Shower Without Glory  

Ross Gittins has an interesting (as always) aricle in the SMH about the affect of global warming and rising energy prices on long hot showers. Being a long, hot shower addict myself, I have to say he's totally wrong about this - if you've gone 100% green power (ideally with solar hot water on your roof as well) and are water efficient in other ways, then long hot showers really don't matter. So don't feel like you have to become a smelly hippie (just kidding) to adapt to peak oil and global warming.

As climate change - and our need to limit it - catches up with us, perhaps we need to examine more critically some of our daily habits. So let me ask you a personal question: how often do you take a shower?

If your answer is daily, you wouldn't hesitate to tell me. If your answer is twice a day, you may be quite proud of the fact. If your answer is two or three times a week, you'd probably prefer me to mind my own business.

But consider this: when you remember how much energy and water we use for our showering, the day may not be far distant when that order is reversed. When the person who showers only a few times a week is pleased to tell you so, while the person still showering twice a day doesn't like to admit it.

Does that prospect appal you? Do you shudder at the thought of conditions deteriorating to the point where we're all walking around dirty?

If so, I have news, courtesy of an eye-opening book I've been reading by the British sociologist Elizabeth Shove, Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience.

I guess most of us like to believe that showering - or bathing, for that matter - is about cleanliness. About getting rid of dirt and germs so as to maintain a high standard of personal hygiene and prevent the spread of disease.

Don't kid yourself. We could do all we needed to do to prevent disease with far fewer showers. If we were really on about hygiene, we'd put a lot more emphasis on thorough, soapy hand-washing and a lot less on showers.

They don't shout it too loudly, but many dermatologists disapprove of all the showering we do, particularly the way we soap up every time as though we've just fallen into a manure heap. All that unnecessary soap and water leaches the natural oils from our skin.

Dirt isn't identical to germs and disease. In any case, our modern lives of paved roads and footpaths, travel by car rather than horse, use of electricity rather than coal, and our predominantly white-collar jobs, mean we rarely get particularly dirty.

The proof of that is obvious: the high proportion of people who shower in the morning before going out, rather than in the evening after getting home. Do they really go to bed dirty? ...

In olden days, the rich regarded bathing as a sign of their social superiority. These days, the ubiquity of electricity, mains water and sewerage mean even the great unwashed need no longer be. Perhaps that's what's driving the obsession: if the poorest worker can afford to shower daily, how can the rest of us settle for anything less?

Another element to it, of course, is that many people shower because they enjoy it. It wouldn't be the first time we sought to crown the things we enjoy with a halo of civic virtue.

The funny thing here is the opposing reasons we have for enjoying it. Some people say they find showers invigorating, the perfect thing to wake them up and get them going in the morning.

But then the evening brigade say showering is relaxing, a great stress-reliever. I must say, I've had both emotions. Magical things, showers.

To all this, you may say, so what? What business is it of an economics writer, anyway? It's a free country and an affluent one. If we choose to spend a little of our wealth on lots of showers, what of it? Surely it's a pretty innocent vice.

Well, not as innocent as it was now we're in the age of climate change. And, soon enough, not as cheap as it was. Before too long we'll be paying a lot more for the water we use and for the electricity or gas with which we heat it.

I don't foresee a day of government advertisements proclaiming the social irresponsibility of showers, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them becoming less popular.