Alright mods, slightly edited.
From an April 2, ’15 New York Times article (easily googleable):
From a Daily Mail article partially titled “new trend for ‘cleansing reduction’ which involves bathing just once a week”:
* ‘Cleansing reduction’ means reducing showers to once or twice a week
* Benefits can include keeping good bugs which help fight disease intact
* Although showering less is fine, you need to regularly wash your hands
* Prince Harry once admitted he hadn’t washed his hair for two years
Daily showers could become a thing of the past, if a new beauty trend called ‘cleansing reduction’ takes off. Instead of bathing every day, proponents whittle their washing habits down to once or twice a week on the grounds that too much cleansing can strip the skin and hair of essential natural oils. While it might sound disgusting, it would seem that cleansing reduction is catching on, after a poll for tissue manufacturer, SCA, found that 41 per cent of British men and 33 per cent of women no longer shower every day. The poll also revealed that a filthy 12 per cent said that they indulge in a ‘proper wash’ just once a week…
Disgusting as it might sound, going for long periods without bathing is nothing new, according to Lancaster University sociologist, Dr Elizabeth Lancaster. According to Lancaster, daily showers are a relatively recent development and less than a century ago, a weekly bath would have been considered perfectly adequate. ‘Now we think nothing of showering once, twice or even three times a day, before and after work or going out and after the gym,’ she said in an interview with the Times. ‘It has embedded itself in our routine and become an essential, not an optional, thing to do.’…
Interestingly, a study conducted by the University of California found that too much washing can actually be bad for you, because it strips away beneficial bugs that the body uses to help ward off infections. ‘A vigorous daily shower would disturb the natural bug flora of the skin as well as skin oils,’ revealed John Oxford, Professor of Virology at Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry… ‘Even twice a week would not be a problem if people used a bidet daily as most infectious bugs hang around our lower halves. ‘We pay too much attention to the body beautiful and smelling good, with perfumes for men and women,’ he added. ‘We should wash to stop cross-infection, not for grooming reasons.’