MANILA, Philippines - We may neither have city streets we can walk barefoot on, nor do we have grime-free flyovers to boast about, but we Pinoys do have one claim to fame in the cleanliness department: We like to keep ourselves shower-fresh and scrubbed to a sheen.
The year-round humidity, which is responsible for the sticky feeling we often complain about while fanning ourselves, compels most of us to shower at least twice a day, once in the morning and another at night.
The heat of summer might drive some of us into the shower more often to avoid migraine, nose bleeding, or prickly heat.
These, combined with an understanding that the first step to good health is washing off impurities that accumulate on our bodies, could qualify us as the shower capital in this part of the world.
Some parents ask their kids to take a shower before dinnertime: no shower, no dinner. It’s a habit children carry with them for the rest of their lives.
Some of us enjoy being in the shower that we even sing our lungs out while we’re at it. Granted singing in the shower is not exclusive to Pinoys, and that the volume might just be a way to fight the biting cold, we certainly shower more than most people in other countries.
Case in point: There are untold stories of Pinoys visiting western countries and braving the cold by showering all through the winter — every day, their fingers turning icy white and electric blue the minute they switch off the heater — while their foreign hosts never see the inside of their own shower stalls for days. It is perfectly acceptable in some countries to jump out of bed and put on the same clothes as the day before and rush off to work.
Pinoys put such a premium on smelling fresh and being clean that we need it to be immediately evident, not just through our sense of smell, but at first glance. Or how else has the mixed metaphor mukhang mabango become part of the local lexicon of attraction?
A very informal survey of random working women in Makati revealed that mukhang mabango is one of the top qualities of a man that attracted them the most, right after mabait (kind) and matalino (intelligent), and just a notch before funny.
It’s no wonder that women go out of their way to be mukhang mabango (this phrase does not directly translate to “he looks like he smells good,” because the English translation implies that there’s a chance that he only looks it; the Filipino phrase, which should not be mistaken for anything other than a compliment of the highest order, means he smells so good you can almost see his skin tingle with freshness).
Pinays are known for their constant search of products that will make them mukhang mabango — from a wide range of bath products, to anti-perspirant deodorants — and can guarantee a longer-lasting fresh feeling (you look how you feel). It’s not just clean we seem to value in a potential partner, it’s a just-showered kind of clean. You need to be what you want to attract after all; and if this attraction business is successful, down the line it breeds more clean-obsessed individuals, thus propagating an entire culture. Who knows?
Rexona, the leading name in anti-perspirant deodorants, has developed the Rexona Shower Clean range of anti-perspirant products formulated to provide long-lasting sweat control (and in these high temperatures, we hardly want to risk sweat rings in our armpits in the middle of the day). The products are also infused with a clean, just-showered fresh scent guaranteed to stay all day. Why so specific? Because wanting to be shower clean and looking fresh all day is part of our Pinoy DNA.