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Extremely frivolous stuff, but there's a fun debate going down over on Aella's twitter about personal hygiene. In short, as a true empiricist, she measures lots of stuff about her daily routine (iirc, using an app called Daylio), and recently revealed her stats for 2023. What is causing a kerfuffle is not the number of days she had sex (63), took Adderall (126), or escorted (6), but the number of times she showered, namely 37 [sic].
Aella insists she doesn't smell (and says she's consulted with others to confirm this), but I think that's a very relative statement; some people seem to have a high baseline tolerance for stank of various kinds, to the point that even strong odours don't register to them as stank, while others like myself are very smell sensitive; at the risk of TMI, my wife was amused that I could tell when our kids in their diaper days had done a pee, because I could always smell it almost immediately even when she had no idea. Back in my online dating days, there were several dates I simply couldn't follow up on because the person I was with had bad personal hygiene. I'm not talking about a mild healthy body odour here, but when you're having sex doggy-style and get hit by bad ass-stench it's an instant boner kill. And I'll be honest, I've had a crush on Aella for ages; she's a very attractive nerdy woman, and as a sexually confident and charismatic female Rationalist, she is a very horny unicorn among horses. But I've got to say, learning that specific factoid about her life had a similar effect on my idle long-distance lust as an F150's tires do on a small rodent (not that she should care, of course - just putting it out there).
That said, I am a bit of ablutomaniac - I shower and/or bathe 2-3 times a day. I don't think it's a hygiene thing per se. I shower when I get up because it helps me feel awake and ready for the day; I often have a shower or bath in the late afternoon/early evening after a workout because it feels great to soak sore muscles; and I sometimes shower just before bed, because I find it really nice to get into a bed with clean, fresh-smelling sheets having just come out of the shower smelling clean and fresh myself. I also routinely use (carefully chosen, subtle) cologne on my body as well as both fabric conditioner and scent booster when washing my clothes.
Anyway, Aella's feed is pretty funny right now, to the point that she's holding polls about showering, and I was curious what folks here think about it. Obviously me and Aella are at different ends of the ablutic spectrum, but what's a healthy normal number of times to shower/bathe per day? How much of it is down to personal preference?
I have not smelled Aella and thus have no opinion on her body odor, nor intend to weigh in on how she should go about her hygiene. Personally, I used to be able to go for a week or so without showering in a cool climate and not stink offensively (according to others); but that seems to break down when you live in a warm place and/or have a healthier lifestyle, moving around enough to work up even a bit of sweat, and that means daily showers.
Maybe she's a shut-in with good AC? Not much of one: she went out 222 times.
Anyway, people's sweat, sebum and earwax properties can be hugely different, for genetic as well as bacterial and dietary reasons.
Another controversial figure there is the number of poops (194) which works out to 0.531 poops a day average or 1.88 days to have a bowel movement. Or, actually, not:
People who are not Aella rarely open up about this stuff unless they have some relevant health issues (or even then), but I remember a scholar tell me that the Platonic ideal of pooping is like once a day, early in the morning. This paper, however, says that the normal healthy range is «between three per week and three per day» which is unexpectedly wide and seems to invalidate concerns about IBS-M in replies, though I can't be assed to look for intra-individual variance. If it were confirmed, it'd have been interesting in conjunction with Scott's old political orientation vs. mental health finding, because of curious genetic correlations: «the same genetic make-up that puts people at increased risk of IBS also increases the risk for common mood and anxiety disorders such as anxiety, depression and neuroticism».
Probably a nothingburger.
A source of lowbrow fun though it may be, Aella is impressively persistent in normalizing and even making prestigious the discussion of stuff currently believed to be gross.
That codes as a shut-in to me. Not total, obviously, but to an extent that I personally think is pretty weird. I don't do daily logging like that, but I'd be surprised if I had more than ~5 days last year where I didn't set foot out my house, and I think they were all days where I was completely physically shot from running a race or traveling the day before. I'd be curious to see what the median is, but not leaving home at all would make me feel like I need to go outside and do something.
She is a professional cam girl though. If my work completely happened at home I think I would also have many days of not leaving the house
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