how to bathe

I've bathed almost every night during isolation, all kinds of baths, from short baths with lots of bubbles to a long personal "spa night" with candles and a face mask (the luxurious kind), to Epsom salt baths with lavender essential oil.

I bathe a few times per week even when I'm not in quarantine, but this time has provided me a space to really up my bath game.

I remember reading a diary in college from the 18th century by a woman who had never gotten her whole body wet at the same time. Her delight at her first bath, in her 80s, was palpable. Though Western Europeans aren't necessarily seen as a bathing culture, what surprised me about this diary is that Medieval people absolutely were! It's almost as if, through plague times and religious wars, Western Europeans forgot about the joys of bathing.

As an Eastern European Jew, my people are big on baths – we love a good shvitz, and women are supposed to go monthly to a ritual bath, called a Mikveh. I've been to a mikveh twice: when I turned 30 with my mother, and when Josh and I got married  (who knows if it will reopen again! Jews have gotten through many a plague.)


When I was young, baths were my mother's cure-all:
Have a headache?
Take a bath.
A cold?
Take a bath.
You think you're getting sick?
Take a bath.
Anxious?
Take a bath
Happy?
Take a bath

In many ways, my mother was right: Research has shown that bathing burns as many calories as a 30 minute walk and has many anti-inflammatory, metabolic, and disease-fighting benefits besides. Most bathing cultures do not bathe every night, but I've decided to throw caution to the wind and bathe as much as I like during this time.

Here are my tips for a good bath:

• Leave yourself enough time – don't treat bathing like a shower and try to do it right before you go to bed. You'll want at least an hour to fully luxuriate.
• Get one of these drain stoppers so you can fill it totally up, but be careful you don't overflow
• Add ins are crucial: I use a shea butter bubble bath, but dealer's choice
• Don't make the water too hot. It's tempting, but very hot water can make you pass out or worse.
• Leave your phone in the other room! This is your time. Also, you don't want to drop your phone in the bath.
• Light a candle – it's just nice.
• Bring a book, maybe some mood music. I get most of my reading done in the bath, which means that most of my books are unfortunately water logged. If you are a person who cares about this, bring a magazine.

Finally, here's a collection of open access bath related content from the Met, and my favorite bath-related image: The Death of Marat. Let's hope that we fair better than Marat.