Setting the Bar

Bar soap.  So often regulated to (non-metrosexual) straight men and bathroom décor.  I have always  preferred frilly, foamy, scented, luxurious body washes.  I like that they can be mixed with a scrub or used as bath bubbles.  They’re just so flexible.  I like the variety available in Sephora and by so many beauty brands.  Of course, if there is a particularly pretty, nicely scented bar soap, it easily wins me over for hands.  But for the most part I’ve always left bar soap to men, assuming that all men are like my dad and brother, who could never betray their Lever 2000.  It wasn’t until I started traveling more, ran out of money and realized my current liquid body wash was giving me contact dermatitis that I was willing to reexamine my arguments against the bar. 

The arguments against bar soap seem to be:

1.       It gets covered with bacteria when different people in your household use it.

a.       Not a problem for me, as I’m the only one who uses my shower.

b.      According to an article from The New YorkTimes online, the bar should get rinsed off between users (I get the impression that's more for the ick factor), but there doesn’t seem to be any scientific evidence to support that cross-contamination between users can occur anyway.

2.       It’s easier to find bar soap that does not have sulfates (a surfactant commonly used as a foaming agent that can, usually only in large quantities, irritate skin) in it.

a.       I haven’t examined every single brand out there, but quite a few of the bar soaps I looked at did contain either Sodium Laureth Sulfate or Sodium Lauryl Sulfate. 

b.      If you want to avoid SLS altogether, look for all natural soaps like Canus Goat’s Milk, or you can even make your own.

c.       All the arguments I’ve read for using SLS insist that in small amounts it shouldn’t irritate skin.  If you have really sensitive skin, however, you probably will want to avoid it.

3.       It melts into mush in the shower.

a.       All that is required here is a good soap dish (or soap saver) and not putting the soap in the direct path of the water.

4.       It doesn’t produce the same kind of lather as body washes.

a.       I can attest to this with some bars (having tried quite a few of them in the past several months), but it is simply not true of ALL bars.  And the same can be said of certain shower gels/liquids.  I love L’Occitane’s Almond Shower Oil (heavenly and subtly scented), but I always use too much because it isn’t meant to be foamy and it drives me crazy after a while.

5.       Once it gets too small, it barely lathers at all and you have to throw it away.

a.       I admit to getting irritated by this, but I recently read somewhere that all you have to do it is press it into the next bar you use…and that made me feel really ridiculous for all the slivers I’d ever thrown away.

This isn’t your father’s Irish Spring. 

The last real argument against bar soap, which was my own, was that you generally don’t find it in a frilly or fun or particularly luxurious form.  It turns out that bar soap can be just as frilly and luxurious as shower gel these days (check out the Claus Porto and Molton Brown lines at Blue Mercury - if you’re in the DC area, there’s one in Bethesda).  And then some, like the Bliss Fat Girl Soap, have things that you’re not going to find in a body wash – in this case, the nubs turn it into a “stimulating massage bar.”  

After talking to most of my friends about what they use, I found that it may not be evenly split between bar soap and body wash (body wash was preferred), but it’s pretty damn close.  In the end, it’s a question of what works for you, personally.  There are some people who think that shower gel, body washes, etc. are a scam and bar soap is the only way to go.  Personally – and I can now officially say this, having tried many many bar soaps just to be sure – I simply do not like bar soap.  But now that I’ve tested a few and figured out what I do like about them, I see the practicality therein and I will definitely be taking a bar with me the next time I travel somewhere by plane.  As far as travel goes, the less I have leaking in my bag the better.  And I like to occasional get onto a plane without having to check any luggage – solid products are the way to go if that’s your aim.

Sorry to leave you hanging – tomorrow on The Thinnest Skin: Jess tested them, you get to read all about her bar soap adventures.  Brands reviewed: LUSH, Canus, Philosophy, Dove, Ivory, Scottish B and Kiss My Face.