There’s an ongoing joke on season three of FXX’s You’re the Worst in which Jimmy (Chris Greere) is disgusted to learn that his girlfriend Gretchen (Aya Cash) doesn’t deliberately wash her legs while she’s in the shower. Quick Q, though: Does anybody?
Jimmy finding this gross makes sense for his character—he is a foot man, after all—but is his an opinion held by humankind in general? I’ve existed through life with Gretchen’s logic: Water falls on your legs while you shower so why bother getting down there with soap? My legs don’t look dirty, the water that spills on them doesn’t come off dirty, so my guess is that scrubbing them—unless you’re splattered in mud or something—is nothing but a waste of time and flexibility.
In an informal poll of friends and colleagues, I found that the washes and the wash-nots, with a few exceptions, could be determined by who has leg hair and who doesn’t. Most people with leg hair responded that they soaped up their legs as though it was the most normal thing in the world—and vice versa for those without. We might shave them, we rarely might exfoliate them, and we certainly towel them off, but we stop short of using soap—both because it seems pointless and dries out your skin.
Please tell me so I can figure out how gross we all are: Do you wash your legs?