’re late because you’ve been having great sex. You would never tell your boss how attractive your partner is, or tell someone you’ve just met that you just love to have sex on the kitchen floor. And many, many people still feel that sex is absolutely shameful: that it should be relegated to marriage, and only used to produce children. Never for recreation. Never for the sheer joy of it.

And so we still repress our instincts. Part of that is by disguising our natural smells, because while sex has steadily become more acceptable, smelling like sweat absolutely has not. By god, what would happen if we went around smelling each other all the time?

If cleanliness is next to godliness, maybe being dirty is next to being alive.