Stinky hair - January 30, 2012

It was a lovely March day in January. I took Anya out for a brief walk this morning, and then a quick lope around the park when I picked up Daniel from school. Things are melting all over the place.

I'm writing this as Daniel is getting ready for bed. He washed his hair, as we have him do every couple of days. Hair-washing is a very modern habit. For centuries, hair was maintained largely through brushing, oiling and perfuming. It was only at the turn of the century that "shampooing" became a regular habit... advised by experts to be performed every few weeks. According to this article, it was the gradual innovations of people like Dr Schwartzkopf of Berlin (whose hygeine products company continues to be a worldwide empire), and John Breck of New England, that made shampoo a regular part of daily life after World War II.

Part of what made washing hair so unusual in earlier times was that harsh soaps were the norm, and they tended to leave dull film behind. In fact, washing as much as is the norm in America now (daily) does tend to dry out the skin and hair... dry shampoos are apparently making a comeback, absorbing oil and dirt using powders like cornstarch or Baking soda and then brushing it out of your hair.

I've always hated having wet hair in winter, and never been a huge fan of blow-dryers. So I was the stinky kid in high school, with the greasy hair (I also hated gang showers, but that's another story).

How much of our idea of cleanliness is shaped by the tools at our disposal? Didn't people 200 years ago notice the stinky hair (and pits) of their friends? Did people just accept that people smell like people? Do we notice people-stink in enclosed places as we've eliminated other indoor smells like smoke from cookfires?

And what about all those perfumes that lace most personal hygiene products? Is this just leftover cultural habit from the days where covering up the smell of people was more common than washing it our? Do we just get used to it, like I became habituated to the smell of Dial soap as a kid? Now I can't walk down the supermarket aisle with all the laundry soaps without getting a little queasy.

What would it have been like to visit this house in January 1911? What would the house and the people in it have smelled like?