Coming clean

When I was in high school I reached what I consider the low point in my sanitary life: some time during those four terror-filled years I bathed about twice a week. It didn’t seem like a big deal then. I got up early, spent most of the day in school, including two hours in the early evening because of my involvement in the theater group, then got fetched and went home. The evenings I spent studying, like any conscientious honor student. In the grand scheme of things (Would I graduate with honors or not? Should I call that Saint Scho girl I met at the soireé or not?), cleanliness concerns didn’t seem all that important. And, best of all, the girls didn’t seem to notice. When soirées came around, I could always splash on my preferred cologne (the cheaper the better, the kind that could send rodents scurrying away) and mask my body’s less presentable odors.

Perhaps some of my gentle readers have turned up their noses upon reading my opening paragraph. Perhaps their delicate sensibilities in matters olfactory were offended by my crudeness. I plead guilty, and ask for compassion. After all, I was a teenager and spent my days among boys my own age. Who knew we stank? When you and everyone around you reeks of adolescence, who notices? Certainly not we. And certainly not the classmates of mine who took off their sweaty PE shirts, threw them into their lockers unwashed, then unearthed them the next week in all their pungent glory to wear to another hour of mandatory physical activity. (To my credit, I didn’t go that far. I always took my gym clothes home.)

These days I bathe at least once a day, which I’ve assumed all this time to be the acceptable standard among Filipinos my age and social class. Our tropical summers being a test of sanitary fortitude, I may take an extra shower late in the early evening in the months of April and May.

I’m guessing that there are some among you who find my standards of cleanliness reprehensible. You’re probably like that friend of my wife’s who brought her kids to New Zealand and insisted on bathing them twice a day even in the dead of winter. (When they took the young things to a doctor after their skin started acting up, he gave her a stern lecture on the dangers of sanitary excess.)

I suspect also that there are others among you who are just the opposite and find me too far on the finicky side. The world is running short of water, you may rail, and you’ve resolved to do your own small part by bathing less. Perhaps you’ve even adopted a bathing-optional lifestyle. Well, I was once one of you. Years ago I would tell my mother, when she would ask why I hadn’t bathed yet, “I’m trying to reduce our water bill.” As someone who kept hectoring us to conserve (on water, electricity, gas, table napkins), she doubtless found some sort of pleasure in her smart-mouthed son’s cheeky reply.

Just how clean is “clean enough”? How do we know when we’ve gone too far, or not quite? Are there standards acceptable to one and all and to which we may appeal for guidance and judgment? Well, it seems there’s no such luck. In “An Unsanitised History of Washing,” an essay that appeared in the UK Times (March 6, 2008), Katherine Ashenberg points out that cleanliness exists “in the mind of the beholder.” In fact, what people believe to be acceptably clean has varied greatly over time and across cultures. Ashenberg writes:

“For the modern, middle-class North American, ‘clean’ means that you shower and apply deodorant each and every day without fail. For the aristocratic 17th-century Frenchman, it meant that he changed his linen shirt daily and dabbled his hands in water, but never touched the rest of his body with water or soap. For the Roman in the first century, it involved two or more hours of splashing, soaking and steaming the body in water of various temperatures, raking off sweat and oil with a metal scraper, and giving himself a final oiling — all done daily, in company and without soap.” Two or more hours bathing, then raking off sweat and oil with a metal scraper — my, those persnickety Romans! When did they ever have time to build an empire?

Ashenberg continues: “Even more than in the eye or the nose, cleanliness exists in the mind of the beholder. Every culture defines it for itself, choosing what it sees as the perfect point between squalid and over-fastidious.” Every culture defines it for itself — the reeking adolescent in me wants to add: so does every age group.

More: “It follows that hygiene has always been a convenient stick with which to beat other peoples, who never seem to get it right. The outsiders usually err on the side of dirtiness. The ancient Egyptians thought that sitting a dusty body in still water, as the Greeks did, was a foul idea. Late 19th-century Americans were scandalised by the dirtiness of Europeans; the Nazis promoted the idea of Jewish uncleanliness. At least since the Middle Ages, European travellers have enjoyed nominating the continent’s grubbiest country — the laurels usually went to France or Spain. Sometimes the other is, suspiciously, too clean, which is how the Muslims, who scoured their bodies and washed their genitals, struck Europeans for centuries. The Muslims returned the compliment, regarding Europeans as downright filthy.”

If cleanliness is “a convenient stick with which to beat other peoples,” other constructs have been used in much the same way. Because we tend to believe that our own standards are the best, we measure others against us, with the natural result that they fall short. Hence, the ease with which we breed a sense of our own superiority.

I remember how my mother told us kids about the peculiar way Americans eat fish. When she said that they don’t eat fish heads, she added, with a sneer, “They don’t know how to eat!” I think I was too polite to protest, but I wanted to ask, “Don’t they say the same thing about us?” I imagined a similar dinner-table scene halfway around the world in which another mother informed her brood, in contemptuous tones, that Filipinos don’t know how to eat — they eat fish heads! (Then a collective gasp from the shocked youngsters.) I had wondered how an appropriate response would have gone.

I wish Ashenberg’s piece had been around for me to quote: “To modern Westerners, our definition of cleanliness seems inevitable, universal and timeless. It is none of these things, being a complicated cultural creation and a constant work in progress.” Being aware that one’s opinions on acceptable levels of cleanliness (or, say, appropriate dress or polite speech) are often no more than cultural constructs means being open to other beliefs, other ways of living. And this openness to how different cultures construct their version of the world and how to live in it goes a long way toward fostering the virtue of tolerance.

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Passing the word along: Aawitan Kita, Armida Siguion Reyna’s long-running TV show, is alive again on the stage. A project of the Office of the City Mayor of Makati, the show — titled Aawitan Kita sa Makati ... Live — goes on once a month and is aimed primarily at senior citizens (but don’t let that discourage you).

Winsome singer and actress Cris Villonco, who happens to be Siguion Reyna’s granddaughter, emailed me the announcement. Villonco describes the show thus: “a mini-sarswela (with costumes and all) composed mainly of kundiman songs, with a mix of contemporary OPM ballads.” As for the performers: previous shows have featured Siguion Reyna (of course), Christine Escudero, Joel Villaflor, Pinky Marquez, Joel Trinidad, Bimbo Cerrudo, Rachelle Gerodias, Roy Rolloda and Villonco herself.

The next performance is on May 15. The lineup has yet to be finalized, but Villonco and Gerodias are confirmed. (Those two names are enough to get me interested.) Gerodias leaves soon after to sing in a production of Puccini’s Turandot in Vienna.

The venue is the sixth floor auditorium, University of Makati, J.P. Rizal extension (between EDSA and C5), Makati City. The show begins at 5:30 p.m. You’ll find snippets of previous shows on YouTube. (Use “aawitan kita” as your keywords.)

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