Am I missing key shower steps or is hygiene tok excessive?

[AurielleBaies]

I’ve been watching hygiene tok and now wondering if I’ve not been showering myself properly all my life.

Saw a woman who uses an unscented bar soap for sensitive areas, antibacterial bar soap for smelly areas, then a body scrub, then a shower gel applied with a African net sponge, then lightly dries herself and applies body oil, then a body lotion, then a glycolic acid treatment under arms and under boobs and then FINALLY clinical strength deodorant. The video was called something like ‘how to not stink this summer’. I’ve never even done half those steps in one shower. I shower at least daily using a bar soap/shower gel and I do exfoliate every other day.

am I missing something?!

I suspect water would only work if you had a flannel or the like to scrub with ?

Because I like to have soft feet and not ashy dry knees and elbows or hard skin on my heels

But isn’t the reason you have all that dry hard skin the products you are using ? You strip away all the natural oils ?

It is true that most urologists don’t recommend using anything other than water around your nether regions. Disrupts the biome.

JFC… switch off the TikTok, delete your account and read a book or something. Unless people have been turning green, avoiding you and you have spent your life swatting the flies hovering above you then your hygiene is fine. FFS. Really?

hygienic? Humans are animals. We just need to be clean enough to not offend others or get infections. This sounds totally nuts.

Always only ever used anti bacterial basic soap, occasionally a shower gel/cream on the rest of my body, usually when I just fancy something smelly, but one bottle of 99p shower gel can last me a year. Though saying that will admit peri and night sweets have me feeling I want to use it more these days. Summer I may crack out some femwash. Exfoliate pre shaving and moisturise but that’s about it.

surely deodorant, perfume or body sprays cancel all the smelly products out 🤷‍♀️

Why the acid ( and what is it)? It doesn't sound nice.

It’s okay, you don’t need to be so angry. If you’d read the thread you’d realise that this is mostly a jokey/semi sarcastic post about a current TikTok trend. It’s not that deep.

The acid is supposed to take off dead skin cells and clear out the pores that trap bacteria. I believe it’s an alternative to a body scrub.

My shower takes ages to get up to temperature and no shower cap ever keeps my hair dry. It takes me twice as long to shower than strip wash.

Not angry - just sick of people hanging on the word of Tiktok pratts - and having their crap spouted at me by my clueless teenagers. We all knew how to shower, fold duvet covers and pair socks pretty adequately for centuries before Stacey whatsit or some other influencer made a 3min sponsored infomercial about it.

Use an African net

The TikTok hygiene Olympics can be ridiculous. But I have learnt some useful pointers including African net sponges and QV wash.

One I saw yesterday was insisting you must shower and lotion yourself twice daily. When people said “I don’t have time” the Op said “you have time to scroll, you have time to lotion”. Parody or click bait I hope.

I think the way to think about 12 step shower routines is essentially as a hobby. Yes yes we all need to get clean but we also all need to eat and I can cook beans on toast for basic nutrition or a challenging 3 course meal if I find that an enjoyable hobby. If spending your free time with a rotating carousel of shower products makes you happy, go right ahead, there are worse things you could do.

No? I use a shower oil on my body but I still get dry skin. I think there’s very few people that can wash with soap all over and use no moisturiser and have perfect soft skin head to toe

I love QV wash

I know that's what is recommended but how can you wash your leg-pits* and erm, butt crack/perineum both of which need a good scrub with soap and not end up with soap transferring to your undercarriage.

*Leg-pits may be more commonly known as groin!

I agree and compromise with Dove unscented. I guess there’s a difference between some suds washing over your vulva and giving it a good scrub with soap. I don’t like to use nothing, although I have been told not to. Seems unhygienic not to, given most utis are from butt e. Coli.

Yes! Wash and Go. Although as the unsurpassable Victoria Wood said, “I prefer to get dressed first”.

Hasn't talc been linked to ovarian cancer? I'm sure I read that somewhere.

All those products, all those chemicals, all those companies getting rich on your gullibility.

Soap (pure olive oil), Water & sulfate free Shampoo for hair.

Yep, so that's the one soap needed then.

talc isn’t talc now, it’s corn starch

Oh god…I use a lot of cornstarch as dry shampoo thinking it was safe

It's fine. It's the talc that has been linked to cancer. But now people use cornstarch in the same way they used to use talc.

Does she have time for anything else..