Is DD weird?

[pastaalover]

My DD who is 13 has been told she is weird by her friends because she showers every 2 days. Compared to her friends showering once some nearly twice a day. They said that she should shower once a day because she is dirty if she doesn't. Naturally this has made her upset and she doesn't want to go to school as she is scared of what they may say. I want to know if she is weird or her friends are being unreasonable.

I still dont understand why she doesn’t have a clean shirt every day though.

Exactly - I would consider it very bad manners to get into bed with someone unwashed, even if I didn’t actually smell.

Honestly, the only thing that stinks here is the stench of MN privilege.

Just have a daily shower? Are you all for real?

Years back, when I was a lone parent to DS1, I couldn't afford to switch the hot water on. Our electricity was on a prepayment meter, and we were always on the emergency setting.
I chose food over topping up the meter.

We lived in a cold, damp flat, with no access to hot water.
Why are you all saying, "just take a shower"?

Genuinely, I don't understand?

What if there's no hot water? How is it simple to shower?

@JockTamsonsBairns Because OP has not indicated that they dont have hot water or that access to it is a problem so its not unreasonable or privileged for people to assume hot water is available.

So you have enough hot water to take a shower?

Yes, I do but I'm still not 'conditioned', how are they connected?

Most homes have combi boilers where a shower is a few pence and even an electric shower is only about 20p. Some people live in horrific poverty in the UK but the vast majority of the population do have access to hot water without it being a choice and immersion heaters are largely a thing of the past in most homes.
OP hasn't indicated at any point that access to the shower is an issue, just her DD chooses not too.

I was in a similar situation. I don't see the appeal in deliberately having cold showers, but I preferred to be clean and cold than cold and filthy - wash with kettle water, then quickly under the shower hose, £2.99 from Woolworths as I remember, for hair and body (or the kitchen tap when I moved into a different place with no hot water for a couple of months).

Spent far too many years being forced to be the dirty kid at school to do it as an adult, frankly. I heard all the bollocks about how showers were something silly rich people did. And the 'Greaseball' nickname, I heard that one a lot.

This thread 🤯

This poor girl is being bullied.

I know loads of people who don’t shower everyday. I don’t. I don’t have time to wash my hair every day. I have lived with loads of different people, gone on various holidays with people, travelled and stayed in peoples houses etc and trust me not everyone showers everyday! And no people do not smell. This thread is ridiculous.

It's not weird at all. Many people shower more often than needed, which wastes water and is drying for their skin. So long as she looks and smells clean, she is.

Because the problem probably is that the pubescent child does smell, and very obviously if a child plays football three times a week and the mother hasn't mentioned that she's skint, living in cold, damp conditions, or in any ither way exposed to deprivation, there is hot water in the house.

Your situation was uncommon and it is shameful that you had to live in those conditions. Hopefully you are doing better now.

Think you should wash the Monday shirt for Friday

Have you considered buying her a shirt next size up which she can wear on Friday if she wants to? You'll need to get it anyway in due course so it might help to get it now.

I think people who don't shower each day are dirty ....we all pee and poo and we all sweat, these areas need cleaned daily and not just a quick rinse either. Everyday pollution and grime stick to our hair and skin.....it's just better to shower each day.

@pastaalover is it that boomerang smell that you get from the shirts for not being cleaned very well, normally I wash for 45 minutes but my DD for she was doing me a favour by putting the washing on and put them on for a 14 minute wash😂
She wants to try and get new friends!!!
I am a 90s girl, so I had So!, impulse and deodorant.

Everyone should shower every day. I have this argument with my DC every day. It's just polite!

Agree.

Nose blindness is a thing.

Her peers have done her a favour.

OP, what is the objection to a daily shower?

Deodorant and body spray don’t wash your feet, bottom or genitals.

Kinda wondering how many pp were the bullies at school...

OP - nothing wrong with your daughter. The friends sound like dicks. Unless she actually smells I'm not sure what lesson you'd be teaching her to double her shower time cos her 'friends' said she should. Where does that end, exactly?

To the pp who said we should shower after every shit? I have 3 poos a day - so 3 showers, right? 21 showers a week? C'mon, just get some bum wipes.

Everyone's hygiene needs are different. Whether or not you smell after one day without a shower is going to depend on:

• Age and hormonal changes
• Genetics - my body odour builds slowly, while my friend can barely go a half day without starting to smell
• General sweatiness
• Biological sex
• Sedentary vs active lifestyle
• How often you change the fabrics you come into contact with
• Whether you use toilet paper or a bidet
• Temperature and humidity
• Diet

I've lived with people who shower daily and yet are often very pongy because that's the way their genetics are. I've lived with people who bathe once or twice a week and don't stink. I've lived with people who shower but still smell like bum due to lax toilet hygiene.

And I know from personal experience that teenage girls can be very judgemental about showering. You can do everything "right" and shower once a day and they'll still pick on you for showering in the evening instead of the morning. Once they consider you an outsider, they will do everything they can to make you feel like an outsider.

What a bizarre post.

Yes, some teens smell. It's not an impossibility. Some adolescents, boys and girls alike, really honk. Adolescent sweat gands can be overactive.

There was a girl in my year in school whom you could smell across a classroom, and her siblings were similarly smelly. Her parents had no clue because the whole family had got used to it, and they believed in saving water. Finally, a teacher approached the parents because this woman was suffering from morning sickness, and the stench made her gag.

It is not fair on a teenage girl to send her to school every second day unwashed, coated in body spray both fresh and stale, and using only deodorant.

What a weird thread this is ....

FFS.

If a teenage girl only showers every second day, she smells, and her hair probably smells too.

The increased smell of teens is a well known effect of puberty. I don't know why there are posters here who refuse to accept this basic and well observed fact.

Teens do not smell like fields of daisies or two week old babies.

Teen sweat contains aldehydes, steroids specific to pubescent and adolescents, and carboxylic acids. These chemicals are described as smelling of urine, musk, sandalwood, goats, cheese, and wax. Teens produce more of these chemicals than children and most adults, and they also produce more sebum than pre pubescent children and adults. The longer the sweat sits in the undisturbed sebum (oil), with bacteria attacking it as it sits, the stronger the stench. Bacteria work on sebum amd sweat all over the body. In the case of this teen, deodorant and body spray are added to the mix. The result is stench.

In plain language, teens need to shower daily.

In the case of this teen, deodorant and body spray, stale and fresh, are added to the mix. Other people have the right not to have to sit in a stuffy classroom near someone who last washed more than 24 hours previously, and is wearing the same shirt she wore yesterday or one that might have sat in a laundry basket with socks and underwear and damp towels since Monday. Even if a previously worn shirt has been hung up, it will smell.

www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/22/teenagers-armpits-smell-of-cheese-goat-and-urine-say-scientists

Think you're slightly over-egging that pudding. The study is linked from the article, you should read it.