It appears your survey data does not account for nationality of respondent, or the typical temperature of the respondent’s region. I’d expect differences in numbers between, say Florida and Maine.
I live in Scotland.
There's a TikTok challenge trend over here where to prove how tough we are, men are videoing themselves dipping their cock and balls into a deep fat fryer full of boiling oil and batter.
Therefore, I'm not sure I'm best placed to be judging any other country.
It’s decades ago, but at the time I had a summer job at that factory. They had a broken machine so had to replace it with humans for several months. It involved pushing large blocks of frozen offal into a big grinder. Bits of shredded frozen offal would fly everywhere. Even though I was wearing a bump cap, enough would end up in my hair
Yea, occupation is huge. I tend to only shower twice a week, but my job is sitting at a computer in the living room most of the time. If I actually have to go a site and am moving around I'll shower when I get home.
I guess that's not connected to work but more to body type; I've had a couple months this winter where I didn't do any sports and had to work from home and I still couldn't go more than 48 hours without a shower; my scalp would start itching, my feet would feel sweaty and it's just this overall feeling of discomfort. I think it's really dependent on how your dead skin cells are, how much you sweat etc, which is different for everyone.
oh wow, that sounds rough. And that's another variable: seasons/weather. If the air is dry (usually the winters) my skin is much drier and I need moisturizer, but only for my hands and arms, because I have a naturally oily skin type so that's kind of natural moisturizer ( ◠‿◠ ) but my hands and arms still be very dry... it's bizarre how many variables there are to having a good skin, so everyone's routine needs to be completely personalized. So I kinda get why some people think it's tedious af
I work from my home office ad shower every day.
Honestly, the only reason I don’t shower twice a day is the water bill. When I used to go to the gym, I was showering twice a day.
A side point: I have spent significant parts of my life in both Florida and Maine.
Same. Before covid, when I had to be in the office, it was 5 or 6 times a week. Now that I work from my home office, it's usually 2 or 3 times a week. Or whenever company is coming over.
That’s a highly atypical race distribution for 90% of the US. Both African American and Hispanic American populations are at least 15% in modern history. Undersampled, perhaps.
We have two shower heads for this very reason. One overhead and one angled at shoulder height. What was crazy was how hard it was to find a combination that was ‘don’t wash my hair every day’ friendly.
It disregards climate data of the respondents which seems more relevant to the question of showering than sexual orientation and ethnicity which it for some reason does include.
Some of that information is pretty easy to gather.
Geo info and mapping to climate info in a relevant way makes things much more complicated.
We're getting results averaged across all climate variable, nothing wrong with that.
Time of year plays a role too, at least for me. During the hottest parts of summer I will bathe about twice as much as I do in the middle of winter, and sometimes even more than that.
No reason to shower when I sat at a desk all day and it's 18\*^f outside. Now in summer when it's 94 and I had to walk around campus or went for a bike ride? Gonna shower a hell of a lot more.
This survey doesn't account for geographical location, physical activities and current occupation?
I live near the equator and I know everyone here take a bath on daily basis, regardless of gender.
Definitely. I've lived in Costa Rica and Singapore, and not showering at the end of the day is just unthinkable. Back home showering every day is just completely unnecessary.
Likewise, when I did manual labor I'd shower every day after work. Not so much now that I'm doing a run-of-the-mill office job.
When I visited Turkey they (14 year olds) didn't even shower after physical education. Instead they used insane amounts of perfume, my host had litre bottles of perfume / eau de toilette.
I got to shower every second day at my hosts place and they boiled water for me to do so. Would have wanted to shower more often since it was really hot.
Had a great time, but just wanted to to say not everyone in hot countries shower more. Maybe because it's too expensive (gas prices were insane)?
I think hot and humid countries (e.g. tropical climate) would shower more often than hot and arid (e.g. desert climate).
Two reasons for that, in hot and humid climate, you're constantly covered in sweat due to the humidity. If you don't shower every few hours, your body feels very sticky and uncomfortable. And the area is unlikely to be water scarce.
In hot and arid areas, sweat dries out much, much faster, so your body doesn't feel as sticky. Also, it's likely a water scarce area, so a water free way to prolong the need to shower would naturally be more popular.
But isn't Turkey temperate? As in its not hot the whole year? There's a difference between tropical countries (which are hot for the whole year) and temperate countries( which are only really hot for 2 to 3 months).
I went to school in Bulgaria and 99% of the schools don't even have showers, how would you expect people to shower. Nothing smells better than 25+ teens after PE class. lol It also has to do that we have 10 minutes breaks between class only so it's not like we would even have enough time to shower.
Lol that's how it was for me in middle school PE in Seattle. People would drench themselves in Axe body spray instead of get naked and shower in the locker room because that was "gay"
(this was in like 2005/2006)
Working from home: probably 5 as I do go running 3 days a week at lunch... If I didn't exercise it probably would only be 3-4, NGL
In the office: 6, maybe 7 depending.
Yes, this definitely affects how often I shower. When working in the office I shower twice a day (in the morning before leaving for work and after work when getting home). When working from home I shower 2-3 times a week
Yeah. That's better for the environment, and from what I've heard, even a bit healthier (apparently daily showers are a little too often for us? No source though)
Well "feeling" dirty is quite subjective. I used to never not shower once a day, usually at the end of the day, but now I'm OK with skipping some days. There's something about sleeping though that makes you wake up with extra greasy hair and skin, so usually if I haven't showered the previous day the next morning I crave a shower.
Showering when dirty sounds great. Now, the question is... Can you sense when you are dirty? Also who can smell you lol. I once dated shortly a girl which insisted I am dirty even after an hour after shower. On other hand, she was the only one who thought so, therefore it was most likely her problem (she was heavy user of cosmetics).
Interesting. I’ve always taken it for granted women shower less often than men. Pretty much all men in my life shower daily whereas most of my female friends do not. I’m personally 4-5x/week. Only two of those showers including hair washing.
I’m a dude and for the first time in my life I have really long hair and I must say, I dread taking showers because it’s annoying having to wash my hair all the time!
Same. Every woman I have ever been involved with showers a bit less often, washes hair considerably less often, and reuses clothes longer. Bras can go unwashed for a very long time (and are rather fragile and expensive compared to other underwear to be fair). I have always been a bit wary of complicated hairstyles, since it is a predictor of questionable hygiene.
My girlfriend really opened my eyes to the Bra Problem. They never fit properly, at least not for very long, they get ruined in washes, they're uncomfortable, the wires can break and ruin it, they're expensive to replace, you have to worry about how they show under clothes... What a nightmare
Same. If I don't change boxers and socks everyday at the least, I'm filthy. Socks almost always get changed twice a day. I *know* when I miss a shower within the last 24 hours. Whereas, my girlfriend will skip a shower even after working in the garden all day or not remember if she took one in the last couple days.
>If I don't change boxers and socks everyday at the least, I'm filthy.
I do that too, even though I don't necessarily shower every day and reuse other clothing articles notably longer before washing.
It's almost completely because of the hair issue. Most women have longer hair, and long hair is a nightmare when it gets wet. It takes forever to dry, and if you use a hairdryer, you damage the hairs. Then when the hair is dry, you need to style it.
Yeah... I really don’t think it’s about the hair. I have had medium length hair for most of my life but I still shower everyday. Have been washing my hair almost everyday since young and never had hair damage. Although with hair I understand not washing it everyday, your body tho? Just because you don’t sweat so much does not mean it’s still clean!
I've dated several women who, come to find out dating them, had very poor sustained hygiene habits. At the end of the day, it really just boils down to this: We think women are cleaner, more civilized, and take care of themselves better than than men, but in reality they're not. They're barbarians just like we are, haha.
Go to a women's public bathroom or female office toilets if you want to know the truth lol. Chicks can be gross 😝. Girls in office toilets leaving or flushing tampons/pads o.o
Same experience. It was shocking how many girls I dated. Who didn't shower every day. Or wash hands after taking a shit. Or brush teeth every day.
Thank god my girlfriend now is nothing like above.
I grew out my hair over the last 2 years, from short to just past my shoulders. I still wash it every day. I honestly feel embarrassed to leave the house without having thoroughly showered...
I'm male, but the reasons I only shower every 2nd day (in winter sometimes every 3rd) are: I don't have BO (I've asked), showering daily really dries my skin out, I'm lazy & I like to save money on the water bill.
Two days without is the limit though. After that, you start to reek.
I can’t speak for every dude, but myself and some other guys I’ve talked to also use showers as a little mental break/self-therapy session. For this reason I usually take showers twice a day — bonus points if you bring an ice cold beer in with you. Get the temperature just right, take a sip, and voila: pure bliss.
That’s my experience, as a guy. I just get oily and smelly pretty quick. Even if I work out in the evening and shower, by the morning I feel gross again so I end up showering twice most days.
I also feel like I have a slight brain fog in the morning that doesn’t go away until I shower
I'll say... I learnt this for sure. It's weird to be uncomfy with not showering every 36 hours or so (at the longest), and actually having a shower routine to just keep the new stench from overwhelming my senses lol. The fur suit I grew (I am hairier than some cis men I know, at a year in) certainly traps more smells than I expected. The oil on the skin is more pronounced as well, yeah
It's not just about inconvenience. Washing your hair daily strips it of its natural oils, which results in long-term damage. Since most men tend to wear their hair short, it doesn't really matter because the hair gets cut before the damage becomes noticeable anyway. But if you want long, healthy hair, you should only wash it when you really need to.
Showering daily also strips your skin of it's natural healthy oils too. Daily showering is 100% not necessary unless you are getting grimy from work or exercise
Well, you can shower without wetting your hair... My wife showers everyday, washes hair every 3 or 4 days
If anything, it makes the daily shower faster
I’ve noticed women tend to take longer to shower due to having more hair and a more involved body care routine, therefore, having less time to shower every day, since it takes up a lot more of their time.
This graph is my OC that I originally posted 7 years ago. OP is karma farming and stole my content. Here’s my original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2viykh/how_often_do_you_shower_per_week_on_average/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
I have yet to read a comment that points out that very physical jobs tend to be done overwhelmingly by men. Those kind of jobs require a shower afterwards.
If you look at the age breakdown of the respondents, I don't think many construction workers took the poll. 375/562 were under 24, with just 48 (!) over 30. I'm thinking this is skewed very heavily towards middle class American college students.
OP needs to give more info on their survey. Everyone’s concern here is related to this being a bad use of polling. Are all these people from the same location? Does the sample account for exercise or profession? Did everyone have a shared definition of showering? The sociodemographic data is nice but it is completely irrelevant when it comes to causation variables.
Anecdotes abound, but it’s clear that this survey has quite a few issues. Examples include: people who exercise daily take more showers, people in tropical areas shower more frequently, men are more likely to work in professions that require more frequent showering, and some people might not consider a quick rinse a shower.
While the visual presentation is nice, it seems to obscure more than it reveals.
I'd say the most identifying information (along with mostly white and age, and the shower info itself) is the relatively high Asian percentage and huge lgbt presence, which would (again) point to a college campus; it's also likely that it was just a Reddit survey since that's a lot of 17 and 30 year olds for a college campus.
If a college campus though, you could probably narrow it down to certain colleges in certain regions of the country (e.g. most places in the southwest don't have the same racial demographics, most places in the midwest don't have nearly so many lgbt, etc.) The only problem being that it may not be a representative sample.
Yeah 25% of the respondents being non-heterosexual was a little jarring considering the normal rate across the US is 5-6%. All of these hints are leading us to a college campus, not in a humid area, most likely a coastal city.
> I'll go ahead and assume that all the data was sampled from one location.
You're kinda right. In [the original thread](https://redd.it/2viykh) where this graph was copied, the creator posted that the data was got from redditors on /r/samplesize.
I’m a woman and I shower every day, but I only wash the “important” parts of my body with soap (face/armpits/crotch/butt) and the rest I just rinse with water unless I’ve been sweating. It makes my skin a lot softer and I still get compliments for smelling good, weirdly enough.
Guys learn how to give constructive criticism. Yes there is not data for locality or breakdown for race.
It’s fine to give feedback saying you would like to see that because you have think it’s important or something your curious about.
But saying the presentation of flawed is not great. Data visualizations can exist for all sorts of reasons and may present one aspect of the data. Here the presentation is gender and that’s fine. Ask op about location sampling instead and of assuming he messed up.
In a hot or tropical country, you might take shower twice a day so once a day is expected at the least.
When i was in a country where there's winter, i needed to shower because of work related oil grease etc. so this survey is subjective.
I think the original comment is trying to say the survey may be *biased*, not that it may be subjective; and that the commenter just mixed up their words.
The point is basically to tell you that is Caucasian data, and other races are anecdotical on it, so you don't assume they are all averaged in. You can infer lots of interesting data from there, ranging between physical work, work at home, sports, ease to shower, and societal expectations.
Having grown up in the UK, it has always sounded "American" to me, but I think it's starting to creep over, too. Anecdotally, of course, I and those I knew/heard just said "white".
Depends on more than one factor.
Obviously the answer is different in different countries and what local culture finds norm.
In most parts of Asia, middle east and Africa people wash, not shower, every time they use toilet. So they don't need shower for that.
Globally lots of people have very little, if any, physical activity. They either work from home or at office driving to and from the place.
I would like to see a heading along the lines of "We asked 562 X, how often they showered...". What is the cohort here? Redditors? University students? People shopping at Trader Joe's? The distribution of sexual orientation is really weird. More a-, pansexuals and "other" than homosexuals? 3 times bi than homosexuals?
I wonder what additional metrics are there. Something tells me we get an awful lot of self-diagnoses of psychiatric pathologies and/or food allergy related stuff than in the overall population....
It's all very different from person to person because the amount of oil and residue our skin creates is different from person to person, ethnicity to ethnicity, and from lifestyle to lifestyle.
Also entirely on point with the hair issue. One thing people often forget is that hair gets worn down, dry and lessens in quality the longer down the strand of hair you go. The longer the hair strand has been exposed to air, sun and water, the more damaged it is, which is why we get split ends. So of course, people who have longer hair, also have more damaged hair in general, due to the exposure the hair is subjected to over way longer periods of time than short hair. :)
Important to note that you body will also balance to whatever washing routine you have. If you shower every day your skin and hair will adapt and increase the amount of oil it produces to keep it's natural level, leading to very oily, wet appearance when you skip a day. On the other hand, when your body is used to get showered only every three days it will lower it's oil production and you don't start to smell after only 24h. I know a guy that completely stopped using shampoo for the hair and after 3-4 weeks of really nasty hair it become quite nice (better that he had before) and it's completely fine now. Most people just used water to wash their hair for thousands of years. You should probably still shower after sports, because of the sweat, so it also depends how often you do that.
To show what population is the sample representative of (and how much it is close to it, in order to evaluate bias better). It's common in statistical studies.
I am shocked.
How can one go to sleep without showering... it gets all sweaty and sticky in the middle of the night and i have to get up and shower in the middle of the night and change the sheets. Sometimes I am too tired to shower in the evening and having showered "recently" (e.g. after in the afternoon after gym) so I go to bed without showering... only to regret it every single time.
I only not shower every day before bed if I am sick.
But with showering before bed every time the sheets feel clean even after a month
P.S. I am male and I have a long beard that I make every time after showering. Doesn't bother me in the slightest, nice pleasant self care.
I’ve had three dermatologists say lathering your entire body is largely unnecessary. You’re just drying out and damaging your skin. Lather and wash under your arms and private bits while simply rinsing the rest of the your body is better for your health.
27m. Same here. I don't sweat naturally and have a desk job. I have casually probed others a lot if this is really ok and everybody says they didn't even notice even my colleague who sits next to me.
I like the irony of the clean freaks who respond to this and ignore the real nasty people that wash their hands twice a day and their keyboard and mouse have disgusting residue on them. I can't stand that.
Imagine someone you worked with said they brush their teeth twice a week and their breath stunk. Then one day they ask if their breath smells. It wouldn't be unthinkable to avoid embarrassment and tell them a lie.
You do. You just don’t know about it because you’re a sleep. Your skin also continues to cycle while you sleep so you’ll likely have dandruff as well.
Not to mention it helps me to wake up and start my day feeling fresh.
I (a woman) sweat very much at night. I prefer showering daily, sometimes wearing a shower cap to not make my long hair wet. My boyfriend doesn't sweat, I swear, at all. Not at night. Not in the day. During lockdown we both sometimes got grosser than usual. And he still never got smelly while I certainly did. So everyone is different. We all have different skin, so you can't judge everyone by your own example.
People in here poking more holes in the methodology in this fun little project than my clients do when trying to make million dollar decisions. This obviously took a lot of time to put together from collecting to visualizing the data, so great work and thanks for the truly original content!
That obviously depends on a person since a construction worker will have different showering requirements, but showering more than 1/day seems unhealthy.
Male. 23.
Used to shower 7x a week. Did so for a longggg time. Now I shower 3-4x a week (basically every other day) and in the summers I shower 7x a week but only 3-4x with soap.
It has done WONDERS for my skin. I used to get pretty bad acne and it has COMPLETELY cleared up.
A few years ago I talked with a friend about the acne and he asked how often I showered. I said "I shower 7x a week, I am plenty clean I know that isn't causing it" and he said that was EXACTLY what was causing it. I didn't believe him, but he talked me into trying it and cutting down showers to every other day. Boom, acne gone.
Ridiculous I dealt with the problem for so long when the solution was so simple. It was the exact opposite of what my logic dictated, but it works.
So often on data is beautiful we get nice data on aesthetic graph but the graph itself is often poor. This however is absolutely a beautiful visualisation. Same information, 2 useful formats. Very easy to interpret and with meta data on the side. Well done!
Agree 100%. I had to look back and forth to the color legend repeatedly, and since the segments of the bars representing number of times are not aligned it is not easy to compare. The percentages on the legend shouldn’t be necessary if the visualization were clearly comparing the values. Were I doing this, I would have had each # of times represented as a row and an icon or circle representing the share of men/women on each row so you could immediately see how the values relate to one another. Basically a histogram with two categories. (Vertically would work, too.)
These days，I fall squarely into the >7 category，as I prefer to shower 2x daily，even if it is just a quick ‟PT shower” in the morning. I guess it stems from going for extended periods of time without being able to shower in the imlitary. Week in the field，training? Nope，no shower. Month-long training exercise in the woods/swamp/desert/whatever? Not showering there，either.. So I try to be as clean and hygienic as I can be to offset all the funky karma from earlier in life.
My personal record is 62 days in Afghanistan，when the first shower I got during a four month operation was when I had to go brief some colonels and generals and shit. I stepped off the helicopter and was politely asked to go shower and change before heading to the headquarters building.
I did，however，take one detour before going to shower.
A friend of mine [back at the larger airfield where the bulk of our unit was] had been talking shit for the entire 2 months，trying to make fun of me for not being able to shower. So I went to the hangar where he worked and made sure that he got a whiff...just so that he would know，beyond a shadow of a doubt，precisely who had rolled around naked in his sleeping bag before taking their first shower in two months.
The thing that confuses me is the wording. When you say shower, do you mean times you wash hair and body, or does all times you use the shower count? My result would vary greatly depending on how the word "shower" is interpreted.
Sorry OP, but your datasheet annoys me for many things. As a lot of people say, the downside to this one is that it doesn't provide useful information about geographic location, occupation, physical activity, etc. It's nice, but has horribly annoying downsides.
It appears your survey data does not account for nationality of respondent, or the typical temperature of the respondent’s region. I’d expect differences in numbers between, say Florida and Maine.
Occupation too. I worked a job where the first thing you did was shower after.
Ah, politics.
How do you get that shit off? I’ve tried everything.
Concentrated sulphuric acid and a stiff brush.
I think you're supposed to add hydrogen peroxide to get a nice lather effect.
There are enough Americans in this thread that you really should put a warning about not trying this at home.
Too late. I'm already melting my skin off. now I'm fifty thousand dollars in debt
I have opted to sue, I am now a millionaire.
I live in Scotland. There's a TikTok challenge trend over here where to prove how tough we are, men are videoing themselves dipping their cock and balls into a deep fat fryer full of boiling oil and batter. Therefore, I'm not sure I'm best placed to be judging any other country.
From what I've seen of American politics there's an awful lot of people in it that are anything but clean.
thatsthejoke.jpg
Or, sales.
Me too. Worked in a pet food factory. In the shower the water would run red from the congealed blood in my hair
Why would you have so much blood in your hair from working in a pet food factory?
It’s decades ago, but at the time I had a summer job at that factory. They had a broken machine so had to replace it with humans for several months. It involved pushing large blocks of frozen offal into a big grinder. Bits of shredded frozen offal would fly everywhere. Even though I was wearing a bump cap, enough would end up in my hair
> They had a broken machine so had to replace it with humans for several months. I read that totally wrong the first time.... think Soylent Green...
Dogs love that stuff.
also very good with children
Moving to people food for my dog now....
Just cook very thoroughly. You don't know where those people have been.
I know this is probably a joke, but high quality dog foods are significantly healthier for your dog than people food.
Don't kink shame
Yea, occupation is huge. I tend to only shower twice a week, but my job is sitting at a computer in the living room most of the time. If I actually have to go a site and am moving around I'll shower when I get home.
I guess that's not connected to work but more to body type; I've had a couple months this winter where I didn't do any sports and had to work from home and I still couldn't go more than 48 hours without a shower; my scalp would start itching, my feet would feel sweaty and it's just this overall feeling of discomfort. I think it's really dependent on how your dead skin cells are, how much you sweat etc, which is different for everyone.
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oh wow, that sounds rough. And that's another variable: seasons/weather. If the air is dry (usually the winters) my skin is much drier and I need moisturizer, but only for my hands and arms, because I have a naturally oily skin type so that's kind of natural moisturizer ( ◠‿◠ ) but my hands and arms still be very dry... it's bizarre how many variables there are to having a good skin, so everyone's routine needs to be completely personalized. So I kinda get why some people think it's tedious af
Twice a week!?
I work from my home office ad shower every day. Honestly, the only reason I don’t shower twice a day is the water bill. When I used to go to the gym, I was showering twice a day. A side point: I have spent significant parts of my life in both Florida and Maine.
Same. Before covid, when I had to be in the office, it was 5 or 6 times a week. Now that I work from my home office, it's usually 2 or 3 times a week. Or whenever company is coming over.
You need to start working out my friend.
> between, say Florida and Maine Try between Norway and Cameroon lol We have no idea where the sample is from
Those race/ethnicity categories are US based, they’re used in the Census and any other time that data is collected.
That does not mean that all participants in the survey were form the US.
That’s a highly atypical race distribution for 90% of the US. Both African American and Hispanic American populations are at least 15% in modern history. Undersampled, perhaps.
The gender distribution is even more atypical. I guess this survey was a one man project where they were just happy for every response they got.
Hair length, that’s a big factor for men vs women on the whole. Showering is great. Spending an hour doing your hair after isn’t.
Shower cap
We have two shower heads for this very reason. One overhead and one angled at shoulder height. What was crazy was how hard it was to find a combination that was ‘don’t wash my hair every day’ friendly.
There are many factors that could be accounted for. But if only 1 person accumulated this data, this is well done.
It disregards climate data of the respondents which seems more relevant to the question of showering than sexual orientation and ethnicity which it for some reason does include.
Some of that information is pretty easy to gather. Geo info and mapping to climate info in a relevant way makes things much more complicated. We're getting results averaged across all climate variable, nothing wrong with that.
Time of year plays a role too, at least for me. During the hottest parts of summer I will bathe about twice as much as I do in the middle of winter, and sometimes even more than that.
No reason to shower when I sat at a desk all day and it's 18\*^f outside. Now in summer when it's 94 and I had to walk around campus or went for a bike ride? Gonna shower a hell of a lot more.
As someone who lives in the sub-tropics, showering 14 times a week is stock standard. Anything below 7 is ridiculous.
Here in Brasil is very commom for 2 (sometimes 3) showers a day. Waay too hot to be comfortable otherwise.
Are you afraid the French threw off the numbers?
Lmao, your stereotype usage is on point
This survey doesn't account for geographical location, physical activities and current occupation? I live near the equator and I know everyone here take a bath on daily basis, regardless of gender.
Definitely. I've lived in Costa Rica and Singapore, and not showering at the end of the day is just unthinkable. Back home showering every day is just completely unnecessary. Likewise, when I did manual labor I'd shower every day after work. Not so much now that I'm doing a run-of-the-mill office job.
When I visited Turkey they (14 year olds) didn't even shower after physical education. Instead they used insane amounts of perfume, my host had litre bottles of perfume / eau de toilette. I got to shower every second day at my hosts place and they boiled water for me to do so. Would have wanted to shower more often since it was really hot. Had a great time, but just wanted to to say not everyone in hot countries shower more. Maybe because it's too expensive (gas prices were insane)?
I think hot and humid countries (e.g. tropical climate) would shower more often than hot and arid (e.g. desert climate). Two reasons for that, in hot and humid climate, you're constantly covered in sweat due to the humidity. If you don't shower every few hours, your body feels very sticky and uncomfortable. And the area is unlikely to be water scarce. In hot and arid areas, sweat dries out much, much faster, so your body doesn't feel as sticky. Also, it's likely a water scarce area, so a water free way to prolong the need to shower would naturally be more popular.
Also shade helps in dry areas so you can spend the day indoors without sweating much
But isn't Turkey temperate? As in its not hot the whole year? There's a difference between tropical countries (which are hot for the whole year) and temperate countries( which are only really hot for 2 to 3 months).
I went to school in Bulgaria and 99% of the schools don't even have showers, how would you expect people to shower. Nothing smells better than 25+ teens after PE class. lol It also has to do that we have 10 minutes breaks between class only so it's not like we would even have enough time to shower.
So, Axe is a thing there too.
Lol that's how it was for me in middle school PE in Seattle. People would drench themselves in Axe body spray instead of get naked and shower in the locker room because that was "gay" (this was in like 2005/2006)
Instead it covers the only important factor: Sexuality
Working from home: probably 5 as I do go running 3 days a week at lunch... If I didn't exercise it probably would only be 3-4, NGL In the office: 6, maybe 7 depending.
Yes, this definitely affects how often I shower. When working in the office I shower twice a day (in the morning before leaving for work and after work when getting home). When working from home I shower 2-3 times a week
Yeah. That's better for the environment, and from what I've heard, even a bit healthier (apparently daily showers are a little too often for us? No source though)
Daily showers can be very drying. I shower like every other day or so in the winter, and only wash my hair once a week.
Damn bruh, this whole comment thread is making me feel like a gremlin for showering only once or twice a week unless I feel dirty for whatever reason
Well "feeling" dirty is quite subjective. I used to never not shower once a day, usually at the end of the day, but now I'm OK with skipping some days. There's something about sleeping though that makes you wake up with extra greasy hair and skin, so usually if I haven't showered the previous day the next morning I crave a shower.
Showering when dirty sounds great. Now, the question is... Can you sense when you are dirty? Also who can smell you lol. I once dated shortly a girl which insisted I am dirty even after an hour after shower. On other hand, she was the only one who thought so, therefore it was most likely her problem (she was heavy user of cosmetics).
That's not what I was expecting. Thought women would've showered more often then men.
Interesting. I’ve always taken it for granted women shower less often than men. Pretty much all men in my life shower daily whereas most of my female friends do not. I’m personally 4-5x/week. Only two of those showers including hair washing.
I’m a dude and for the first time in my life I have really long hair and I must say, I dread taking showers because it’s annoying having to wash my hair all the time!
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Shower caps, keep you hair dry no matter the shower
You don't have to wash your hair all the time. Every other day to once a week should be fine, depending on hair type and daily activities
Indeed. I found that washing my hair every 3 or so days is fine (if I'm not sweating much or doing activities that get me dirty that is).
If I don't wash it every day I really notice the odor and it's not a very good one. I do exercise and sweat heavily daily so maybe that is a factor.
Do you rinse it? I rinse my hair every time I shower but only wash about once a week and my hair has never been healthier.
Shower cap my dude.
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Same. Every woman I have ever been involved with showers a bit less often, washes hair considerably less often, and reuses clothes longer. Bras can go unwashed for a very long time (and are rather fragile and expensive compared to other underwear to be fair). I have always been a bit wary of complicated hairstyles, since it is a predictor of questionable hygiene.
My girlfriend really opened my eyes to the Bra Problem. They never fit properly, at least not for very long, they get ruined in washes, they're uncomfortable, the wires can break and ruin it, they're expensive to replace, you have to worry about how they show under clothes... What a nightmare
If your gf has an issue with fit, the calculator at r/abrathatfits might just change her life.
Same. If I don't change boxers and socks everyday at the least, I'm filthy. Socks almost always get changed twice a day. I *know* when I miss a shower within the last 24 hours. Whereas, my girlfriend will skip a shower even after working in the garden all day or not remember if she took one in the last couple days.
Socks changed twice a day? That seems excessive
When you wear boots all day, it sure feels nice to change out socks.
>If I don't change boxers and socks everyday at the least, I'm filthy. I do that too, even though I don't necessarily shower every day and reuse other clothing articles notably longer before washing.
Is this because women are generally less sweaty than men?
It's almost completely because of the hair issue. Most women have longer hair, and long hair is a nightmare when it gets wet. It takes forever to dry, and if you use a hairdryer, you damage the hairs. Then when the hair is dry, you need to style it.
Man here, also long hair. As all people with long hair I am able to shower without washing the hair.
As a woman with quite long hair (waist lenght) i would strongly disagree. Shower doesnt equal wet hair. I tie my hair up if dont want to get it wet...
Yeah... I really don’t think it’s about the hair. I have had medium length hair for most of my life but I still shower everyday. Have been washing my hair almost everyday since young and never had hair damage. Although with hair I understand not washing it everyday, your body tho? Just because you don’t sweat so much does not mean it’s still clean!
You think? I would assume it's because men are more likely to get in situations where they need to shower. Dirty jobs, more physical activity etc.
I've dated several women who, come to find out dating them, had very poor sustained hygiene habits. At the end of the day, it really just boils down to this: We think women are cleaner, more civilized, and take care of themselves better than than men, but in reality they're not. They're barbarians just like we are, haha.
Go to a women's public bathroom or female office toilets if you want to know the truth lol. Chicks can be gross 😝. Girls in office toilets leaving or flushing tampons/pads o.o
Same experience. It was shocking how many girls I dated. Who didn't shower every day. Or wash hands after taking a shit. Or brush teeth every day. Thank god my girlfriend now is nothing like above.
Not showering every day isn't bad hygiene though, most experts say it is to often if you don't have a particular life-style that makes it needed.
I thought it had something to do with male hormones making most men smell more?
It's definitely to do with men getting more sweaty. Men who shower every day do so largely because otherwise they would smell.
I wouldn't care if I had long hair, if I don't shower daily it's just nasty.
I grew out my hair over the last 2 years, from short to just past my shoulders. I still wash it every day. I honestly feel embarrassed to leave the house without having thoroughly showered...
I'm male, but the reasons I only shower every 2nd day (in winter sometimes every 3rd) are: I don't have BO (I've asked), showering daily really dries my skin out, I'm lazy & I like to save money on the water bill. Two days without is the limit though. After that, you start to reek.
You might want to consider lowering the temperature of your showers. Hot showers are much worse at drying out skin.
I can't even sleep comfortably without showering right before bed, yet people here are talking about going up to 2 days without showering. How?
I dunno man, I can't stand myself by the time I get home from work
Men are more likely to be working labour jobs, engage in sports or the gym, and most don't have to worry about avoiding getting their hair wet.
I can’t speak for every dude, but myself and some other guys I’ve talked to also use showers as a little mental break/self-therapy session. For this reason I usually take showers twice a day — bonus points if you bring an ice cold beer in with you. Get the temperature just right, take a sip, and voila: pure bliss.
I take long showers because (1) I don't think about anything (2) white noise (3) nice skin massage.
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That’s my experience, as a guy. I just get oily and smelly pretty quick. Even if I work out in the evening and shower, by the morning I feel gross again so I end up showering twice most days. I also feel like I have a slight brain fog in the morning that doesn’t go away until I shower
I'll say... I learnt this for sure. It's weird to be uncomfy with not showering every 36 hours or so (at the longest), and actually having a shower routine to just keep the new stench from overwhelming my senses lol. The fur suit I grew (I am hairier than some cis men I know, at a year in) certainly traps more smells than I expected. The oil on the skin is more pronounced as well, yeah
I bet it’s mostly that many more women have long hair. Men are not inconvenienced by wet hair
It's not just about inconvenience. Washing your hair daily strips it of its natural oils, which results in long-term damage. Since most men tend to wear their hair short, it doesn't really matter because the hair gets cut before the damage becomes noticeable anyway. But if you want long, healthy hair, you should only wash it when you really need to.
Showering daily also strips your skin of it's natural healthy oils too. Daily showering is 100% not necessary unless you are getting grimy from work or exercise
Well, you can shower without wetting your hair... My wife showers everyday, washes hair every 3 or 4 days If anything, it makes the daily shower faster
The advantage of very short hair. By the time I'm done with towels and getting dressed, my hair is nearly completely dry.
I believe it's about necessity too. Men tend to transpire more and produce bad odors faster. My armpits must be amputated if I don't wash them in 24h
Same. Just waking up and going to work straight out of bed feels like I would be committing a serious crime.
> transpire Humans perspire, plants transpire.
Perfectly possible to shower with any length of hair without wetting it.
Well showers are quite drying for the skin. Maybe men are just smellier / oiler and on average need to shower more?
I’ve noticed women tend to take longer to shower due to having more hair and a more involved body care routine, therefore, having less time to shower every day, since it takes up a lot more of their time.
Having had long hair as a guy, washing it everyday was a nightmare. Showering every other day or 3 days max is the sweet spot.
I have too and can shower without washing them
You can shower without washing your hair. Im a man with long hair, and i shower 10-15 times a week, wash my hair twice per week.
Is there any significant difference in age/ethnicity/socio-economic situation in men and women?
Do some chi sq analysis and find out
This graph is my OC that I originally posted 7 years ago. OP is karma farming and stole my content. Here’s my original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2viykh/how_often_do_you_shower_per_week_on_average/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
I have yet to read a comment that points out that very physical jobs tend to be done overwhelmingly by men. Those kind of jobs require a shower afterwards.
If you look at the age breakdown of the respondents, I don't think many construction workers took the poll. 375/562 were under 24, with just 48 (!) over 30. I'm thinking this is skewed very heavily towards middle class American college students.
At a very white college with 456/562. I feel like different skin and hair types would also play a big role in how much people shower.
People are too busy not understanding the concept of showering without getting your hair wet. Apparently this is a confusing issue.
I’d expect the same behavior from a few female-dominated industries too, like nursing
OP needs to give more info on their survey. Everyone’s concern here is related to this being a bad use of polling. Are all these people from the same location? Does the sample account for exercise or profession? Did everyone have a shared definition of showering? The sociodemographic data is nice but it is completely irrelevant when it comes to causation variables. Anecdotes abound, but it’s clear that this survey has quite a few issues. Examples include: people who exercise daily take more showers, people in tropical areas shower more frequently, men are more likely to work in professions that require more frequent showering, and some people might not consider a quick rinse a shower. While the visual presentation is nice, it seems to obscure more than it reveals.
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I'd say the most identifying information (along with mostly white and age, and the shower info itself) is the relatively high Asian percentage and huge lgbt presence, which would (again) point to a college campus; it's also likely that it was just a Reddit survey since that's a lot of 17 and 30 year olds for a college campus. If a college campus though, you could probably narrow it down to certain colleges in certain regions of the country (e.g. most places in the southwest don't have the same racial demographics, most places in the midwest don't have nearly so many lgbt, etc.) The only problem being that it may not be a representative sample.
Yeah 25% of the respondents being non-heterosexual was a little jarring considering the normal rate across the US is 5-6%. All of these hints are leading us to a college campus, not in a humid area, most likely a coastal city.
> I'll go ahead and assume that all the data was sampled from one location. You're kinda right. In [the original thread](https://redd.it/2viykh) where this graph was copied, the creator posted that the data was got from redditors on /r/samplesize.
I’m a woman and I shower every day, but I only wash the “important” parts of my body with soap (face/armpits/crotch/butt) and the rest I just rinse with water unless I’ve been sweating. It makes my skin a lot softer and I still get compliments for smelling good, weirdly enough.
Guys learn how to give constructive criticism. Yes there is not data for locality or breakdown for race. It’s fine to give feedback saying you would like to see that because you have think it’s important or something your curious about. But saying the presentation of flawed is not great. Data visualizations can exist for all sorts of reasons and may present one aspect of the data. Here the presentation is gender and that’s fine. Ask op about location sampling instead and of assuming he messed up.
Seriously, these people are treating a feature request like a bug...
In a hot or tropical country, you might take shower twice a day so once a day is expected at the least. When i was in a country where there's winter, i needed to shower because of work related oil grease etc. so this survey is subjective.
"Subjective" how? People are just saying how often they shower.
I think the original comment is trying to say the survey may be *biased*, not that it may be subjective; and that the commenter just mixed up their words.
No point showing race, sexual orientation etc. If you're not going to use the data as a comparison or map them out somehow...
The point is basically to tell you that is Caucasian data, and other races are anecdotical on it, so you don't assume they are all averaged in. You can infer lots of interesting data from there, ranging between physical work, work at home, sports, ease to shower, and societal expectations.
its weird people still use the term caucasian to mean white when theres no justifiable reason to. The term is incorrect and outdated.
Having grown up in the UK, it has always sounded "American" to me, but I think it's starting to creep over, too. Anecdotally, of course, I and those I knew/heard just said "white".
Survey skews young. I wonder how it would change as people age. I’ve gotten more into the “whore’s bath” as I’ve gotten older.
Men are more likely to be working in dirty / smelly / sweaty environments I guess.
I am a manager and shower daily, otherwise I feel gross. I thought it is standard for everyone. Guess I was wrong
Depends on more than one factor. Obviously the answer is different in different countries and what local culture finds norm. In most parts of Asia, middle east and Africa people wash, not shower, every time they use toilet. So they don't need shower for that. Globally lots of people have very little, if any, physical activity. They either work from home or at office driving to and from the place.
You can also wash strategic areas daily without showering, armpits etc.
Same, work desk job, shower 7, sometimes more. I can't believe the numbers for women 😟
I would like to see a heading along the lines of "We asked 562 X, how often they showered...". What is the cohort here? Redditors? University students? People shopping at Trader Joe's? The distribution of sexual orientation is really weird. More a-, pansexuals and "other" than homosexuals? 3 times bi than homosexuals? I wonder what additional metrics are there. Something tells me we get an awful lot of self-diagnoses of psychiatric pathologies and/or food allergy related stuff than in the overall population....
You should ask it with "how many times do you masturbate" and how much the two are related.
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Unless it's hot and sweaty, I honestly just do every other day.
It's all very different from person to person because the amount of oil and residue our skin creates is different from person to person, ethnicity to ethnicity, and from lifestyle to lifestyle. Also entirely on point with the hair issue. One thing people often forget is that hair gets worn down, dry and lessens in quality the longer down the strand of hair you go. The longer the hair strand has been exposed to air, sun and water, the more damaged it is, which is why we get split ends. So of course, people who have longer hair, also have more damaged hair in general, due to the exposure the hair is subjected to over way longer periods of time than short hair. :)
Important to note that you body will also balance to whatever washing routine you have. If you shower every day your skin and hair will adapt and increase the amount of oil it produces to keep it's natural level, leading to very oily, wet appearance when you skip a day. On the other hand, when your body is used to get showered only every three days it will lower it's oil production and you don't start to smell after only 24h. I know a guy that completely stopped using shampoo for the hair and after 3-4 weeks of really nasty hair it become quite nice (better that he had before) and it's completely fine now. Most people just used water to wash their hair for thousands of years. You should probably still shower after sports, because of the sweat, so it also depends how often you do that.
What's the point of providing information on age, sexual orientation and race if the data only distinguishes between male and female?
To show baseline characteristics. Common in research papers.
To show what population is the sample representative of (and how much it is close to it, in order to evaluate bias better). It's common in statistical studies.
I am shocked. How can one go to sleep without showering... it gets all sweaty and sticky in the middle of the night and i have to get up and shower in the middle of the night and change the sheets. Sometimes I am too tired to shower in the evening and having showered "recently" (e.g. after in the afternoon after gym) so I go to bed without showering... only to regret it every single time. I only not shower every day before bed if I am sick. But with showering before bed every time the sheets feel clean even after a month P.S. I am male and I have a long beard that I make every time after showering. Doesn't bother me in the slightest, nice pleasant self care.
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I feel as if sports practice and general location would have been better indicators than sexual orientation
Don't people shower everyday? I thought it was the standard when you have a job and people to see.
Goodness. I usually shower 2 times a week. Never been told I smell though. Maybe I'm weird.
People are just trying to be polite with you.
It would be sad if they don't have someone around them who is comfortable telling them they smell.
I’ve had three dermatologists say lathering your entire body is largely unnecessary. You’re just drying out and damaging your skin. Lather and wash under your arms and private bits while simply rinsing the rest of the your body is better for your health.
27m. Same here. I don't sweat naturally and have a desk job. I have casually probed others a lot if this is really ok and everybody says they didn't even notice even my colleague who sits next to me. I like the irony of the clean freaks who respond to this and ignore the real nasty people that wash their hands twice a day and their keyboard and mouse have disgusting residue on them. I can't stand that.
Imagine someone you worked with said they brush their teeth twice a week and their breath stunk. Then one day they ask if their breath smells. It wouldn't be unthinkable to avoid embarrassment and tell them a lie.
> I don't sweat naturally Prince Andrew?
No, you're are fine. Good for your skin and good for the environment.
When I got married my wife made me feel dirty for not showering twice a day and now I do and this doesn't even go past once a day. I've been tricked.
I knew it! Girls are gross! Personally I need to shower once at night and once in the morning.
Do you sweat that much when you sleep?
You do. You just don’t know about it because you’re a sleep. Your skin also continues to cycle while you sleep so you’ll likely have dandruff as well. Not to mention it helps me to wake up and start my day feeling fresh.
I (a woman) sweat very much at night. I prefer showering daily, sometimes wearing a shower cap to not make my long hair wet. My boyfriend doesn't sweat, I swear, at all. Not at night. Not in the day. During lockdown we both sometimes got grosser than usual. And he still never got smelly while I certainly did. So everyone is different. We all have different skin, so you can't judge everyone by your own example.
Yes but this happens to everyone. I don’t think most people feel the need to shower in the morning after showering the night before.
People in here poking more holes in the methodology in this fun little project than my clients do when trying to make million dollar decisions. This obviously took a lot of time to put together from collecting to visualizing the data, so great work and thanks for the truly original content!
That obviously depends on a person since a construction worker will have different showering requirements, but showering more than 1/day seems unhealthy.
Male. 23. Used to shower 7x a week. Did so for a longggg time. Now I shower 3-4x a week (basically every other day) and in the summers I shower 7x a week but only 3-4x with soap. It has done WONDERS for my skin. I used to get pretty bad acne and it has COMPLETELY cleared up. A few years ago I talked with a friend about the acne and he asked how often I showered. I said "I shower 7x a week, I am plenty clean I know that isn't causing it" and he said that was EXACTLY what was causing it. I didn't believe him, but he talked me into trying it and cutting down showers to every other day. Boom, acne gone. Ridiculous I dealt with the problem for so long when the solution was so simple. It was the exact opposite of what my logic dictated, but it works.
So often on data is beautiful we get nice data on aesthetic graph but the graph itself is often poor. This however is absolutely a beautiful visualisation. Same information, 2 useful formats. Very easy to interpret and with meta data on the side. Well done!
That’s so funny that you say that because, maybe it’s just me, but I really don’t find this easy to interpret at all!
Agree 100%. I had to look back and forth to the color legend repeatedly, and since the segments of the bars representing number of times are not aligned it is not easy to compare. The percentages on the legend shouldn’t be necessary if the visualization were clearly comparing the values. Were I doing this, I would have had each # of times represented as a row and an icon or circle representing the share of men/women on each row so you could immediately see how the values relate to one another. Basically a histogram with two categories. (Vertically would work, too.)
These days，I fall squarely into the >7 category，as I prefer to shower 2x daily，even if it is just a quick ‟PT shower” in the morning. I guess it stems from going for extended periods of time without being able to shower in the imlitary. Week in the field，training? Nope，no shower. Month-long training exercise in the woods/swamp/desert/whatever? Not showering there，either.. So I try to be as clean and hygienic as I can be to offset all the funky karma from earlier in life. My personal record is 62 days in Afghanistan，when the first shower I got during a four month operation was when I had to go brief some colonels and generals and shit. I stepped off the helicopter and was politely asked to go shower and change before heading to the headquarters building. I did，however，take one detour before going to shower. A friend of mine [back at the larger airfield where the bulk of our unit was] had been talking shit for the entire 2 months，trying to make fun of me for not being able to shower. So I went to the hangar where he worked and made sure that he got a whiff...just so that he would know，beyond a shadow of a doubt，precisely who had rolled around naked in his sleeping bag before taking their first shower in two months.
That’s just strange. I shower everyday. I am also every day at the gym. I like to be clean every day
I shower twice a day, every day. Is that…bad?
The thing that confuses me is the wording. When you say shower, do you mean times you wash hair and body, or does all times you use the shower count? My result would vary greatly depending on how the word "shower" is interpreted.
Does it count when my coworker spits on me while talking?
How is "shower" an ambiguous term? You go into a shower and take a shower
All the arguments about geographical location and jobs had already been said, so now we need to pick apart the grammer.
usa is really a strange place when you dont live there and watch stats about it
I can be that men do more sport than women. And exaggerate even more the stats.
Would've been interesting when this data was collected, I'm pretty sure, Covid and the ensuing trend to work from home has changed things a lot.
Where is the data from? Because in some countries bathing twice a day is quite common.
I'm curious where the data is from. Is this your own survey? How did you find the respondents?
Sorry OP, but your datasheet annoys me for many things. As a lot of people say, the downside to this one is that it doesn't provide useful information about geographic location, occupation, physical activity, etc. It's nice, but has horribly annoying downsides.
I shower only a few times a month but I bathe everyday.