Speaker 1: Okay, this is Annie and Samantha. I don't recome to stuff.
Speaker 1: I've never told your production of I Heart Radio. I
Speaker 1: know we've talked about this before, Samantha, about cleanliness, But
Speaker 1: would you say as a child you were clean? No
Speaker 1: emphatic no more. Yes, I mean I can. I can
Speaker 1: leave things up to my imagination and I can come
Speaker 1: up with something. But uh, you know, as I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about it, I don't actually know. As an adult, I
Speaker 1: have had a hard time, and we've talked about this
Speaker 1: many times as a child, because I went through several homes,
Speaker 1: I really can't tell you how clean unclean I was.
Speaker 1: Between being with the grandmother in Korea, I don't remember,
Speaker 1: but I was in a very strict, abusive home, so
Speaker 1: I'm fairly sure I wasn't dirty, uh, or at least
Speaker 1: I didn't make a mess. And in the orphanage, same thing.
Speaker 1: You can't really have messes, I guess, even though technically
Speaker 1: what I was stayed in it was an orphanage at
Speaker 1: that time, but essentially a children's home. And then coming
Speaker 1: into the US, I shared a bedroom with my brother,
Speaker 1: and I oftentimes didn't I hated making up my bed
Speaker 1: and I just could not understand why we needed to
Speaker 1: if we're just gonna sleep in it every night, like
Speaker 1: putting it together shore. But my mother was very clean,
Speaker 1: like that is the prior joy. My mother is a
Speaker 1: person who if she saw a fuzz, she had to
Speaker 1: pick it up. And I mean she never crossed the
Speaker 1: living room without bending over picking up fuss from my carpet,
Speaker 1: Like I distinctly remember this. This is the type of
Speaker 1: person she is. She has also the same one that's like,
Speaker 1: you cannot do the dishwasher properly, so she would just
Speaker 1: rather do it herself. And I used to yell at
Speaker 1: her about that because she would want me to load
Speaker 1: the dishwasher and I'd come in and she would be rearranging.
Speaker 1: I'm like, why in the hell would you have me
Speaker 1: do this as a tour if all you're gonna do
Speaker 1: is redo everything? Right? So this is this is my mother.
Speaker 1: So I don't really know if I was really messy
Speaker 1: because it was always clean, and or I didn't have
Speaker 1: enough stuff to know if I was resy what about you?
Speaker 1: I was a very clean child. I didn't leave stuff out.
Speaker 1: I always put stuff away every night, even though if
Speaker 1: I was going to play it again the next day,
Speaker 1: the same thing. Um, I would put it back, and
Speaker 1: I felt like I had an expectation to be clean.
Speaker 1: And honestly, there's no specific memories I have of like
Speaker 1: why that is. But my brothers were very messy. They
Speaker 1: are very messy compared to them, I am so clean.
Speaker 1: I was a child who asked for chores, so I
Speaker 1: had a chore sheets at Kate Nashley Chores sheet, and
Speaker 1: I would do laundry. I would do all this stuff.
Speaker 1: But I I feel like, I thought, this is a
Speaker 1: deeper psychological issue that I've been digging into in therapy.
Speaker 1: But I felt like I had to earn my keep essentially,
Speaker 1: and like make sure that my parents were not like
Speaker 1: this child is not worth having around um, which is
Speaker 1: messed up. But I think that's where a lot of
Speaker 1: it was coming from where I was like and and
Speaker 1: even when I went to college, my roommates eventually confronted
Speaker 1: me because they were like, it's like, you don't live
Speaker 1: here because I would put stuff. I would like not
Speaker 1: leave anything out. There's like no evidence that I lived
Speaker 1: in that apartment. Because I didn't want to annoy people.
Speaker 1: I wanted it to be like I wasn't even there.
Speaker 1: And that has been interesting through this pandemic because I
Speaker 1: feel my apartment is very A lot of people describe
Speaker 1: it as eclectic or controlled chaos. I'm much messier than
Speaker 1: I was then, even though that's not saying much. But
Speaker 1: I live alone, so I think that's why. And even
Speaker 1: my messy is still relatively clean. It is chaotic in
Speaker 1: some some areas, but it's relatively clean. But I think
Speaker 1: I discussed in a past episode. I recently have had
Speaker 1: people over for the first time since we're vaccinated in
Speaker 1: the you know, it's still really scary out there, but
Speaker 1: we were hanging out in person, and I felt this
Speaker 1: need to go to my mom was also she's very clean,
Speaker 1: and when I come home, she'll tell me all the
Speaker 1: stuff she did for me to come home, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: you don't need to do that. I really, please, don't.
Speaker 1: I don't care, I don't expect it. It's fine, but
Speaker 1: I just caught myself kind of trying to live up
Speaker 1: to that, and I was curious as to why that is. Why.
Speaker 1: I felt like, Okay, I've really got to clean this
Speaker 1: place up and it's got to look really good. And
Speaker 1: that just got me to thinking about our views on
Speaker 1: I even did a deep dive on cleanliness and like
Speaker 1: the history of cleanliness, because I was curious us and
Speaker 1: whether or not it is true that women are cleaner,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the myth, or whether it's more
Speaker 1: that women are expected to be cleaner, and some surveys
Speaker 1: have shown that are judged more harshly for not being cleaner.
Speaker 1: But I do think as we're a lot of us
Speaker 1: are re examining some things after and during this pandemic
Speaker 1: UH strict quarantine, I should stay even though that's not
Speaker 1: outside the real possibility. Again, why we do the things
Speaker 1: we do and what habits are we falling back into
Speaker 1: that we don't need to and why did we have
Speaker 1: them in the first place. I'm not saying you shouldn't
Speaker 1: be clean. I'm just curious as to why I felt this,
Speaker 1: like knee jerk friends are coming over, I must get
Speaker 1: to the very back of my cabinets that they will
Speaker 1: never open and wipe them down. Like I don't know,
Speaker 1: I feel the same way. I think for a long time,
Speaker 1: I'm like, you can't come over unless my house is clean,
Speaker 1: and so I would just whether like not worry about
Speaker 1: having people over. It is it is so in light
Speaker 1: of all of this, we wanted to bring back this
Speaker 1: classic episode, Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and Caroline spring has sprung.
Speaker 1: It is now April, and it's time for spring cleaning, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get all that pollen off your car. Do you
Speaker 1: do the spring cleaning thing? It depends I if I'm bored, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I usually I am too busy to think about it.
Speaker 1: I do think about it, that's good. I don't tend
Speaker 1: to do it though. Well, we're talking about whether women
Speaker 1: are cleaner than men. And you have a male roommate,
Speaker 1: your do roommated roommate, and and you talk to me
Speaker 1: about how you guys do have some some differences in
Speaker 1: your cleaning approach. Yeah, dude, roommate is super neat. He
Speaker 1: gets mad if I leave shoes or purses in the
Speaker 1: living room. But he's not clean as in cleaning dishes,
Speaker 1: spraying down counters, vacuuming. I I'm the opposite clutter. I'm
Speaker 1: naturally a bit of a clutterbug, uh, which I can handle,
Speaker 1: but I can't stomach a dirty kitchen for instance, now
Speaker 1: with the wouldn't that if he can see though a
Speaker 1: pile of dishes in the sink? Is that not? Does
Speaker 1: that not mess with his neatness? Well, see, the thing is, dude,
Speaker 1: roommate doesn't cook very much, so there's never quite a stack.
Speaker 1: It'll be just like a pot that sits low in
Speaker 1: the sinks, so it's not in his field of vision necessarily.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. Um, well, we're gonna
Speaker 1: get into more about the differences in how you know,
Speaker 1: women and men are clean or not clean, and we're
Speaker 1: looking mostly at hygiene kind of stuff, and I think
Speaker 1: that we could agree that the general assumption is that
Speaker 1: women are cleaner than men. Right, Yeah, Men have the
Speaker 1: whole thing like, oh, they're just these messy guys. They're boys,
Speaker 1: they're dirty, you know, in childhood there's a whole thing
Speaker 1: about girls are made of sugar, spice and all things
Speaker 1: nice boys or snip snails and puppy dog too. I
Speaker 1: don't know that if you've ever been to a public restroom,
Speaker 1: I don't think you could argue that women are necessarily
Speaker 1: cleaner than men. That's true, But as far as the
Speaker 1: standards of cleanliness, what people tend to expect clean wives
Speaker 1: out of boys and girls. There was a study that
Speaker 1: came out of Oregon State University by Sharing Klohe, who's
Speaker 1: a philosopher um and she talks about how the standards
Speaker 1: of cleanliness are generally higher for girls, even by the
Speaker 1: age of five, and it has a lot to do
Speaker 1: with differences such as girls being dressed in dresses whereas
Speaker 1: boys are in more rough and tumble car go shorts
Speaker 1: or denom pan denom denom pant the gene um and
Speaker 1: she talks about how these gendered norms of cleanliness go
Speaker 1: back to nineteenth century US in British schoolyards, where physical
Speaker 1: cleanliness was really taught in school as a form of morality,
Speaker 1: and for girls especially, that emphasis on physical hygiene extended
Speaker 1: to how they carry themselves and presented their bodies. The
Speaker 1: whole cleanliness is next to godliness and the whole virtuous
Speaker 1: woman thing checking themselves. So Chloe would say that from
Speaker 1: the earliest age, girls are acculturated to be cleaner than boys.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that would necessarily apply to me.
Speaker 1: I don't know. The more the longer we do this
Speaker 1: podcast together, the more I think my childhood was very
Speaker 1: strange and atypical for girls. I did wear a lot
Speaker 1: of dresses because my mother, like would still want to
Speaker 1: dress me in smock dresses if she could, But so
Speaker 1: I always need to change out of the dress and
Speaker 1: go outside and play. But when my parents built their house,
Speaker 1: they didn't finish off the backyard for years and years,
Speaker 1: so it was just like this huge mound of Georgia
Speaker 1: red clay, and I would slide down it on my
Speaker 1: butt in my cute pink shorts, and my mother would
Speaker 1: yell at me, and I'm like whatever, I like the
Speaker 1: mud sassy little Caroline and shaking my finger like whatever Sally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was a mix of both of those on the
Speaker 1: one hand, wearing lots of dresses. But then as I
Speaker 1: got a little bit older, I wanted to be more
Speaker 1: tomboyish and play with my older brother and getting messy
Speaker 1: and stuff. So maybe it is more of an age thing.
Speaker 1: But the question of our you know, women clearer than men,
Speaker 1: is looking more into our patterns of cleanliness in adulthood,
Speaker 1: because for me, I have lived with guys and girls,
Speaker 1: and I gotta tell you, Caroline, the guys have been
Speaker 1: cleaner overall. Women can be very messy, we can be
Speaker 1: what's up with that? What is maybe all of the
Speaker 1: things that we have which we'll talk about with like
Speaker 1: office spaces. Yeah, we do have a lot of things.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, Yeah, that's that's why my closet is such
Speaker 1: a terrible disaster. But um, Kloe, you know ties in
Speaker 1: her theories about gender and cleanliness to the hygiene hypothesis. Kristin,
Speaker 1: do we want to get into this this now? We
Speaker 1: don't want to confuse anybody. It's kind of a long
Speaker 1: drawn out hypothesis, but basically, the general idea of the
Speaker 1: hygiene hypothesis is that a lack of childhood exposure to
Speaker 1: germs could be responsible for adult allergies and diseases. Basically,
Speaker 1: the idea that if the immune system isn't busy fighting
Speaker 1: off germs, it shifts to developing more allergic tendencies. So
Speaker 1: you know, your immune system gets bored. It's like what
Speaker 1: can I tack? Let's go for peanuts. Yeah, And some
Speaker 1: researchers think that this is responsible for increased rates and
Speaker 1: things like asthma, um. And essentially, you know, we hear
Speaker 1: about it a lot, like the question of whether or
Speaker 1: not like children today especially are so sanitized, that we
Speaker 1: are leaving their immune systems defenseless towards germs like let
Speaker 1: him go outside and good dirty. Yeah, so closed theory,
Speaker 1: uh in in her paper is basically that girls have
Speaker 1: it worse because we are expected from a young age
Speaker 1: to be cleaner and you know, more prim and proper
Speaker 1: than boys are. That we are exposed to fewer germs
Speaker 1: and fewer contaminants, and so we end up growing up
Speaker 1: to be a whole mess of allergic, asthmatic and autoimmune disorder.
Speaker 1: Written people, and may I please briefly talk about cooties? Yeah,
Speaker 1: sure you do? You have them? I don't know. I've
Speaker 1: got my circle circle dot dot immunization a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago when I got my tetanus, So I probably
Speaker 1: get a your due for a boost. I probably do
Speaker 1: need a booster. But in close paper that she published
Speaker 1: in the journal Social Science and Medicine, she cited how
Speaker 1: sociologists have actually studied the cootie's phenomenon and so called
Speaker 1: pollution rituals that take place generally among kids between six
Speaker 1: and nine years old. So we're getting a little bit older,
Speaker 1: and she talks about how girls are far more likely
Speaker 1: than boys to be associated with cooties and be ostracized
Speaker 1: as carriers of cooties mutie carriers. Well, and she links
Speaker 1: that to the whole high giene hypothesis and the high
Speaker 1: the greater expectation for girls to be clean because you know,
Speaker 1: we're from a young age. We're told that, you know,
Speaker 1: we we might even have this thing called cooties, and
Speaker 1: to stay away because we're just covered and covered in
Speaker 1: girl germ. Did you ever make the paper? Well, okay,
Speaker 1: see that's the thing. Everybody calls them fortune tellers, but
Speaker 1: at my school, we call them cootie catchers. The thing
Speaker 1: where the with the flaps and you put your fingers
Speaker 1: in it. Yeah, I would open it, and I wish
Speaker 1: people could see my hands. Our hands are doing this
Speaker 1: some flapping, but we would use them like a beak
Speaker 1: to pick cooties off of our arms. Oh well, again
Speaker 1: there is a bit of a socialization gap with my
Speaker 1: home school. Well, when I tell people cootie catchers, they
Speaker 1: think I'm weird, So don't worry about it. I think
Speaker 1: most people call them fortune tellers. Can be weird together. Great, well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about let's talk about physical cleanliness though in adults,
Speaker 1: because I think we've established that overall, least expectation wise,
Speaker 1: girls clearer than boys. But as we grow up, what
Speaker 1: happens when we're left to our own devices? Is it
Speaker 1: the same? Well? Yes and no. I think men are
Speaker 1: cleaner in summer guards and women are cleaner and others. Um.
Speaker 1: There was a survey performed by cut Ker hand Wash
Speaker 1: in that showed that men are becoming more obsessive about hygiene.
Speaker 1: That might be strong. Language obsessive might be a little strong,
Speaker 1: But basically the survey in the u K goes against
Speaker 1: what a lot of other studies have said in recent years,
Speaker 1: mainly that there's no big difference in how much we
Speaker 1: wash our hands, brush our teeth and clean our sheets. Uh.
Speaker 1: The survey said that both men and women wash their
Speaker 1: hands ten times a day and change their sheets every
Speaker 1: three weeks or so, which makes me want to puke seriously,
Speaker 1: every three weeks? Am I the only one who changes
Speaker 1: my sheets every week? I don't change my sheets every week? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm not sleeping ever anytime, saying it's fine. Well, there's
Speaker 1: a well, some surveys even find that men might wash
Speaker 1: their hair more than women. But I'm gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and say that that is not a hygiene thing. That
Speaker 1: is a hairstyling thing. Because we're women are told to
Speaker 1: not it's it's actually better for your hair. Do not
Speaker 1: wash your hair. Spoiler. I color my hair and red
Speaker 1: faiths the fastest, so I don't want to. I only
Speaker 1: wash my hair like once or twice a week. But
Speaker 1: you do, you change your sheets more than you wash
Speaker 1: your hair about the same that that's a great step. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There was another UK survey among a thousand college students
Speaker 1: looking at that whole changing of the sheets thing, and
Speaker 1: it also indicated that male students might be changing their
Speaker 1: sheets more of them change your sheets at least once
Speaker 1: a month, with more than washing them once a week,
Speaker 1: meeting the Caroline standard, whereas the female students wash your
Speaker 1: sheets about every two months, which is surprising. I would,
Speaker 1: I would say, ladies, what's wrong? But I remember, I
Speaker 1: mean freshman year of college, I've barely changed my sheets
Speaker 1: either maybe once a month, maybe once a month. I
Speaker 1: was there with the guys changing my sheets. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: with the whole underwear thing, no big surprise here that
Speaker 1: women change their underwear more often than men do. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Forty two. This is back to the Cuticura survey of
Speaker 1: men admitted to wearing the same pair of undepense more
Speaker 1: than once without washing them, and this was often for women.
Speaker 1: This was just And I would like to take this
Speaker 1: time to point out that according to a Keeping It
Speaker 1: Clean That's k l e In infographic that Kristen and
Speaker 1: I found, that's great comparing cleanliness and hygiene between the genders,
Speaker 1: they said that poop just doesn't come off people. You
Speaker 1: need to like really sterilize that if you're going to
Speaker 1: be wearing you can get up to a gram of
Speaker 1: poop in your underwear if you don't wash them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was so excited slash disgusted by that fact that
Speaker 1: I tweeted it oh well once I ran across it,
Speaker 1: And I also texted it out of context to my boyfriend,
Speaker 1: who was then very confused and asked if everything was okay. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not just underwear and sheets that we have
Speaker 1: to worry about. Let's talk about our actual physical selves. Uh.
Speaker 1: An American Society of Microbiology study in two thousand five
Speaker 1: found that women's hands tend to be cleaner than men's.
Speaker 1: And how did they find this? Did they did they
Speaker 1: go up to people and swipe their hands. No, they
Speaker 1: just they just plain all spied on them in the bathroom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Harris Interactive pulling watched over six thousand adults, six thousand,
Speaker 1: twenty eight adults to be precise, just lingering in bathrooms
Speaker 1: waiting to see if you're gonna wash it on tower
Speaker 1: for nine hours. And they found that women wash your
Speaker 1: hands a lot more often than men. And this is
Speaker 1: in public restrooms and Caroline. The worst hygiene, unfortunately, was
Speaker 1: found for both men and women at Atlanta's Turner Field
Speaker 1: Home of the Braves in our hometown. Thirty seven percent
Speaker 1: of men and six percent of women left the bathroom
Speaker 1: without washing. Yeah, but what about all the catchup and
Speaker 1: mustard from hot dogs? Hey, these people are maybe they're
Speaker 1: during a couple of expensive beers and they want to
Speaker 1: get back out there to their expensive seats with their
Speaker 1: expensive hot dogs, watching the expensive game. The biggest gender
Speaker 1: disparity was at New York's Penn Station, where sixty percent
Speaker 1: of men and women wash their hands. Best hygiene up
Speaker 1: San Francisco in Chicago, San Francisco's Ferry Terminal, Farmers Market
Speaker 1: in Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, and shut aquarium.
Speaker 1: It's a long name. UH were places where only twelve
Speaker 1: of people left the restroom without washing their hands. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to self reporting, also not so surprisingly.
Speaker 1: When Harris Interactive went back and just called a sample
Speaker 1: of a thousand adults, they reported washing their hands far
Speaker 1: more often than the numbers would imply of the of
Speaker 1: the people who were, you know, scouting out actual handwashing instances.
Speaker 1: But the good news is hand washing is getting better.
Speaker 1: And it might seem like, oh, this is handwashing doesn't
Speaker 1: really make that big of a difference. Yes, it does
Speaker 1: make a massive difference in terms of disease prevention, just
Speaker 1: the basic washing your hands. And I mean I've heard
Speaker 1: people argue. When I say people, I mean boys. I've
Speaker 1: heard boys argue that, well, it's not like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm touching a whole lot of stuff in the bathroom
Speaker 1: when I'm in there. They're getting and I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: think about all the stuff you're touching before you go
Speaker 1: to the bathroom. You want to wash all that stuff
Speaker 1: off anyway. Yeah, so you know, we're not perfect, but
Speaker 1: we're getting better. In the American Society of Microbiology, UH
Speaker 1: followed up and in two they went back to the
Speaker 1: same places Kristen turner Field was still the dirtiest except
Speaker 1: for the women. Percent of the women, it was still
Speaker 1: the worst for men. Uh sorry sorry. Thirty five percent
Speaker 1: of men at turner Field in Atlanta did not wash
Speaker 1: their hands, but percent of the women observed did. That
Speaker 1: is commitment because those lines can get crazy, can But um,
Speaker 1: the most likely place for men to wash their hands
Speaker 1: still the Chicago Museum mentioned eighty eight percent of men.
Speaker 1: Maybe intellectual types pay better attention to hand hygiene. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but they were very happy to report
Speaker 1: and I'm happy to read it that the study found
Speaker 1: that about eight percent of people all together wash their hands,
Speaker 1: which is a jump from seventy seven percent in two
Speaker 1: thousands seven and sixty eight percent. And I bet that
Speaker 1: does have to do with more public health awareness in
Speaker 1: terms of washing your hands, the benefits of washing your
Speaker 1: hands and disease prevention, because we've had a couple of
Speaker 1: animal related flus that have circulated swine flu, bird flu,
Speaker 1: zebra flu, giraffe flew all over the place. Um, but
Speaker 1: when we do wash there some researchers think that our
Speaker 1: motivations and by army men versus women might differ. And
Speaker 1: this is coming out of the American Journal of Public
Speaker 1: Health in October of two thousand nine. And what the
Speaker 1: researchers did was put up these flashing pro hand washing
Speaker 1: messages in front of in a public restroom, in front
Speaker 1: of the soap dispenser, and it would change every time
Speaker 1: to see, you know, for a different tax. So some
Speaker 1: of them. Some of the messages were more discussed oriented,
Speaker 1: such as, don't take the loo with you, wash with
Speaker 1: soap or soap it off all eated light. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: There were other ones that were related purely to being informative,
Speaker 1: which was water doesn't kill germs, soap does. Uh. They
Speaker 1: found that that men really responded to the disgusted messages,
Speaker 1: whereas women were more likely to wash their hands that
Speaker 1: they were armed with knowledge. One that performed well for both.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let Kristin read it is one tied to
Speaker 1: social norms. Is the person next to you washing was
Speaker 1: soap that was just solid up talk right there. Uh
Speaker 1: had that um And that makes sense because you know,
Speaker 1: it is calling you out. It's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a public shaming if you're not washing your hands. But
Speaker 1: the thing is, though, in post interviews, when the researchers
Speaker 1: would wait outside the bathroom and say, hey, gal, did
Speaker 1: you wash your hands? Yeah? Did you see that message?
Speaker 1: Not really, so they weren't really sure whether or not
Speaker 1: it just happened to be a discussed a pro disgusted message. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it was something more subliminal. And I did a
Speaker 1: little bit more digging on this whole discussed aspect of hygiene,
Speaker 1: because there is a ton of research out there on
Speaker 1: the emotion of disgust, how it differs for men and women.
Speaker 1: Are sensitivity to that, and how it's linked to things
Speaker 1: like not only hygiene, but also morality, sexuality, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: there are some studies that would suggest that disgusted sensitivity
Speaker 1: it's higher among women, which would contradict this this study
Speaker 1: finding that don't take the loo with you is more
Speaker 1: effective for men. But I don't know either way. I
Speaker 1: think um, I would I would buy the whole thing
Speaker 1: that the social norm thing of hey, you know you're
Speaker 1: you're gross if you're not washing your hands because everybody
Speaker 1: else is doing it would be effective. Now what about teeth? I,
Speaker 1: for one, I'm a bad flosser. I'm gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and admit that I feel like I'm in a safe
Speaker 1: space to talk about it. You have a bad floster
Speaker 1: to I. I try, but really it's mainly just after
Speaker 1: I eat popcorn. Um. An American Dental Association study in
Speaker 1: two thousand four found that more Americans are saying now
Speaker 1: that they brush their teeth after every meal, but women
Speaker 1: still outpaced men. A quarter of respondents in this survey
Speaker 1: that they brush their teeth after every meal, more than
Speaker 1: twice the number reported six years earlier. So we're making strides.
Speaker 1: Congratulations everyone. Yeah, and women, though, are still more likely
Speaker 1: to have a regular dentist get their checkups more often.
Speaker 1: Men will tend to go years between dental checkups. Women
Speaker 1: are also more likely to brush twice a day, so
Speaker 1: there's a bit of an oral hygiene gender gaps still there.
Speaker 1: What's up? What's up with people who only brush their
Speaker 1: teeth once a day? Um? Maybe it is a time thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm really not sure. Just like I
Speaker 1: changed my steets once a week, Kristen, I washed my
Speaker 1: Arab brush my teeth twice a day. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: all of you very disappointed. But let's take it to
Speaker 1: the workplace, because you know what place is teeming with
Speaker 1: germs your desk? Oh yes, um. Clorox company has sponsored
Speaker 1: a number of studies not so surprisingly, I feel like
Speaker 1: I've said not so surprisingly like twenty five times in
Speaker 1: this podcast by the way, not so surprisingly, I know,
Speaker 1: but Clorox sponsored a number of studies on germs and
Speaker 1: our cleaning habits. And one of these studies, which was
Speaker 1: conducted by University of Arizona professor Charles Gerba in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, it found that women's desks harbor three to
Speaker 1: four times the number of bacteria than men's desks, and
Speaker 1: this was looking at more than one hundred offices around
Speaker 1: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, d C, Oregon, and
Speaker 1: the University of Arizona campus and attributes this to women
Speaker 1: having more interactions with small children, keeping food and makeup
Speaker 1: at the desk as well. And even though our desk
Speaker 1: might be neater, they are dirtier, largely because of the
Speaker 1: food in the makeup. Yeah, cosmetics, hand lotions and food
Speaker 1: are microorganism magnets um. The worst offender overall, though, was
Speaker 1: men's wallets, because they're in that warm back pocket that
Speaker 1: just serves as an incubator for bacteria. But not so
Speaker 1: fast ladies, you're not off the hook either. Most handbags
Speaker 1: have tens of thousands of bacteria on them, just just
Speaker 1: to let you know. Bacteria levels of two hundred are
Speaker 1: considered safe, but don't worry. Men's wallets are four times
Speaker 1: dirtier than that. You know what, I'm gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and say that maybe I have very low discuss sensitivity
Speaker 1: with the in terms of pathogen disgust because it doesn't
Speaker 1: bother me. Our bodies are teeming with bacteria. Sure, but
Speaker 1: just don't put your purse down on the bathroom floor
Speaker 1: or anything. That is a good point, but one thing
Speaker 1: to keep in mind. I mean, it's not hopeless. Don't worry.
Speaker 1: Fewer back here you were found on desktops that were
Speaker 1: regularly sanitized. So keep those antibacterial wipes around or sprays
Speaker 1: whatever you feel like using. I I have a huge,
Speaker 1: like industrial size canister of of wipes because I feel
Speaker 1: like people get all the time at work. Well, that
Speaker 1: is sick building syndrome is a thing, and researchers have
Speaker 1: attributed to bad habits like people not cleaning their desks
Speaker 1: and and speaking of women and food in the desk.
Speaker 1: Charles Gerba that University of Arizona professor said something along
Speaker 1: the lines of, uh, if the apocalypse ever happened, he
Speaker 1: would immediately just rush to a woman's workspace because of
Speaker 1: the amount of food that we keep stowed away in
Speaker 1: our desk. I don't have any food at the moment.
Speaker 1: I usually keep some granola bars, but those are sealed up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't have anything. Just which when you're hungry, the
Speaker 1: most oppressing thing to do is open your drawer and
Speaker 1: only see utensils that could be for food that's not there.
Speaker 1: Your imaginary hook food back when they had the in
Speaker 1: in the movie Hook anyway, uh so, but the opposite
Speaker 1: was true. Interestingly enough, in a plus one study may
Speaker 1: performed by Scott Kelly, who's a biology professor at San
Speaker 1: Diego State University. He looked at ninety offices in New York,
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and Tucson and found that men's offices, not women,
Speaker 1: had up more bacteria. So basically, just be aware people
Speaker 1: that your workspaces grows, particularly if you eat at your desk.
Speaker 1: You want to just clean that sucker off maybe once
Speaker 1: a week or once every other week. Yeah, that's San
Speaker 1: Diego State University study got a ton of press and
Speaker 1: like thinking about all this stuff of you know, like, oh,
Speaker 1: well men have more, Oh but handbags are so rows
Speaker 1: all the stuff. I feel like it all kind of
Speaker 1: comes out in the wash pun there because I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know that the that kind of gender difference
Speaker 1: matters that much. It's more of an overall message of saying,
Speaker 1: you know, I just maybe we should keep our spaces
Speaker 1: a little bit cleaner. Um. But once we leave work
Speaker 1: finally and we go home, who is doing a majority
Speaker 1: of that housework? We've talked about it in podcast Divorce.
Speaker 1: We're not going to spend a ton of time on it,
Speaker 1: but it's the women. Yeah, we we as women are
Speaker 1: more likely to do more housework more often. Well we
Speaker 1: should say that is in a male female combo household. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that's also in the Caroline and dude roommate household. Also,
Speaker 1: not that we fight about it or anything dot dot dot,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so we reference that keeping it clean in
Speaker 1: phographic earlier. According to the research they did for men
Speaker 1: are less likely to do some housework every day, not
Speaker 1: in general, just every day, and that's of men versus
Speaker 1: of women. But when they do clean the house, it's
Speaker 1: more thorough. Yeah, and the whole thing about men maybe
Speaker 1: waiting longer to clean the house, but when they do it,
Speaker 1: they do it really, really, really well. Um reminded me
Speaker 1: of a recent article that was published in the Atlantic
Speaker 1: by Alexandra Brander, who's a philosophy professor out at the
Speaker 1: University of Kentucky, and she was talking about reasons why
Speaker 1: potential reasons why men might do less housework than women
Speaker 1: in heterosexual marriages, and she highlighted three major theories. One
Speaker 1: is the epistemic hypothesis, which is basically, men didn't see
Speaker 1: their dad's modeling this household clean behavior, so they're not
Speaker 1: gonna do it. Uh. Motivational hypothesis, which would be house
Speaker 1: cleaning or running errands is an unjustified table time cost,
Speaker 1: so which reminds me of like, you know, they might
Speaker 1: not do it every day, when they do it, they're
Speaker 1: going to do it really really well to make it
Speaker 1: worth it. And one of the reasons why the motivational
Speaker 1: hypothesis is compelling is because sometimes women and I've been
Speaker 1: guilty of this as well, not just with male but
Speaker 1: also female roommates. Um, women will come behind and sort
Speaker 1: of sweep up behind them or even redo what they did,
Speaker 1: for instance, with me, I'm a stickler about dishwashers. Yes
Speaker 1: you are, I am. I have I'm very good at
Speaker 1: loading it, and I feel like you should not waste space.
Speaker 1: And I have been known much too roommates chagrin to
Speaker 1: come behind them and reload the Dishwah, I do that
Speaker 1: behind dude, roommate all the time? Are you kidding? What?
Speaker 1: I just I imagine you might have the same thought
Speaker 1: when you open the dishwasher after a roommate, boyfriend, whoever,
Speaker 1: has loaded it. You look at it and you're like,
Speaker 1: in what way did this make sense in your brain?
Speaker 1: Because as things are like spread out over the entire dishwasher,
Speaker 1: and you're like, no, no, no, no, no no. The
Speaker 1: plates go here, spoons are over here, cups are obviously
Speaker 1: on the top to the right. Yeah. And and it
Speaker 1: ties totally into that motivational hypothesis because man or woman,
Speaker 1: if that's going on, you would say, you know what,
Speaker 1: You're going to do the dishes because you're just gonna
Speaker 1: do them anyway, whether I load the dishwasher or not.
Speaker 1: And interestingly, that's something that Facebook CEO Shell Sandberg has
Speaker 1: brought up for you know, women who are married to
Speaker 1: men saying, you know what, if you want to split
Speaker 1: the household chores fifty fifty, you need to let them
Speaker 1: do that fifty because I think women sometimes unnecessarily kind
Speaker 1: of buy into the whole acculturation of women being the
Speaker 1: chore doers, the maids essentially around the house, and whether
Speaker 1: we are conscious of it or not, and take on
Speaker 1: more than we really have to, and it kind of
Speaker 1: continues that whole epistemic thing, the motivational thing. And then
Speaker 1: there's also the third uh the hypothesis brand or highlighted
Speaker 1: at the Atlantic is the structural hypothesis, saying that basically,
Speaker 1: the modern workplace doesn't afford men the time to do
Speaker 1: it like if they would if they could, which which
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think again, I feel like that though,
Speaker 1: you know, like I guess what can be frustrating about
Speaker 1: my roommate being such a neat freak is that I'll
Speaker 1: get home and he'll resent me for throwing my purse
Speaker 1: on the floor something like that, but neither one of
Speaker 1: us has time to deal with it, so we end up,
Speaker 1: over the course of the week building up these teeny
Speaker 1: tiny resentments, and one of us finally cleans because we're
Speaker 1: both busy. We both work. But as we pointed out
Speaker 1: too in other podcasts, this issue of the division of
Speaker 1: the household chores not such a divisive issue with same
Speaker 1: sex couples because there aren't those, you know, those gendered
Speaker 1: norms of you know, whom men clean and men lawn?
Speaker 1: Yeah uh where you know, it's kind of like you,
Speaker 1: you find your strength and you stick to it. Like
Speaker 1: for you and I, we should probably do the dishes,
Speaker 1: whereas if someone wants to do the laundry, have at it.
Speaker 1: That is not my favorite thing in the world to do.
Speaker 1: I feel like laundry is such instant gratification. But I
Speaker 1: really won't get into all of that because I really,
Speaker 1: I mean, I could talk about yours. But once we
Speaker 1: circle back around though, to the household cleanliness, you start
Speaker 1: to see that a lot of the patterns that we
Speaker 1: have an adulthood do trace back to those childhood gendered
Speaker 1: norms that start out with the assumption that, you know,
Speaker 1: girls you need to be cleaner than boys, you know,
Speaker 1: in appearance wise, down to neatness and cleanness. So the
Speaker 1: question of whether or not women are cleaner than men,
Speaker 1: I think the answer is no, because they're might be expectations,
Speaker 1: but you and I both have plenty of clean, clean men,
Speaker 1: and I know plenty of dirty women like I have
Speaker 1: had some female roommates whom I love dearly, But spaghetti
Speaker 1: bowls were kept in bedside tables. Oh yeah. I won't
Speaker 1: even get into any stories about women that I have
Speaker 1: lived with who have destroyed spaces that we've shared anyway,
Speaker 1: So maybe it would be a good thing for all
Speaker 1: of us if we abandoned that that gendered notion that
Speaker 1: women are the cleaner sex and just all start pitching
Speaker 1: in and everybody wash your hands. And I'm really never
Speaker 1: going to touch a male wallet again because those things
Speaker 1: are jeremy, a male wallet, a male wallet. Uh. So
Speaker 1: I will be curious though, to hear from listeners on
Speaker 1: this one, especially folks with roommates out there, because cleanliness
Speaker 1: is such a such a big factor I think for
Speaker 1: room I mean, the number one thing I can think
Speaker 1: of with having roommates, Like, whenever fights would come up,
Speaker 1: it was about cleanliness, yeah, and that was it. It
Speaker 1: was about the dishwasher. Yeah. If only if I could
Speaker 1: just live by myself in a silent, uh cluttery, but
Speaker 1: clean apartment with a nice dishwasher, I'd be happy paradise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does sound pretty nice. Well, listeners, let us know
Speaker 1: your thoughts on whether men or women are cleaner. I
Speaker 1: know you've got them. Send them our way. Mom Stuff
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot Com is our email address. You can
Speaker 1: also hit us up on Facebook as well. And now
Speaker 1: back to our letters. I have one to hear Kristen
Speaker 1: from Jenna. This is about our pole dancing episode. She says,
Speaker 1: you talked about pole dancing in the latest episode, and
Speaker 1: I just wanted to say that. I think it's a
Speaker 1: very empowered thing to do, to tell those who would
Speaker 1: scoffy your independence and strength as a woman that they're wrong.
Speaker 1: So all the double standards and morality aside, I think
Speaker 1: that means a lot. It's very admirable. I look up
Speaker 1: to strong women like that personally, so thank you for
Speaker 1: the perspective, Jenna. Well, I've got an email here from
Speaker 1: Tina and it's about her daughter, who's five years old
Speaker 1: and she's the youngest of four. She has three older brothers,
Speaker 1: ages nine, thirteen, and sixteen, and she writes, my daughter,
Speaker 1: since she could speak, has described herself as quote a
Speaker 1: girl and a boy, and will explain that she likes
Speaker 1: girrel stuff and boy stuff. She's as comfortable in the
Speaker 1: two day old clothes playing in the dirt as she
Speaker 1: is in a princess dress with lipstick and a tia.
Speaker 1: It's a nerving to some people, such as my mom
Speaker 1: when she calls herself a boy and a girl, even
Speaker 1: though they have no issue with her acting like quote
Speaker 1: unquote one of the boys, and they try to encourage
Speaker 1: her to use the word tomboy instead. My husband and
Speaker 1: I have always let her describe herself however she wants,
Speaker 1: and we tell her that she can be whatever she wants,
Speaker 1: whenever she wants, and to try not to draw attention
Speaker 1: to the labels. She starts kindergarten this year, and I'm
Speaker 1: curious to see if the new pressures will change the
Speaker 1: way she describes herself. And she does note that her
Speaker 1: daughter has been in daycare, so it's even with that
Speaker 1: kind of socialization, she still does see I'm a girl
Speaker 1: and a boy. Yeah, so I thought that was kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. So thanks to Tina and everybody else, we're
Speaker 1: writing into mom stuff at Discovery dot com. You can also,
Speaker 1: of course find us on Facebook, where we do lots
Speaker 1: of fun things during the week. You can follow us
Speaker 1: on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast and on Tumbler as
Speaker 1: well It's stuff Mom Never Told You dot tumbler dot com.
Speaker 1: And as always, if you'd like to get smarter this week,
Speaker 1: you can head to our website, it's how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Does it how stuff works dot com.