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Loofahs and body wash

Saturday, January 21st, 2006 at 10:38 pm

Yes, I?’ve been absent for a month. I took winter break as an opportunity to pursue some random projects which I will post as I finish up. For my first post-hiatus post, I was going to write something totally relevant about the game industry or computer graphics or something, but I figured I’d scrap all that and, in honor of my new “off-topic” section, write about something completely and utterly random: body wash and loofahs.

After a conversation with my roommate’s semi-boyfriend today, it has been brought to my attention that guys are more “soap” people and tend not to go for the body wash-loofah combination. For those enlightened male individuals out there who have figured out the inferiority of bar soap, I applaud you. As for the rest of you, read on.

Forget the gentle moisturizing components of bodywash that attract the female audiences. Body wash is just more practical than bar soap. It comes conveniently bottled so its contents don’t contact the shower water, and you can bring it with you to the gym, or pour it into a smaller container for travel purposes. But most importantly it saves time. I mean, think about what you have to do to clean yourself with bar soap. First you apply the soap, which is slipping around in your hand, over the part of your body that you are cleaning. Then you have to put the soap down to work up the lather, and you have to pick up the soap again to clean another part of your body. Very often, the soap will be slippery and fall to the bottom of the shower and you have to pick it up. Of course every time you do this, the soap is getting smaller from sitting in the water. It’s completely wasteful! You can never use ALL of a bar soap. With body wash, you pour just a little into a loofah and very shortly after the loofah contacts your skin, you get a lather. Plus the lather does not go away until you are ready to rinse you loofah. Think of the efficiency. Bar soap is like washing dishes with detergent and no sponge! Why would you still use bar soap? It’s ridiculously inefficient!

As for the concern that it’s girly, pretty much every brand of bar soap has a bodywash equivalent. And sure, while you can buy very fancy scented body wash, the normal body wash that sit next to the bar soap on store shelves smell like soap. And if you still think that something as efficient as bodywash is girly, maybe it just goes to prove that women are smarter.

Anyway, I promise, next post will be on video games or something.

7 Responses to “Loofahs and body wash”

Omar Ismail says:
January 22nd, 2006 at 3:06 am

Ok, next time you use a strawman argument at least make it reasonable. What kind of cracked up retard monkey drops the soap more than rarely? And you don’t need to put the soap down ever, just keep it in your hand and work up a lather.

Loofahs are stupid because they take too long to have a lather worked up, and their not as versatile. You can’t make as quick and long scrubbing motions because the loofah will fold, or not enough soap will come out. With soap in hand you can scrub as fast and wide as you want. And you don’t have the versatility of getting deep into your elbows and knees and that kind of thing. Loofahs are a blunt tool.

And the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. Guys shower much quicker than girls usually, AND they don’t need to apply a ton of apres-shower products like all the sprays and spritzers and such.

Sally says:
January 22nd, 2006 at 3:47 am

Loofahs take too long to get a lather worked up? Are we talking about the same thing here? I dunno about your loofahs but EVERY single loofah I owned has more lather coming out than a bar of soap. And it has waaaaaay more versitility to get for elbows and knees because it’s soft, not rigid like a bar of soap. And if guys really take pride in their quick showers, then maybe they can wise up and do it quicker. Frankly, us girls like our long showers, 80% of which is spent on shampoo and conditioning, and the occasional shaving of legs by the way.

Also, to make a general clarification - this only applies to using body wash with a loofah or shower poof. They’re meant to go together. Body wash without a shower poof is as inefficent as cleaning your bathroom with a q-tip.

Omar Ismail says:
January 22nd, 2006 at 2:48 pm

I should admit that I’ve never used a loofah or sponge before. I’ve just used other people’s body washes in times of need like sleeping over at another place. It’s so frustrating that I just hate the entire body wash world, loofah or not. Though the nature of my body makes ME the loofah…

Pam's Semi-Boyfriend says:
February 3rd, 2006 at 7:41 pm

I have used bar soap, body wash, and body wash with a loofah. I can say that body wash does have some of the advantages that you mentioned (the number of washes/unit, the soap is bundled with many other useless things like scents and moisturizers). However, none of your other comments bear any weight to me. Bar soap is much faster because you just put it in your hand and anywhere your hand goes is washed. Your analogy about detergent without a sponge is poor, and is much more applicable to body wash without a loofah than bar-soap. Bar soap naturally foams and coats much faster than body wash. The other hand can spread the lather simultaneously. Body wash elaborates on this process and imposes many additional steps that require a finite amount of time, and decisively prove body wash is less efficient while in the process of showering. In the case without a loofah, you need to resqueeze an additional amount to cover your whole body. In the case with a loofah, you have to warm up your loofah and get it to foam first. However, I personally don’t like using a loofah. If I use it like bar soap, I find that it is much more abrasive to the skin (maybe Pam’s loofah isn’t high grade enough). If I just get the foam and wash with my hands, it takes much more time and any of the cases described above.

That being said, I am currently a fan of body wash without a loofah. It’s not as inefficient as you state. I can wash my whole body just fine with two aliquots of body wash after lathering in my hands. For me, the loss of efficiency in using body wash per wash is outweighed by the number of trips to the store to refill on personal hygene products. However, I think that your final claim to the intelligence of girls is unjustified. I would like some hard statistics to prove that body wash is more efficient based on costs, volume, materials, time in shower, time spent in stores, storage space, percentage of the population that is using bar soap to body wash, percentage of males to females using the productand the same analysis based on geography and age groups to name a few before you can truly make such a bold claim. Back to lab for me.

maroon tigress says:
January 26th, 2007 at 9:16 pm

personally, i think body washes dont wash clean enough for me. i feel like there’s a film left afterwards and to me that doesn’t feel clean. i use a wash cloth when i shower, so i don’t touch the bar with my hands to often. i quick lather with the cloth gets my whole body. and as far as using the whole bar of soap, when i get low, instead of throwing it away, i combine it with a new bar. why waste? what do you do with that little bit of body wash at the bottom? dilute it with water which means you have to use more to get the same affect?…

T says:
December 23rd, 2007 at 11:48 am

I like using the body wash with poof because I get softer skin. I can’t say it’s more time-efficient since I will use the soap bar when I am in a hurry. :)

Lisa says:
February 18th, 2008 at 7:31 pm

I second maroon tiger, washcloths work great. Also, they are washed after each use, as opposed to loofahs, which retain the body wash long after the shower is over (and are therefore less sanitary…ew!) and are far more difficult to thoroughly clean than washcloths.
And although I would like to agree with you that women are indeed smarter than men, I agree with Pam’s semi-boyfriend that you need more facts to back it up.


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