After reading this book, I am going to stop taking showers! I met a pretty 71 year old women at the park and was surprised to see that she wasn’t freaking out that we we’re near her nor did she have a mask which is quite rare these days. So me & my son sparked a conversation with her and we made a lot of connections before she told us about this book and how she stopped taking showers and only cleans her armpits and private areas. My jaw dropped and I was literally floored when she told me this partly because of her clean demeanor and a rather upscale lifestyle because of the neighborhood and the fancy car she drove.
All these light bulbs started going off for me, I made the connection that the farther our society drifts from nature, the sicker we become, to the point we are literally killing ourselves today. I also made the connection with unschooling which goes back to the hunter-gatherers and how they lived and learned. And also how I was raised on a farm and I was always dirty, catching frogs in the pond, working in the field, and I hardly took showers. My father also hardly takes showers, but he loves to go bask in the sun in his boxers in nature daily. My grandparents were the same way so it seems this ancestral knowledge is getting lost and now our society is absolutely obsessed with all this snake oil, creams, lotions, and potions as James says here:
“And even our most personal decisions about caring for our bodies have long been influenced and manipulated by larger power structures.” ~ James Hamblin
“The global market for soaps, detergents, deodorants, and hair and skin care products is now valued in the trillions of dollars. The parade of bottles and tubes and vials that line modern bathtubs and medicine cabinets surpasses the collections of yesterday’s monarchs. Much is sold to us not as luxury but as necessity. The industry has grown to unprecedented heights largely on the promise of defending our bodies from the outside world.” ~ James Hamblin
I am still in the midst of reading this book and it is life changing! It really digs deep to make you think about your habits. I love the cover, a soap bottle filled with dirt. This book is a must read, especially for helicopter parents who are obsessed with keeping their children immaculately clean.
The author, James Hamblin, is a doctor in Preventative Medicine and decided to ditch his half-million dollar a year career to be journalist, while even trying to live in a van in order to rekindle what truly matters in this world.
This book also brings to mind…
https://twitter.com/thedankoe/status/1382987700890927105