Marina Fogle
I gave up soap and never felt or smelt better
It was a flippant enough comment. “Oh, and you don’t have any more soap in your shower,” my sister-inlaw told me over breakfast as she spent the weekend with us this summer. I murmured an acknowledgement, but in truth was reluctant to say why. I motioned that I would add soap to my shopping list but in reality I had no intention of doing so. The truth is, in the Fogle household, we just don’t use it.
I’ve never felt confident enough to shout about it, but now I find myself in such good company – with Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher’s admission that they rarely use soap and don’t give their children a bath every night, and Jake Gyllenhaal saying he finds bathing to be “less necessary” – that it’s time to speak my dirty truth.
I’m not anti-soap. Visitors to my house will see handwash by the kitchen sink. As we locked down, fearful not to spread a virus, we all washed our hands vigorously after going out. But pandemic aside, we just don’t seem to need it. I’ve got sensitive skin, you see – I suddenly developed eczema aged 28 and have struggled to control it ever since. There’s a steroid cream that does the trick but, for obvious reasons, I’m reluctant to use it unless I really need to. So I’m constantly on the hunt for habits that will make it less angry. Soap is one thing that doesn’t help, so I’ll shower in the morning but just use water to wash, with no soap. My husband, Ben, doesn’t have eczema but has long been a soap dodger – also believing that left to its own devices, the skin is self-cleaning.
Indeed, dermatologists increasingly argue that our skin biome is perfectly balanced, providing our skin with all the protection it needs. Using soap is thought to break down this skin barrier, leading to skin conditions that require yet more products to rectify it. This idea was presented to me shortly after I interviewed a gastroenterologist about our gut biome. Describing it as the brain of the body, he said that we were only beginning to understand its complexity and how its natural balance is harmed by man-made interventions. It made sense that our skin might too have this natural harmony of oils, perfectly tailored to give it the unique maintenance it needs.
The more I thought about the fact we are interfering with our bodies for no reason, the more cynical I became about the skin care industry – worth over $500 billion a year – which, let’s face it, is largely built on the insecurity that we need to improve the way we look and smell. Our skin should look less wrinkled, our eyelashes should look longer, we should smell, not like humans but instead like synthetic watermelons. “Feminine hygiene” products – designed specifically for women to wash and fragrance intimate areas – are sold throughout the UK, in spite of gynaecologists warning that there is no need for a woman to wash her vulva with anything other than water. Not many women I know have been duped by this idea, but is it also time to assess the true need for our consumption of soap and shower gel?
For many, the prospect of not washing with soap at least once a day is unthinkable. I mentioned the idea to my sister, pragmatic person that she is, and she was horrified. “You mean you don’t use soap under your arms?” she countered. In spite of the fact she’s never thought I was smelly, she couldn’t get her head around the idea that I just don’t seem to need it.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not passionate enough about preserving my skin biome to forgo soap if the alternative was smelling a bit pungent.
I have vivid memories of the stigma of body odour, of my mother pressing a large can of Sure into my hands as puberty hit; of the girl in my class who stank and was the victim of snide giggling and ostentatious nose holding behind her back; of the matron at my boarding school whose odour was more fruity than us pubescent girls were comfortable with, who was duly gifted Mitchum Extra Strong.
I would hate to smell in a way that polite society deemed unacceptable.
The reality is, though, I don’t, and since my personal hygiene functions perfectly well without soap, I’m happy to do without. Or normal deodorant for that matter. Ben suggested trying a kind of natural salt spray a few years ago, so I thought I’d give it a go and it turns out that it works just fine. (Don’t just take my word for it – Matthew Mcconaughey gave up deodorant 35 years ago and the singer Lizzo recently backed him, posting: “OK… I’m with him on this one. I stopped using deodorant and I smell BETTER.”)
I’d have no problems waging war on body odour with whatever product worked, the moment I needed to. And maybe that’s where we’re going wrong. This idea that there is a one size fits all solution for all human beings is the source of mistake after mistake. With a population of 7 billion people of different ages, ethnicities, with different lifestyles and needs, it’s unlikely that we’re all going to need the same form of personal hygiene product.
Maybe some of us don’t need soap, while others really do. Maybe at a certain point in our lives we don’t need as much washing as at others. My eleven-year-old son told me recently that he hadn’t washed his hair with shampoo for two years. TWO YEARS. I’ll admit I was horrified. He’s obviously at an age where he showers on his own and I took it for granted that a quick hair lather was part of his weekly routine. But then, as the adoring mother who is acutely aware that my days of being able to kiss his blonde head are numbered, I take every opportunity to do this, and never once suspected that he was boycotting shampoo. “Storm (our dog) doesn’t wash her hair,” he told me, “and she smells just fine.” Not all my readers might agree with this sentiment but I had to admit he had a point. Her fur is never greasy and unless she’s found some fresh fox poo, her odour is actually inoffensive, in spite of the fact she never bathes in clean water.
Not using soap has benefited me greatly. My eczema flare-ups are far less frequent, my shower is delightfully clutter free and it saves me money. That’s before we even start on the environmental benefits. Our household’s water consumption is reduced, now that we no longer need to rinse, and the waste water we do produce contains less polluting soap and no micro plastics.
I still have a guilt that over the summer holidays my children counted they’d had six baths in eight weeks, but maybe this guilt is yet another pointless sentiment that needs casting aside. The moment they, or any other member of our household (including the dog) smells, they’ll be packed off to the shower to work up a rich lather. Until then, if you come to stay, bring your own soap.