Why bathtime is picking up steam: ''Shower people' seem to be missing the larger point'

We all have our own little rituals to punctuate the day, don’t we? Some people need an extra-strong coffee to negotiate the liminal zone between sleepiness and wakefulness. Some people need to hear the glug-glug-glug of wine being poured into a goblet-sized glass before they draw a line between work and play. And some people need baths – lots of them.

A recent study, published in the New Scientist, found that taking regular afternoon baths was associated with a lift in mood among people with depression. And as the ultimate ‘me-time’ experience, it’s no surprise that the ‘bathleisure’ trend – Instagram stars posing post-soak – has recently swept social media.

As a committed ‘bath person’ myself, the bathtub has always signified much more than mere cleanliness to me. Sure, I feel squeaky clean after a long soak, but that’s just an added bonus. I don’t take baths to scrub-a-dub-dub off the dirt of the day (that’s what showers are for); I take baths to melt away the stress of the day and signal to my mind and body that it’s time to shift into a lower gear.

A lot of bath people inherit the habit from a parent. My love of soaking came from my mother, a daily bather who has never scrimped on the various oils and unguents that turn a simple bath into a spa-like ritual. When I was a child, the day simply wasn’t over until we heard the low rumble of the boiler and the rush of steaming hot water filling the bathtub.

Before long, the scents of lavender, neroli and ylang ylang would drift through the house and we’d all get the message that bedtime was imminent. Like many women, my mother saw the bath as a private sanctuary for uninterrupted ‘me-time’. Unfortunately, her five children saw the opportunity for uninterrupted ‘mum-time’.

Toddlers who normally huffed and puffed at the mere mention of bath-time decided that they’d actually quite enjoy a spontaneous soak. The older ones, meanwhile, would take turns at rolling up their pyjama bottoms and dipping their feet in the hot water.

You’ll be glad to hear that I no longer sit at the side of the bath when my mother’s in it. I’ve borrowed a lot of her bathing rituals, though. Essential oils are, well, essential. So too is an industrial-sized tub of Epsom salts.

Of course, there are generational differences. My mother’s in-bath entertainment was her five lunatic children; mine is a Bluetooth speaker for music.

I have a friend who does all of his reading in the bath – he’s also known to bring a bottle of beer in with him, or a gin and tonic if he’s feeling fancy. Another friend says ginger baths help with her circulation issues and another insists that a piping hot bath is the best hangover cure bar none.

That’s what’s interesting about bath people. We all have our own processes and peculiarities.

Some of us can relax under the water until our fingers and toes wrinkle up like prunes. Other more restless souls prefer a quick in and out. They’d like to hang around longer, but there’s only so much inactivity that they can take.

There are bath people who, like myself, soak just before bedtime so that the rapid temperature drop afterwards sends them into an almost-instant slumber.

And then there are the bath people who like to soak earlier in the day. The late Karl Lagerfeld got into the bath at noon and luxuriated in his own fabulousness until lunchtime. He also added half a bottle of Collosol Eau de Lait to the water… because he was worth it.

Fellow fashion designer Tom Ford is another man who prefers to bathe closer to dawn than dusk. He runs a bath at 4.30am and sips on an iced coffee from under a blanket of bubbles. Respect. Ford used to take four baths a day, but his increasingly busy schedule got in the way.

Actress Emma Watson has no such trouble. She can take up to three baths a day, much like Simon Cowell who has a bathtub in his X Factor dressing room.

Gwyneth Paltrow is another celebrity whose bath time is “non-negotiable”.

“My kids are welcome to come in and chat with me if they need to,” she explained in a recent interview. “It’s not like I’m in a meditation or something. But I just need that time and so I just take it. It’s really the only time I take for myself every single day, regardless of what is going on.”

A lot of people are surprised when I tell them that I take a bath every night – and even more surprised when they hear I’ve moved hotel rooms upon discovering a bath-less bathroom.

They can’t fathom why someone would choose to lie in a “tepid pool of their own filth”, as Kramer put it in Seinfeld. They can’t rationalise what seems like an unmitigated waste of time, energy and water.

They’re all valid points in their own right, but ‘shower people’, if you will, seem to be missing the larger point.

For the vast majority of bath people, bathing isn’t an alternative to showering. It’s a complement to it.

More than that, it’s a sacrosanct ritual that marks the interstices between night and day, work and play.

In an always-on age, we all need rituals to help us define the increasingly blurred line between work life and home life. Likewise, we need spaces for solitude – places where we can gather our thoughts without getting interrupted by the digital distractions of text and email.

Sure, showers are invigorating, but they’re always rushed. Baths, on the other hand, are unhurried by their vary nature.

There’s a reason why baths have become the ultimate symbol of self-care. They’re one of the few places left where we can disconnect from our devices and, arguably, the only place left where we’re not against the clock.

Nobody sets a timer when they sink into a bathtub, and in a world where time is always at a premium, that’s the sort of relaxation we could all benefit from.

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