Officially Coming Out of the Shower

A French soldier's shower contraption

A brave new exposé by The New York Times has revealed once and for all to the public that hygiene in America has gone completely OCD.  Emboldened by the courage of the individuals who stood forward for the Times, I too am ready to be recognized as one of the “unshowered and unashamed.”

Reading the Times article one could be led to believe that there are critical scientific reasons to forgo showering, washing your hair and wearing anti-persperant.  But this is like admitting that you drink wine regularly for the health benefits – it totally negates the too coolio for schoolio factor.  It makes the beautiful seem, well, dorky.

I need no edifice of scientific reasoning or lame-o excuses to do the right thing (preachiness intended.)  Now that The New York Times as clumsily broached the issue, maybe the world is finally ready to hear the truth.  The one you have all come to know and love as David Mark Brown showers no more than twice weekly, has not besmirched his body with anti-persperant since he was 13, and has only used soap for “the hairy parts” since 1996.

Hell, I’ve been wearing the same pair of pants for the last 116 days.  And all I have to say for myself is that to smell me is to love me.  I’m a walking commercial for Jesus Christ; and I say that as an unblasphemous brother to John the Baptist.  People came from all over the surrounding country to hear John preach of the Messiah to come.  And we all know that people don’t flock to hear stinky weirdos, but they do flock to hear avant-garde prophets.  And that’s all that I’m saying that I am.

But seriously, lightning-strike joking aside, I am a lazy conservationist.  At a certain point you just have to ask yourself if you can use the half hour of prep time in the morning on something better than unnecessarily primping yourself with rivulets of warm water and exfoliating detergents.  Should you be intervening with the natural process of underarm sweating?  Is the outfit you wore to your cousin’s bar mitzva really deserving of a launder?

I can’t answer these questions for you.  And if you choose to follow the funky path those of us like Mahatma Gandhi have set before you, I must warn you, there will be consequences.  It takes time to recondition your skin to its natural state of oily blessedness.  It takes discipline to sleep in on a cold morning rather than stand beneath an excessive flood of warm water heated by your local coal-fired power plant.

But in time, you too can become one of the few, the righteous, the unshowered.

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