(Photo by Leon Seibert on Unsplash)

By Joshua Moore
Special to the AFRO

Celebrities like Brad Pitt and Jake Gyllenhall have made recent headlines in regards admitting how often, or seldom, they take showers. 

This recent surge of washing information started with Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher on the Armchair Expert podcast discussing their frequency of washing their kids. 

They said that they only wash their kids when they see dirt on their bodies. They don’t seem to see the need to wash everyday. 

When speaking to Vanity Fair, actor Jake Gyllenhaal said that he finds bathing less and less necessary. He thinks that not bathing will help with skin maintenance and will help your body clean itself naturally. 

At first, Gyllenhaal was unsure of his bathing frequency. But dermatology professor at NYU Langone Medical Center, Mary Stevenson reaffirmed his beliefs in skin maintenance. 

In a Vogue piece, Stevenson said that showering too long or using too much soap could get rid of the skin’s natural layer of protection and strip its natural oils. 

“Generally speaking, our skin and body is a remarkable system that does regulate and take care of itself,” Stevenson said. “A daily rinse is fine, but for dry and irritated skin- it may mean less soap time in the shower.” 

This has made people a little uncomfortable with how celebrities have made known that they don’t shower or bathe everyday. 

Alexis Durham, 21, from Rising Sun, Maryland has been caught off-guard with the recent news. She showers on a daily basis, and thinks that these celebrities are unhygienic. 

“I’ve heard that some people wait for their bodies to stink. What! That’s disgusting,” Durham said. 

Samuel Leonard, 21, from Chicago finds it ironic that celebrities like Pitt, and Gyllenhaal are deemed “attractive” by beauty standards, yet they don’t take showers everyday like regular people. 

“Women find these guys attractive and call normal guys dusty, but it seems like these guys are just as dusty as the rest of us. Irony at its finest,” Leonard said. 

It seems as though showering daily is not as common as many think.

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