If you are reading this article over breakfast, the chances are you have recently stepped into the shower, lathered up your hair and torso, rinsed off, toweled and blow-dried, before dousing your armpits with deodorant, and wafting on a fog of perfume or aftershave. Then again, maybe not. The New York Times has just reported on a new trend towards what’s sometimes known as soap-dodging.
Among those who have cut down on daily showers, baths or hair-washing were a woman who swipes a sliced lemon under her armpits instead of deodorant, another who uses baby wipes to freshen up after her lunchtime runs, and a salesman who shampoos only once a month and gave up anti-perspirant for three years.
Not only in the US, is this happening in the UK too. Last year, a poll for tissue manufacturer SCA found that 41 per cent of British men and 33 per cent of women don’t shower every day, with 12 per cent of people only having a proper wash once or twice a week. Around the same time, research by Mintel found that more than half of British teenagers don’t wash every clean as everyone else.”
It has helped him to get his water consumption down to around 20 liters a day — well below the 100 to 150 average in the UK. McCarthy points out, “It’s only recently that we have expected people to bath or shower every day. When I was a child, the normal thing was to bathe once a week.” Head much further back into history, and we find Elizabeth I bathing once a month, and James I apparently only ever washing his fingers. In 1951, almost two fifths of UK homes were without a bath, and in 1965, only half of British women wore deodorant. 
Now people have begun to fetish for extreme cleanliness, to create the kind of culture where, as McCarthy says, “It’s not entirely unusual for people staying in hotels to churn through 1,000 liters of water a day — showering in the morning, after a sauna, after the swimming pool, before dinner, before bed.
The international market for soaps of all kinds is now $24 billion a year. And some dermatologists fear that this intense, regular washing is stripping our skin of germs that could actually be beneficial to us, that help our skin stay healthy, balanced and fresh.