Did you wash your ass today?
Because life is too short to walk this earth with a crusty butt.
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I have a problem with the American dream. If there’s one thing people feel uncomfortable talking about—other than openly discussing their salaries—it’s the topic of anal hygiene.
It’s even become an essential discourse in sexual politics! For some reason, straight (often white) men have a problem with having their fingers around their own butt, fearing that it’d make them gay. Shout out to Lil B because if I’m gay, I’m definitely happy.
A little background here: I grew up washing my ass. Suppose you ask me to name one single benefit of being a part of the jungle diaspora. In that case, it’s the generations of domestic traditions passed down to us. Namely, the mandatory ritual of washing ass. And that means washing ass every time you have a number two. Every. Single. Time.
So, without a doubt, I can say that among the cis-gendered, straight men in my radius, I have the cleanest butt in the Mile-End of Montreal. I’m proud of it, even. I relieve myself on the dot twice a day. That means I’ll wash twice a day (we’ll get to how later).
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I admit that having a clean posterior has become a bit of a compulsion for me. But I carry this with a badge of honor with just as much pride as I do having a consistent streak of type 4 shits on the Bristol stool scale. However, this compulsion has turned me into a chaotic neutral being: I will say and do anything to make sure my ass is clean even if it’s at the expense of people, places, and things.
Example, say I’m in a public space and I’ve had a bit too much milk in my triple-shot espresso drink. Uh oh, I’ll tell myself. My tummy feels funny (Asians are notoriously lactose intolerant). I will clean myself using soaped-down paper towels and wet toilet paper. I will unashamedly clog the pipes to have a clean ass. And I will do so because my compulsion is so strong nothing else in the world can stop me (bar police intervention). Outside of terrible Asian fusion food, nothing ruins my mood more than knowing I have a dirty ass.
Among Filipinos in the motherland and across the world, we use a tool called a tabo. It’s a plastic dipper commonly found in Southeast Asian homes. It’s functional and versatile—trending keywords—and has been a mainstay for multiple generations of families. You can use a tabo to clean your driveway. Got a giant pot of stew? There’s a tabo for that. Want to bathe or shower? Tabo. Gotta wash your ass? Tabo (obviously different dippers for each occasion).
The tabo has been an integral part of my cleaning ritual. Being young and naive as a kid, I assumed everyone had one. The first time I realized that wasn’t the case was going to my Italian friend’s home for dinner.
Having gobbled down an entire plate of cheesy spaghetti—and being slightly disappointed in discovering that Italian spaghetti wasn’t sweet like the Filipino version—I immediately went for a number two. Unfortunately, this was my second anxiety attack in the evening (the first was discovering the family wore shoes inside the house). Not wanting to exit the bathroom with a dirty ass, I did the only sensible thing I could: squatting in front of the bathtub faucet and letting it run, wiping myself clean.
Surprisingly, I’ve had similar experiences within the Filipino diaspora, too. My armchair theory is that the closer we Filipinos lean into our colonial mentality and embrace whiteness and the American ideal (a topic thoroughly detailed by the late Doreen G. Fernandez in her 1989 essay “Mass Culture and Cultural Policy: The Philippine Experience”), the more we distance ourselves from washing ass.
The implications are serious. Fernandez writes:
Centuries of colonization make the Filipino inclined to choose, to believe in, to regard highly, the colonizer's culture and artifacts over the "native" culture… He dreams of emigrating to the US. He prefers corned beef bought in PX stores around the bases to the same product from locally franchised plants and he dresses, sings, dances American.
If this sounds like a stretch, hear me out: I’m saying this based on experience. In my early twenties, I paid visit to an ex’s family in Seattle. They were the classic archetype of a military family (they even had painted portraits of the dad in uniform on the walls). Hanging out with the kids, they displayed a distinct apprehension toward Filipino things, be it food or language. They didn’t want to eat adobo, so they took us to Jack in the Box for some burgers. Extra cheese.
One benefit of subscribing to whiteness is the apparent tolerance to milk products. Because, while they were fine, baby, I was suffering (maybe it’s just a me thing). While doing my business in their bathroom, I noticed they didn’t have a tabo. Instead, there was a discarded red solo cup filled slightly with Corona. You know what happens next.
Life might be easier if I didn’t fuss about something considered trivial among men. But, fellas, this is important for your health. You have a higher chance of contracting a urinary tract infection just by wiping improperly, according to Healthline. With stray fecal matter being spread in your underwear, not only are you more likely to get sick, you’re affecting the health of others, too.
Fake news, you say? Here’s what ChatGPT says:
Think of the implication.
As much as you might not care about others, you probably care about clout. Most of us today want to look good. It’s a status thing. So if you can spend 3 hours scrolling through the seemingly endless pages of SSENSE to find the next statement piece for your wardrobe, you can totally dedicate a little bit of your time to smelling good (and no, perfume doesn’t cut it).
Let’s remember that most of us can’t smell ourselves, mainly because our olfactory senses are conditioned to be used to the odors we produce. But people can definitely smell you.
I’ve had terrible eyesight for as long as I can remember. That means my other senses are heightened—a natural adaptation that has made me a discerning eater and sniffer of things. And that means I can smell the terrible bouquet of head, heart, and base notes emanating from your drawers.
Do I detect trace amounts of spinach in your stool? Something tart and cheesy, too. Did you have spanakopita?
But it’s not too late. We can fix this. You’ve probably heard of the bidet. First invented in France during the 1600s, the bidet has become an essential tool for many countries to clean their butts. France, Portugal, Italy, and Japan are examples of countries that use the bathroom tool today.
To visualize here’s a very inaccurate map of countries that use the bidet:
You’d think that Americans would be a superpower in bidet usage, having been introduced to the tool in Europe during World War II. But, Americans saw the tool as one associated with sex work and birth control. Naughty, naughty.
According to The Atlantic:
As Norman Haire, a birth-control pioneer, put it in 1936, “The presence of a bidet is regarded as almost a symbol of sin.” The present-day American sociologist Harvey Molotch agrees, concluding that the devices were tainted with France’s hedonism and sexuality. “Bidets have had such difficulty ... Even all the power of capitalism can’t break the taboo.”
But things are changing, albeit slowly. Some of my peers have begun to use a bidet, and I couldn’t be more proud. Sometimes, though, the snowflake part of me feels a little apprehensive at the western appropriation of ass-cleaning. A gentrification of sorts—like Hawaiian poke. I felt a little triggered, even though I still use a tabo, and many other cultures use their own equivalents, such as the bodna, lota—used as far back as the second-millennium BC—and bidet shower (used across South Asia).
My friend Annum, a fantastic writer who runs the Substack newsletter
, tells me over WhatsApp that this is something I should be okay with.Me: I realize that the bidet is a symbol of western gentrification.
Me: At least in the western model.
Annum: Honestly? I’m ok with the specific form of gentrification.
Annum: They can appropriate it all they want.
Me: Sure, sure, but they think they OWN the bidet.
Annum: Go ahead as long as you’re cleaning yourselves lmao
Annum: But also 🙄
One caveat is that, while TUSHY bidets are relatively affordable, costing as low as 99 CAD (they even offer portable lota-equivalents), it still takes some effort to set up.
So, instead, you can go to the dollar store for a dipper and start washing your ass manually. Here’s a quick guide by YouTuber PrinceZee.
