The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History Book

If anyone ever tells you that you shouldn't be spontaneous. That every decision in life needs a solution. Shove this book in their face. I just saw this book randomly on my Goodread's rec list and thought, "Why not?. What could you possible tell me that I don't already know? Challenge me, book!" And this book, did not disappoint. Everything was built up and up and up and I can tell you that I was giving myself a good scrub down and wash while I was reading this book. Water and Sanitation is something I will never take advantage of.

Katherine Ashenburg did a fantastic job in going through history and telling the story how people from different cultures viewed the simple concept of hygiene. It's a lot more complex than you can possibly imagine and the effects of each culture's mentality had affected them both positively and negatively. To you and I, the simple concept of maintaining your hygiene is something you don't even think about. You were taught when you were young and then you just added it to your routine. Yet, had you been brought up in a different timeline, your views would have definitely been different.

It's incredible to think that such a minuscule task was something that challenged societal views. I'm talking big issues such as views on "What made a man?", "Is keeping clean a sin?", "How much is too clean?","Can the temperature of water affect my manliness?", "If my enemy cleans, should I not to distance any possible association I have with them?", "What does it mean to be clean?"
You may laugh at reading these questions, but I kid you not when I say that these were dilemmas people faced throughout history. Mind you, this book focuses more on European and North American notions and history. Yet, it's fascinating and mind boggling to read how people viewed cleanliness throughout different timelines. You've got conceptions of public baths being normal to it becoming a dreaded sanctity. You have people shunning the idea of having a bath but being totally okay with wading thorough a public bathhouse filled with other people's germs, dirt, blood, hair, and god knows what else. For a long period of time, cleanliness was represented by having closets loaded with clean white linen. It's why today, we still view clean white linen as a sign of cleanliness. So the next time you see a painting where the subject is wearing clothes that show their linen underclothes, realize that it's not because they're trying to be "hot" for their timeline. It was the way of displaying wealth and cleanliness. The concept of cleanliness was so ingrained in people's head that if your enemy kept clean, you wouldn't This happened in Spain when the Moors invaded. The Moors kept clean so the Christians decided to not keep clean as a propagandist act of patriotism. It got to the point where after taking back the invaded land, they declared a law stating that any Moor who converted had to give up bathing. And in court, you would get automatic suspicion if someone accused you of bathing. This notion of staying dirty might boggle and disgust you but there was a reason as to why they saw things this way. It was simply because 1. most people had a fear of water 2. It was considered a sin to bathe too much as it would make you vain. In fact, during the middle ages, the cleanest group of people would have probably been Jewish women. After each menstrual cycle, they were required to take a special purifying bath that required them to have nothing touching the skin. So they would have had a minimum of 12 baths (maybe less depending on how frequent periods were as physical exercise does have an effect on period frequency). Can you imagine though, if the cleanest person in your community took a bath only 12 times a year????

Despite having slightly different views on hygiene, most European countries had a fear of water. They had the misconception that water (especially hot water) would remove the "protective" layer of dirt off of one's body allowing harmful pathogens from the outside to come into the body through the now open pores of the skin. If people were to take baths it was due to illness where a special herbal bath was taken. This was because most people up til probably the late 1800's strongly believed in the principles of Greek medicine where there would be 4 humors that needed to be balanced at all times. There was also the fear that water was the "unknown". Who knew where it could take you or what could be hiding within in. Ironically, the lack of regular maintenance is what led to the widespread of many plagues. If you look in the course of history, you will see that most plagues were occurring in Europe. Why do you think that it, especially since the Europeans viewed the East as "Those that bathe.". There was also the conception that regular bathing (if at all any bathing) would lead to prying eyes, vain behavior, and of course, acts of immodesty (ahm..ahm..). Clearly chastity was ranked higher than hygiene... Needless to say, people STANK.

Fast forwarding years later, it seems as if the people in America became the pioneers in hygiene. A lot of research was done in the late 1800's to early/post WW1 on hygiene but little was done in actually implementing anything because people didn't want to change. But America did. For them, since there was so much land, it was okay to have expensive homes with built in baths. Yes, people. The only reason we have bathrooms in our house was because Americans were rich enough and had enough space to facilitate it. Soon with the introduction of women to the work field, people became conscious of the odor (yes...smelling clean came from the notion that offending a women by your smell would be despicable) and marketing companies leapt at this goldmine. It's why today many complain of Americans as being too obsessed with hygiene (yes, there is such as thing as being too clean). But you can't blame the people. No. The fault lies in the marketing companies (do I see a familiar trend for today's issues???). However, I also learned some cool things such as how Kotex came to be. You know the infamous pad company? Well guess what their original pads were made from? It was the same bandages that were used to sop up the blood from injured soldiers because people believed that if it was good enough for the soldier, it would be good enough for the women (especially since people were more keen on insulting women after seeing their tenacity during the wars).

At the end of the day, this book was magnificent. there were many pictures and little tidbits of information here and there. Ashenburg knows how to capture and audience and how to inform you without boring you. I loved this book (clearly), but you know what surprises me the most? That at the end of it all; even after going through the history of just how important hygiene is, I still see people leaving the washroom without washing their hands. -_-