For the average American, bathing is commonplace and expected. Nearly everyone washes with some regularity, and many do so daily, as if the act were a requirement on par with eating and drinking. Natural as that fastidiousness may seem, though, it’s far from universal. Even in the developed Western world, routine bathing became a foregone conclusion only in the past century or so.
Hygiene has a long history. We live in a world of dirt — though the meaning of that word, too, has been subject to interpretation — and after living in it for 300,000 years, humans have had plenty of time to figure out what to do about said dirt. But the prescripts and conventions around bathing have varied tremendously in that time. From ancient Rome’s public baths to early-modern Europe’s water aversion or the 21st-century ubiquity of in-home tubs and showers, humanity’s relationship with bodily tidiness is anything but static.
