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The Hygiene Culture Wars That Started on Social Media

Beyond the jokes, this viral conversation is making for some insightful cultural observations

Nicole Froio
ZORA
7 min readAug 1, 2019

Photo: Brooke Auchincloss / Getty Images

InIn May, a tweet by a White woman started a debate about washing your legs in the shower. “i don’t like use soap on my whole body when i shower? and i don’t think i’m gross? I pretty much just wash my face and my armpits with soap,” she wrote. “And I shower like once or twice a week lol. I think it’s fine.”

A myriad of people of color responded to the thread, horrified at the idea of A) not washing your legs in the shower and B) only showering once or twice a week. The offending tweet was ratioed to death, with 500 retweets and 1,500 replies that varied from disgusted to shocked to relating lack of hygiene to White people specifically. The website Very Smart Brothas later published a video called “The Case for Washcloths: Why White People Need to Wash Their Damn Legs,” while Latinx people responded by tweeting “Lavate las piernas!!” (“Wash your legs!!”). In response, the original poster characterized cleanliness as “weird classist bullshit”.

It’s impossible to count how many indirect responses were posted as the incredulity and disgust soon turned into a meme. Journalist Yashar Ali tweeted “Everytime I wash my legs I say a prayer for all the white…

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ZORA
ZORA

Published in ZORA

A publication from Medium that centers the stories, poetry, essays and thoughts of women of color.

Nicole Froio
Nicole Froio

Written by Nicole Froio

Columnist, reporter, researcher, feminist. Views my own. #Latina. Tip jar: paypal.me/NHernandezFroio

Responses (54)

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What do dermatologists actually recommend? Typically they state washing once a day is too much. This also reminds me of the washing chicken debate. Doctors, CDC, etc. do not recommend washing chicken yet folks continue to argue back and forth about…

Maybe I missed the part where this became a white/black thing?
I shower every day and feel dirty if I don’t, but until I got to know my wife when we were dating I had no idea she didn’t and 20+ years on she still doesn’t, yet I don’t notice that she…

I don’t understand two moments in this (nice) article. 1. Why does anyone share details about personal hygiene habits? 2. Why is frequency an issue at all? Do when you need it. If you need hourly, do it hourly. If you need only once a week (e.g. you…