Chris Blattman

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I don’t think of myself as a cultural imperialist, but…

…I would have thought that the first French person to return home from a visit to America would have run straight to his friends and said, “Guys, guess what? did you know that we can take that shower nozzle and mount it to the wall?

“Yes, yes I know! No longer must we stand awkwardly and cold in the tub, trying to juggle the shampoo and nozzle at the same time!”

“Not only that,” he would continue, “but if you put a piece of plastic between the tub and the rest of the bathroom, the entire bathroom will not get soaking wet! We must spread the word!”

I am quite sure that the average Frenchman is better at juggling the shampoo and nozzle than I. Undoubtedly the wet bathroom phenomenon is a rookie move. But so much about the style and pace of life is better here that the absence of hot showers perplexes me.

French readers: explain yourselves!

22 Responses

  1. I did mount it to the wall while living in Switzerland. At first I was afraid of what the landlord would say, but it’s easily the best home improvement decision I’ve ever taken.

  2. @Benjamin, Lee, Abhijeet and Alison: cleaning yourself with water that you have just made filthy/ soapy, is not something I will ever get around to. Frankly, the same goes for baths. Running water all the way!

  3. Living in France, I want to know what the point is of the wooden slatted things you’re supposed to stand on when getting out of the shower that just lets all your drips run on to the floor? You then have to either 1)get off the wooden slats, step onto the wet floor whereby your feet get wet anyway or, 2)open the bathroom door, jump off the slats to the dryness outside the bathroom, hoping you don’t slip on landing and break your back.

    As a Brit, where do you guys stay that there aren’t mixer taps? I have vague recollections of old two-tap sinks in my parents’ house as a kid, but are they still so widespread?

    1. The wooden slatted thing is called “caillebotis”. I don’t know the answer to your question. But It may be a question of hygiene though…

  4. Please do not get men started on SINGLE glazing (and no insulation whatsoever) but TWO (separate) taps in the UK (and especially so in any medieval student accommodation)!

    According to the facebook group “You are not an advanced country if you have separate water taps” (https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=39784845321#!/group.php?gid=12860331647 ) ‘(W)hen Winston S. Churchill visited Moscow in 1942, he was astonished by the advanced technology used in the bathrooms. Oh yes! They had mixer taps! Fascinating little things, that allow you to, as he later wrote, “mingle [the water] to exactly the temperature one desires”.’

  5. The french bathroom design may not be the best, but this is also true for american showers. Why mounting the shower to the wall, when you can have an adjustable shower nozzle, and we do not even talk about the handle. Sorry, but I had to repeat some previous posters.

  6. Separate hot and cold taps: you plug the sink, fill it with water from the hot and cold taps until it is the temperature you require, then wash and shave using the water in the basin.

  7. @Benjamin, I am an international student in the UK too. And no matter how hard I try, it is impossible to think of ONE good reason for having separate hot and cold water taps. They usually have them in the kitchens here, why not in the loos?

    @Lee, separate hot and cold taps are retarded. We deserve an explanation!

  8. I am a Swede who has lived in both France and the US. Both you guys have bad solutions. Building the noozle into the wall, at least when you are a tall Scandinavian, means you almost have to break your back to wash your hair, whereas in France, which is not a “take-a-shower twice-a-day” culture, you have to be an acrobat to get clean. Why dont you put a noozle on a handle that gives you both options…..

  9. well that’s too funny! In any case, being French, let’s be clear: I’ve never been in a shower without a curtain or similar… so yes Vivek maybe a cruel joke… Also, most have fixation devices as Alexandre mentions and yes, Anna, most people stop the water to actually wash.. and people should do this here bc it’s greener (ever heard of stopping the water when brushing your teeth..). When I first moved to the US I felt showers were miserable… only one knob to mix the water so careful when first entering the shower! Also impossible to direct the stream of water… I’ve also seen showers w/o curtains here (i.e. Boston and the Cape). So really there’s no French exceptional-ism here… just bad experiences for some of you! Next time, drink more wine and you’ll be happier (oh, and you can always ask to use another shower or ask for a curtain or something)

  10. I just had american friends stay with me and one of the people said ‘I cannot believe we do not have heated towel racks and adjustable height shower head holders like they do here in Europe’.

    So…you know…the grass is greener and all that jazz.

  11. @Benjamin – I lived in London for four years and could not agree with you more! I think there must be some powerful sink mafia or else this is some bizarre form of technological lock-in. @Lee – I dealt with it, but I didn’t like it!

  12. @Benjamin – when I was at SOAS that was pretty much all every foreign student ever talked about. Deal with it!

  13. It’s only because you’re doing it all wrong! If you’re in France you ought to be taking a long luxurious bath and using the shower head purely for rinsing, and have it switched off/in the bath water when shampooing/reading a book/drinking wine. French shower heads are not built for speedy multi-tasking usage (a reflection of the much loved french style and pace of life, no?)

    I think the fact that there is no way for me to put a plug in my bath in New York, forcing me to only use a shower, and to have to stand up to do it, demonstrates the difference between the life-apporaches of the two cities/nations admirably…

  14. While we’re at it, could someone explain why sinks in the UK have separate taps for cold and hot water, thus making it impossible to wash your hands in the winter without either freezing or burning them?

  15. How many data points do you have? Is there some sort of bias in your database? This does not seem to be a specifically french problem (based on my own, french, experience).

    Granted, in some places you find showers whithout any curtain, and shower nozzles that cannot be put on the wall. But shower curtains, shower cabins, and wall shower fixations can be found in any supermarket in France, and are pretty ubiquitous in most french bathrooms.

    Things might be different in old places (and there are lots of those in France). There is an explanation for that : shower is quite “new” in France – the habit kicked in during the 70s. It’s not coming from the old stereotype of french not washing themselves, but from a preference for bath over shower. so older bathrooms are sometimes not well-equiped for showering. This is changing fast.

    Another theory is the following : if you are in the south of France, where during most of the year water dries quickly, and it’s very hot, you may find showers whithout curtain. Hey, why stay in 1 m2 when you can have the whole bathroom for your ablutions? Moreover, if you’re in the south, water is scarce, and people rather wet themselves several times per day than stay for long minutes under the shower. BTW, you save water by using soap whithout water falling all on your face.

    There might be other explanations, but mostly, old buildings, different uses seem to explain the phenomenon.

  16. I lived in France for a semester and showers were the most miserable part of the day. I suspected that our host mother was playing a cruel joke on us, depriving us of warm water and dry floors, until it turned out to be a universal issue. And no you will never get better at balancing the shampoo and the shower head. Impossible!

    I guess as the French would say, C’est dommage mais…*shrug shoulders*

  17. Hum, I remember the exact opposite puzzlement when I set foot in NY! It is when you lack the rope to move the shower head that you have to contortion to wash off the soap! I agree some way to attach it to the wall while you juggle with the shampoo makes it much better, indeed, the best of both worlds. But I wouldn’t think this is Unamerican, I found one at Kmart (yes, it came to this…)

    As for shower curtains, I must agree with you, but I would have thought most French showers had one. At least I am a French person without the skills not to flood the bathroom in its absence.

  18. It’s not just France, of course. I’ve spent too much time on too many mornings wishing I’d brought along flip-flops so that I could comfortably brush my teeth in a Berlin hotel bathroom whose floor I drenched while showering.
    The same is true of the shower head on a rope issue, though most of the German hotels now have ways to attach the shower head so that you don’t have to hold it aloft throughout your shower (though lining up said shower head with your own head is still not a main issue, so there’s some contortions required); this wasn’t true when I first started visiting regularly for conferences in 2005.

  19. The French have special rooms for foreigners – in French homes the showers are on the wall, they just don’t like non-French people.

  20. I’d say that Americans definitely have space for improving showers too: guess what, there could be more than a single handle! I desperately missed water pressure control when on a trip to Boston.

    Anyway, I’m also joining the line of those waiting for French readers’ explanations :)

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