It’s an open secret in the annals of the internet that some Hollywood celebs choose to skip taking baths for days and don’t use any kind of deodorant. Recently, more stars (such as Jake Gyllenhaal in a Vanity Fair interview for a new Prada fragrance he’s promoting, no less) have come out saying that they don’t believe in regular bathing schedules. This, in turn, prompted other celebs to give disclaimers that they aren’t part of the anti-shower club.
In an interview with Access Hollywood today, Aug. 10, Jason Momoa set the record straight when the “trend” got brought up. “I’m not starting any trends. I shower. I’m Aquaman. I’m in the f*cking water. Don’t worry about it,” said Momoa cheekily.
On Aug. 7, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson gave us a breakdown of his daily showers (yes, multiple!) when a fan asked him to confirm their guess. “Nope, I’m the opposite of a ‘not washing themselves’ celeb. Shower (cold) when I roll outta bed to get my day rollin’. Shower (warm) after my workout before work. Shower (hot) after I get home from work. Face wash, body wash, exfoliate and I sing (off key) in the shower,” he wrote in a tweet. We love a guy who exfoliates.
You might have also seen a circulating clip of Chris Evans saying that he “showers all the time” from a 2020 interview with the Today Show. It seems safe to assume that he hasn’t broken the habit… yet.
For those of you still wondering what prompted all of this, it’s because of a TMI that Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis shared during an episode of the Armchair Expert podcast.
Kunis said, “I don’t wash my body with soap every day. But I wash pits and tits and holes and soles. I didn’t have hot water growing up as a child, so I didn’t shower much anyway. But when I had children, I also didn’t wash them every day.” Kucther added, “Now, here’s the thing: If you can see the dirt on them, clean them. Otherwise, there’s no point.”
Dax Shepard (who co-hosted the podcast) and Kristen Bell echoed their friends’ sentiment on “The View.” The couple stated that they don’t always wash their kids as well. “I’m a big fan of waiting for the stink. Once you catch a whiff, that’s biology’s way of letting you know you need to clean it up,” said Bell.
As mentioned earlier, Gyllenhaal has also shared his thoughts on baths. “More and more I find bathing to be less necessary, at times,” he told Vanity Fair. “But I do also think that there’s a whole world of not bathing that is also really helpful for skin maintenance, and we naturally clean ourselves.”
Now, we know that personal hygiene can be a luxury and something that can be difficult for people with mental and physical illnesses. But privileged folk actively choosing and getting away with not taking baths is evidence of classist and racist double standards.
Public health and preventive medicine physician and author Dr. James Hamblin talks about how excessive use of soap and skincare products are harming our health and the environment in his book “Clean.” However, he did write in his prologue, “It was possible for me to stop showering in large part because I was born with extra credit in the ingrained currency of acceptability in America: I’m an ambulatory white male who appears generally healthy…Even when I’m not showered or groomed, I’m unduly likely to still be seen as competent or professional or welcome in a restaurant. In other words, I barely have to do anything to be seen as clean.”
Well, we’re just onlookers on the lives of anti-shower celebs. We can only hope that they’re using their non-showering privileges to do no harm and that they don’t inadvertently start a poor hygiene movement. We don’t want another plague on our hands.
Photo courtesy of Dwayne Johnson’s Twitter page
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