I decided to do some google research on the claim that early American colonists, and Europeans in general, were filthy and did not bathe.
The first article that google shows is this one, from a DC-based journalist named “Becky Little“. A literal Becky who is not a historian, who lives in the cesspool that is our nation’s capital. This lady has nothing more than a B.A. in history and women’s studies from The College of William and Mary.
She takes the line that people virtually never bathed at all. As in, people apparently did nothing to clean themselves, and just lived in their own sweat and grime, hoping that their undergarments would absorb it all. This is the maximally-condemning perspective possible, and you will later see that it is not true.
Honestly, this is disgraceful that the History Channel has women’s studies undergrads producing their content. How come they cannot get a real historian to write their content? Surely they can. They choose to hire people like her - there likely is an ideological agenda.
A typical women’s studies major has seething hatred at 99% of her own society (only suppressing her rage for the other feminists who are exactly the same type of feminist as she is. They also hate different sorts of feminists). This seething hatred, directed towards 99% of people and with the intention of tearing down the entire culture, is typically a reaction to the mean behavior of a minority of men. This seething hatred is something that would be regarded by all great moral thinkers in the past as being vice. It’s impossible to imagine Confucius approving of a modern feminist.
So, let’s get back to the topic of bathing in the pre-1800’s Western world. You can find a real article about bathing from a real historian of Williamsburg and contemporary Western history. Already from reading this more serious article, Becky Little’s “hot take“ is showing holes. Most of the early colonists and contemporary Europeans had ways of cleaning themselves, but they were not uniform. Some used the rivers, some made makeshift showers, etc. As we will see later, most people used something called a “wash basin.“ Not to mention - it’s possible that the Puritans were different from the other colonists. Speaking of the Puritans, you see that the New England Puritans bathed less often partially due to the coldness. (Bathing in the cold is a nice way to suppress your immune system to the point of sickness.)
Then, you can find a blog post introducing the idea of the wash basin as the typical daily way to bathe. It turns out, this is how people all bathed back in those days. And this would be corroborated by another post, which takes the tone of condemnation, but also admits that, yes indeed, people used wash basins every day. And the common claim that colonists/pre-1800’s Europeans “only washed their hands and face“ is also false - that is a reference to bathing practices in the morning. They washed their whole bodies in the evening.
There is much condemnation of the fact that the early Western people used a cloth to wipe their bodies, but did not use soap. The condemnation of Native Americans and other human groups for bathing without soap is strangely never made. This is not to mention, that a cloth, like a sponge, is quite effective, in itself, for rubbing away the oil and dirt. It is far better than just laying idle in a bathtub. Friction matters more than H2O molecule contact. Would any of us prefer to bathe by jumping in a river, if we could wipe with a cloth or sponge instead?
Becky Little also claims that colonists used to never clean their teeth, and that the Native Americans ingeniously directly rubbed charcoal or chewed on sticks to clean their teeth. But the former is also unlikely. According to this website, “Europeans generally cleaned their teeth by rubbing them with rags rolled in salt or soot.“ In otherwords, they did the exact same thing as the Native Americans - utilizing the adherence of coal/charcoal/soot/etc. to organic compounds to clean their teeth.
In conclusion, there is a concerted effort to generate maximal disgust towards the forefathers of the USA. In order to do this, fake historians are hired to skew history. We live in a disgraceful, hellish society.
