Wett All Over: The Meaning of Shower - welcome

Welcome to Wett All Over: The Meaning of Shower, a blog about something you probably do most days, every day or maybe more than once a day.

I think there's more going on in there than perhaps we realised. Let's take a look, shall we...

A Shower Catalogue

Above: Go on Steve, please tell us what you found in your shower

I guessed there were 27 things in my shower. Here's what I found:-

1. A rectangular non-steam mirror (sucker-attached)

Left: 2. A corner shelf (sucker-attached, not 100% reliable)

Left: 3. A hanging shelf (suspended from showerhead arm; not quite straight)

4. Backbrush

5. Hairnet (guess)

6. Showerscreen sponge cleaner

7. Bar of soap

8. Nailbrush

9. Razor (his) - Mach 3

10. Razor (hers) - pink

Above: 11. A rectangular bucket full of cold water

12. Prince shaving gel aerosol (from Aldi)

13. Bodyshop Brazil Nut Bath and Shower Cream

14. Oscar Natural Shaving Oil (free sample)

15. Cedel Anti-Dandruff shampoo

16. Harvard Shower Gel

17. Unbranded AM/FM splash and dust-resistant radio

18. OC Organic Care Scalpcare Anti-Dandruff Plantactif

19. St Ives Apple Blush Moisturing Body Wash

20. Botanics: The Power of Plants Bathing Softening Body Wash

21. L'Oreal Elvire Illuminating Shampoo, Nutri-Gloss, Pearl Protein

22. Keune Care Line Shampoo Volume

23. Perfect Potion Detox Body Buff - Juniper Grapefruit Nuts

24. Shower Power Amazing Bathroom Cleaner

25. Charles Worthington Results Moisture-Seal Glossing Shampoo (with red sticker stating 'Reduced to $6.47')

26. Blue tray for holding things in (holding two razors and shaving gel)

Left: 27. A mysterious little bottle cap

28. Bonus track/Easter Egg: Little white tracker grommet from sliding door.

Now you may find it suspicious that I guessed there were 27 things in my shower and that I found 27 (plus a little bonus thing). Well, it's true. That means that either  I already 'knew' how many things were in my shower, though I assure you I've never counted them (who would do such a thing?); or it was a lucky guess.

What's wrong with Oscar?

Item (14) was Oscar, Natural Shaving Oil. I got this as a free sample at a conference, used it twice or three times and won't use it again. Perhaps I'm odd because I shave in the shower, but there's something wrong about smearing oil over your face when you want to shave. For one thing, you can't easily tell where you've shaved, unlike the satisfying scrape away of shaving foam: the absence of white shows the absence of stubble.

For another, the packaging is wrong. The lid is hard to get off when your hands are wet, and there's a fiddly little spray button that is hard to work when you have oil on your hands, which is funnily enough what happens when you're using Oscar. And I'm not sure whether you're supposed to spray oil onto your hands, or directly onto your face. If it goes on your face you don't know if it's there or not; and if you spray it on your hands, you get oily hands that make holding your razor less comfortable than before.

Coming soon: What's wrong with Mach 3?

What's wrong with Mach 3?

The two superpowers slaved away in their secret lairs, devising more and more cunning and elaborate weapons of mass destruction to knock out the other guy. I baled on three blades, thinking that was quite enough, and actually thinking that Mach 3 gave me a pretty good shave. Expensive, yes (though I had to protest when Helen exclaimed at the supermarket checkout at how much they cost, when they're about the only cosmetic item I ever buy). But a good shave is a good clean professional way to start the day, and using a disposable is on a par with using a shard of broken pottery.

It has a little strip that supposedly moistens your face as you go, but in fact the purpose of which is to gradually wear away and show you when your razor is getting close to needing replacing. It's a more efficient way of finding out than slicing your face (it's the blunt blade, or rather set of three, that cuts; not the sharp one). Fair do's, sir, as Howard Moon would say. There's always a delicate balance between getting just another shave from an old blade; and cutting chunks out of your face and having it bleed for hours in meetings, inviting pity and scorn.

But recently the blade's stopped sitting properly in the razor, and falls out twice or three times as I shave. Perhaps I just need a new razor. Perhaps they've changed the design a little. Either way I'm tempted to go nuclear and try a four bladed razor (I'm assuming there is such a thing: why would they stop at three?).

(By the way, what's wrong with Blogger?)

(Apparently there's no easy way to display your oldest blog on the page first. You have to manipulate the dates retrospectively, to make it appear as though your oldest is your youngest. Just thought I'd point that out.

What it means is that as I progress either I have to date things back into the past - so that a new post created at Easter, for example, has to be older than the things created before Easter, so that time appears to go backwards - or I'll have to go through and redate everything.)

My shower obsession

Not so long ago I found myself more than a little keen on keeping the showerscreen clean, to the point where I actually enjoyed washing it with items (6), the showerscreen sponge cleaner, and (24), the Shower Power Amazing Bathroom Cleaner.

I put this down to a mild dose of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, probably brought about by my wife having cancer for the second time. (She's fine now, thanks for asking.) She suggested I try transferring my concern about the showerscreen to the toilet, and get obsessive about cleaning that, too. I had to explain to her patiently that I don't think it works like that, though I'd give it a go. And actually, you can redirect your OCD if you wish - or I can, anyway. You know how going for a run is always such a pain, but when you get going it's fine? Or how tidying up is a chore, but then you get into it and you're off and running (hang on I'm getting things confused now). Well, cleaning a shower or cleaning a toilet is like that. Not that I'm an expert or anything: I try not to let the feeling overtake me too much.

Usually I like to clean the showerscreens while I'm showering, which involves aiming the showerhead at the screens to rinse them, swivelling the head, raising the arm, increasing the waterflow so that it reaches far enough to hit near the top of the screen and flow down. This complicated combination requires lots of contortion and making the shower point in directions it doesn't want to, like directing a recalcitrant shopping trolley or reversing a trailer. But wetter.

I don't think, what with the shaving and the showerscreen cleaning, I manage to get in and out in three minutes, somehow.

Wasting water

I don't like getting cold water on me. So I turn on the hot tap and wait while the water warms up. This takes about 35 seconds, and uses a lot of water to no purpose.

Where am I going with this?

I'm reading Elizabeth Shove, 'Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality' (Oxford: Berg, 2003); and Donald Norman, 'The Design of Everyday Things' (New York: Basic Books, 2e 2002).

Radio on

My favourite thing in the shower is the radio, which I bought from Catchoftheday.com.au. It doesn't even have a brand (how rare is that), but it has a far better receiver than any shower radio I've had before. I listen to Red Symons while I wash my bollocks. This morning a caller recounted a memory that ended up with an 80 year-old naked woman asking him if he wanted a woman for sixpence, and Symons chortled, nay guffawed, with joy. He has a refreshing callosity that clashes nicely with John Fayne, who follows him.

Buckland Valley Easter – The Meaning of Bush-Camping Shower

What a palaver camping is: that’s half its point. Fortunately our friends the Porters and the Hanbys have been here since Tuesday, so there’s a fire, a covered kitchen area and even a toilet, a wooden toilet and seat above a pit shielded with a canvas sheet, into which you pour a can of dirt when you’re finished. And if you’re a boy, as the girls discovered this morning, you forget to put down the lid and – like a version of the boy in Sixth Sense – “there’s flies everywhere.” As compensation for the basic level of amenities you get a superb view across the stream and the valley. It’s like being a nature king on a throne. Or, failing that, it’s like having a dump in the woods.

We were due to have gone to the Murray, to the Barmah State Forest, but blue-green algae saw to that. As far as I can recall that’s the first clear, direct impact climate change has had on me. Yes, there are water restrictions in Melbourne, but there’s been drought before and in truth its impact is pretty limited anyway. I’m not a big gardener, and even before water retrictions keeping the lawn going always seemed a bit mad, and more effort that we could usually muster.

(It’s hard to pour the water into the hole at the top of the bag. Nick’s found a drink bottle the neck of which fits perfectly, and cutting off the bottom makes a neat funnel. Apparently it never occurred to the manufacturers of the bush-shower that getting water into the thing efficiently was an important consideration.)

Anyway, everything was pretty much set up in advance. We have a shower site, across the stream, and the shower itself is a simple bag which lies in the sun all day until the afternoon when the water’s warm enough to be useable.

Now, instead of a shower being a part of one’s daily routine, an efficient way of getting clean and ready for the day ahead, warm water is a scarce luxury that has to be planned hours in advance, taken frugally and savoured: we don’t know what we’ve got till it’s not there. (This is true of the Murray also, and of water generally.) So the situation alters its meaning.

It’s worth noting, then, that despite the complexity of arranging a simple shower and performing any other simple function, like cooking or crapping, time goes by so slowly that you savour every moment. Things we take for granted (like power for one’s laptop: don’t get me started about getting it started) become challenges that take time and engenuity to resolve – and are all the more pleasurable for that.

The Meaning of Shower, According to the Oxford English Dictionary

Shower is of uncertain origin, and appears to have at its root the notion of a fitful spell of something – rain, for example, or illness: something that comes, is with us in copious amounts and then is gone just as suddenly. It’s a very old word, over a thousand years old in fact, with roots still deeper than that. You may recall how Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales starts, with a reference to April’s sweet showers piercing March’s droughts to the root. There’s a quaint though recent (1943) meaning from New Zealand, a “light decorated covering spread over cups and saucers set out on a tray or table,” and a sweet quote: “All was out of sight beneath a large and snowing fabric… the kind of gossamer thing he could remember his mother had coveted many years ago in a shop window and described as a shower.”

(As I wrote the above, a tremendous shower poured down upon us from a sky that was blue just moments ago. Alanis Morrisette might call this ironic, though it is merely coincidental. Bloody inconvenient when you’re camping, though.)

The meaning I’m concerned with, however, dates from 1873, is first used by Mark Twain, and for its first fifty years – as noticed by the OED, at any rate – it’s a far from pleasant thing. It’s medicinal (1873: “He has fell back on hot foot-baths at night and cold showers in the morning” – Mark Twain) and, as Twain’s use showed, it’s stone cold (1889: “You forgot to put the ice in the shower, Francois; it is hardly bracing enough” – Gunter).

Then suddenly, between the wars, it becomes part of the daily routine, preparation for the day ahead: “I had a shower and rammed on some clothes” 1953, Macdonald) – and notice how it’s already associated with getting ready efficiently, if not in a rush. In the blink of an etymological eye, a merely quarter century, it becomes a necessity to cleanliness that is assumed as a right and noticeable in its absence: “Must have a shower. I’ve been in a muck sweat all day” – 1953, Lehmann. So in less than a century it’s evolved from a freezing tonic to midway between a luxury and a requirement: “The bathroom… was small, but lush… with… a bidet and a corner shower” (Wainwright, 1973).

(Note the economy with which the OED illustrates this development: those five quotes, each with a distinct and evolving meaning, are all we get. There’s a mini thesis there, done without plaudit or ceremony. I hope the editor who compiled it knows it is appreciated.)

The word shower used in this way, incidentally, is really an abbreviation of shower bath, described by the OED as “Also U.S. a form of punishment for convicts”: there’s a quotation from 1868 referring to the “severe punishment” of the “terrible Shower Bath… now seldom used.” The original focus is on the bath, and only later on the shower: “They have invented a machine… which is now very much in use; it is called a shower-bath. It is like a sentry-box” (Duc de Levis’ Eng, 1815).  

In that same period of time, by the way – from 1873 to the present – the Oxford English Dictionary was executed (having been conceived in the late 1850s), printed (twice) and has now evolved so that I can refer to it on my laptop in the middle of the bush. In this location, it can’t be said that the shower has progressed as far…

The Meaning of Wett All Over

Describing in 1798 how well she “bore” her first shower, Elizabeth Drinker, wife of a well-to-do Quaker merchant, records that she had not been “wett all over att once, for 28 years past.” This illustrates the amazing fact that, over the course of just a few generations, washing went from being an “occasional and haphazard routine of a small segment of the population to a regular practice of the large bulk of the people” (Bushman R and Bushman C, “The early history of cleanliness in America,” Journal of American History, 74(4), 1988: pp1213-38 – this quote p. 1214).

Give Us This Day Our Daily Frustration

Every morning I encounter three design faults that, when I’m awake enough to notice, drive me to distraction. The first is the loo, the seat of which won’t stay up by itself. Now for a male bloke of the masculine gender this is sets a challenge, which I confront by standing side on and resting the toilet seat against the outside of my left knee while I ponder this little mystery.

The second is… the loo, again, or more precisely its dual flush, a pair of buttons so cunningly similar that I am hard pressed to tell apart. Compare that with a sensible arrangement and you’ll see what I mean. (Pictures coming.)

Then, after an hour or so going through overnight emails and making a cup of tea, and perhaps walking along the beach with Helen and the dog, I take a shower. Self being a softy of the worst kind, this involves standing starkers while the water gets up to speed. I really, really don’t like a cold shower. A cold sea I can just about take, but for me it’s no way to start the day. (When we do take that walk along the beach, summer or winter, there’s a bunch of folk braving the sea, often in the dark as well as the cold. Are they so very different from me, that this is their idea of  a good start to the day?)

Our hot water system, which we did not choose, heats a whole tank of water and then waits until the moment we choose to use it. On a hot day this can mean that you get hot water out of the cold tap, as it rushes into the sink from where it’s been sitting, heating up. And any day this means you get cold water out of the hot tap, as it rushes into the sink from where it’s been sitting, being cold, before the water in the tank finally arrives.

Helen has put a bowl into the shower that catches this water, which she then uses on the garden. I care far too little about a few gallons of water and a half-dead rose - but I do care about the inadequacy of the design.

Do you ever think about the museum of the future, which people will come to visit from their home on the moon or under the sea, and chortle at our silliness? I see a tableau of a middle-aged bloke supporting a loo seat with a knee, while cold water gushes from a shower in the background. If you look closely (not that you'd want to), you'd see a look of extreme irritation on his face.

The Meaning of Cleanliness

Camping reminds me how filthy the early settlers - of Australia, of the United States, of anywhere - must have been. No soap, fresh water hard to store, clean clothes a luxury. How we came to value cleanliness must be a story that closely intertwines technology and habit: soap makes cleanliness possible, which drives the demand for soap.

Perhaps in some ways it parallels the expansion of empathy, which has now reached mammals, provided we’re not planning to eat them. We read revolting accounts of the Roman holiday, with defenceless human beings torn apart by animals, and wonder how they could find it amusing. In the future - when we’ve learned to make meat without animals, say - our descendants will be just as baffled by us. So perhaps the Roman and medieval sensibility was changed by political developments? You have to believe slaves have no feelings to treat them so; when they are freed you’re confronted with the realisation that they haven’t grown feelings overnight. Had always had them, in fact. And where does that leave one's conscience?