Some things still utterly mystify me about (sweepingly generalised) Americans. Take soap, for example. In a country that was well known for the ubiquity of its showers long before the majority of us Brits gave up swimming lethargically in our own dirty bath water, people still seem to prefer soap over shower gel.
In the UK, I would assume this was some kind of a class thing - maybe like a preference for a rock of Imperial Leather over liquid soap. But here I can't figure out what it is. All I know is that when I first arrived here and went to stock my bathroom, shower gel was among the hardest bathroom product to find, relegated to just one half of a shelf in a two-floor CVS.
When I was about 11 or 12, my dad installed a shower. Before that, we'd messed around with a shower head attached to the bath taps (washing your hair meant hanging awkwardly over the side of the bath, head upside down, while you got pins and needles in your legs and developed chronic back pain). At about the same time as we got our first shower, all of our relatives decided to start giving me Body Shop 'smellies' for Christmas and birthdays. This wasn't because I smelled, I'm pretty sure, as all the girls I knew also started receiving little gift packages of shower gels and lotions in appetizing flavours like Dewberry or Satsuma, not to mention White Musk - everyone's favourite aged 11. Re-gifting of these 'smellies', I'm sorry to say, was rampant. (Boys, meanwhile, still continued to receive money or gift vouchers for birthday and Christmas presents, which I'm pretty sure they never re-gifted. This is when it began to be clear to me that Sometimes Life Is Just Not Fair.)
Anyway, my point was, as soon as we had a shower, I used shower gel. Eventually even my brothers started to receive testosterone-scented bottles of Lynx (Axe) shower gel from the same relatives that had been giving me strawberry-scented shower stuff for years. And although I have graduated to something less heavily scented, I still prefer the convenience of shower gel over soap... Is this because I'm a creature of my environment - a product of the slow introduction of daily showers in the UK, coinciding with me reaching the age of suitability for bathroom gifts? Or is there another reason why soap - so slippery, so scummy, so damned inconvenient - dominates in the U.S., while I stick to the gel stuff?
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
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9 comments:
<< shower gel was among the hardest bathroom product to find, relegated to just one half of a shelf in a two-floor CVS >>
... where it's labeled "Body Wash", no doubt.
and amazingly enough this American was just muttering to herself in Tesco yesterday... while on her hands and knees... "Why the fecking hell is the bar soap always down on the bottom shelf?!"
I have no explanation for my preference... other than the scent lingers longer in the bathroom, and I'm just rather fond of the slippery little buggers.
Shower gel is definitely better - I've never been a soap person myself. It's less fiddly and seems more hygienic.
I don't know...I've always been suspicious of shower gel/body wash. It doesn't seem like it scrubs as well.
I find quite the reverse in our house. Even in our "nice" loo, there's a bar of nice soap and a pump conatiner of liquid soap. The soap looks like it has never been used and I have to refill the hand gel thing every week. My kids only use shower gel, and I had a look and couldn't find a single bar of soap in my shower. Hmm. Wonder if it's a regional thing.
White Musk!! OMG haven't thought of that in years.
You're right about yankees and their showers. My American husband blew up my parents crappy electric shower in the UK by staying in too long. Maybe he was hoping it would teleport him back to California.
And we do have a brick of Imperial Leather in our shower. And some World Market shower gel!
Crappy electric showers... that's exactly the kind of shower my dad installed (no offense to my dad). Funnily enough, every place I've chosen to live since, I've chosen in large part on the adequacy of the shower....
Soap definitely gives you a delicious clean feeling. But having only recently discovered the frustration of attempting to clean a layer of soap scum from the bottom of a bath, there's no way I'm abandoning my gel/body wash.
I can tell you why I (American) don't care for shower gel (hand gel yes, I don't put that in the same category), but it may only be me.
Shower gel first sufaced in the USA in cheap motels, usually in a box fixed to the wall of the bath. What?! No free soaps???
During a period when I traveled extensively, and cheaply, for work, I was constantly coming across this and always glad to get home to REAL soap. So I personally associate shower gel with places that look like they rent by the hour. No idea if this applies to anyone else. :)
Not sure that your reasoning stands. American men seem to despise shower gel, but every woman I know uses it.
Some people just get aggravated because one goes through body wash so much quicker. We have both in our shower, as my husband prefers the soap.
I am an American - Californian now, orig from NY
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