There seems to be a conspiracy of sorts with the whole soap industry. Have you ever noticed that there appears to be a soap for everything? Lets go through this systematically.
Car Washing
OK, remember when washing your car was a fun thing to do? You grabbed a bucket, sponge, the hose and some soap to do the job. When you were done, you would park the car in the shade and pop out your can of Turtle Wax and polish your baby to a high shine. Then they came out with something crazy! Wash & Wax in one! So now there was a special soap, just for washing and waxing the car. Then came the special soap for just washing your tires, then the soap for just washing your wheels.
Lets not even get started on the interior, because there are special cleaners for wood, leather, vinyl, naugahyde (I have never seen a Nauga, but their hides are fantastic! Sorry PETA).
Washing Yourself
OK, here is where we start to get complicated. Back in the day we had the Irish Spring for the body and the Prell for the head. OK, so there were a bunch of other soaps and shampoos, but as a guy we didn't care much about this stuff. Then it hit me. At some point my body had more hair than my head. No I didn't go bald, but in proportion, there is more hair elsewhere than on top. So the question became, where do I stop using shampoo and start using soap? Can I wash the hair on my head with soap? Can I wash the rest of my body with shampoo? I need direction here. Thank you hair & body wash in a single bottle!
I then reached a milestone in life and began to share a shower with a woman. Yes, my wife counts as a woman. This is when I found out that there were special soaps, depending on your mood I guess. You had soaps that were pure, soaps with moisturizer, soaps just for your face, soaps just for your hands, soaps just for your feet, even soaps that had oatmeal in them?!? I guess if you are ever trapped in a shower and need to survive a few days, an oatmeal soap would come in handy.
Then there are all the hand soaps. There are the soft soaps and the bar soaps and now soaps with anti bacterial crime fighting action built in!
How about at the hotel? You always get two bars of soap. One marked facial, the other marked bath. The look exactly alike, except one is larger than the other. So now you are telling me that I can wash my face and hands with the same stuff as long as its a different size?
Some soaps are even bold enough to claim they clean over 1000 body parts, unfortunately they do not provide a list, so you must use this at your own risk.
I am not even going to touch the shampoo market, because that is a scam they have strictly for the female population. Because face it girls, if you want to look like a super model, you need to have the Vidal Mitchell Suave Fuller Body Shampoo for Oily/Dry hair with the matching bottle of conditioner, which makes your hair feel greasy again like it needs to be washed. Lather, rinse, repeat, lather, rinse, repeat, lather, rinse, repeat, lather, rinse, repeat, lather, rinse, repeat, lather, rinse, repeat, go buy more.
The truth about soap...
As the empirical evidence suggests, the soap industry is constantly trying to figure out a new soap for something. However they have never been able to come up with a soap for one thing. In all my research for preparing this article (OK, so I just sat down and began typing) I have never found a soap for....SOAP! No there is not a soap for soap. That ultimately means that soap cannot get dirty!
So why is this relevant? Well, we have all been to the gym or locker room and forgotten soap. There is always an abandoned bar of soap on the floor of the shower. You have done it yourself. Small bar remains, slips out of your hands and you just leave it there. Well now you know that it doesn't matter who left it there or what has touched it, that soap is clean. Because lets face it if soap got dirty, there would be a soap for that!
