Imagine it: Twenty-four hours without brushing your teeth, taking a shower, or washing your face. Then forty-eight hours. Then five days. Then ten. By that time, your teeth are probably coated in a gritty film, your armpits itchy, your face slick with oil, and your hair is (depending on the texture and presence of natural oils, of course) may be greasy and flat. You’re covered in dirt and soot from the time you spend outside every day. You probably don’t smell too great, either, from the bacteria swimming in the caked-up oils on your skin.

You’re probably grumpy, too, because you feel gross and smelly and anti-social.

Imagine, then, going forty days without grooming.

Sound impossible? Or at least very icky? Well, there’s no need to try it (like you were leaping out of your chair to do so anyway), because a British woman has already performed this grand experiment.

Nicky Taylor, before and after the experiment

Nicky Taylor, a television documentarian, went forty days and forty nights without so much as a splash of water to her face or piece of floss in her mouth. She says she got so disgusted with her own high-maintenance routine of cleansers and shampoo and styling products and moisturizers and makeups and all manner of chemical-laden beauty products that she just wanted to see if she could survive — nay, thrive — without them.

Well, she survived.

“I’d heard that hair begins to clean itself after a few weeks, using oils which are naturally secreted by the body, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to wait that long. I was only four days in and I felt so unpleasant all over that I wanted to quit.”

By the second week, Nicky’s experiment and the subsequent haze of body odour accompanying her was beginning to affect her children, who refused to cuddle her.

…

By week three, however, Nicky was beginning to see the signs of being socially ostracised, particularly by other mothers at the school gate.

“Things really were getting to a stage that I thought was utterly grim,” says Nicky. “My hair was stuck together with grease. My toenails were turning a strange colour and I’d developed dry, peeling skin on my hands.

Yeesh. I know people do strange things for television (see: VH1, Every Show on) but abandoning grooming altogether?

It’s fascinating, but it seems like an odd way to make a point about product gluttony. I absolutely agree with Taylor’s assertion that women are beauty- and product-obsessed to the detriment of their own senses of self, not to mention pocketbooks (and, she argues, health, though she doesn’t provide scientific proof that moisturizers lead to irritable bowel syndrome). Cutting back on various creams and lotions and balms and whatnot would benefit most women — myself included, and I’m fairly low-maintenance — just by reducing the meaningless “I have to be attractive at all times” static of from our minds. (Ladies, you know what static I’m talking about.)

But completely abandoning hygiene seems like a ridiculous gimmick to get people to arrive at such a conclusion. If anything, it’s going to cause people to lash out the other way and come to love their closetful of toiletries all the more, just so they don’t end up greasy-haired, mossy-toothed, and shellacked with face grease.

Taylor says: “I was amazed to find that the point when my skin looked its best was after a month of not using anything at all. As a result, I’ve become far more moderate in what products I use and what I am prepared to spend money on.”

Interesting, but even chimps need to groom themselves occasionally. And brushing your teeth isn’t exactly a cosmetic thing, either, as Taylor found out when her experiment ended and she needed to have a cavity — her first ever — filled.

Taylor has now resumed her hygiene habits, but she’s scaled them back quite a bit: She’s now down to a bar of soap, organic shampoo and conditioner, and a basic moisturizer.

It might not have made for compelling TV, but here’s a thought: Why didn’t she scale it down to that to begin with?

Related reading: The Year Without Toilet Paper

[Via Jezebel]