The French have been less picky about hygiene since the start of the pandemic

When was your last shower? A question that we will perhaps end up asking before a first date in the coming weeks, as the French seem to neglect their hygiene in this period of pandemic. And that’s hardly exaggerated … Less than two-thirds of French people (63%) say they do a complete toilet ‘at least once a day’, including 67% of women and 59% of men, reveals a survey carried out by Ifop for the Unbottled * brand. Note that these gentlemen were 61% in October and April 2020, that is to say during the first two confinements, and 71% in February just before the start of the pandemic. In short, a situation that continues to deteriorate.

The observation is the same, to a lesser extent, for washing the hair. Curfews, confinement, and teleworking have obviously pushed the French to ignore their hair hygiene, or at least to be less demanding on the subject. More than a third of respondents (35%) say they wash their hair every two days. This concerns a quarter of women today, against 29% before the pandemic. But is the health crisis really responsible for these less frequent shampoos? No, according to the women concerned, who express their desire to improve the quality of their hair (50%) or to have less oily hair (45%).

Some clichés have a hard tooth

Women would look better when they straightened their hair. Obviously difficult to get rid of certain diktats, because 46% of men agree that beauty and brushing are inseparable, or almost. They also assert in numbers (68%) that a woman who does not wash her hair at least once a week is a woman with poor hygiene, and, to a lesser extent, a woman who has hair short is less feminine than a woman with long hair (31%).

Hair hygiene, even the very nature of your hair, can be important even under the duvet. More than eight in ten French people (84%) – men and women alike – would refuse to sleep with a person with “unpleasant” smelling hair, and more than a third (36%) could not have sex with a bald, when 27% would refuse to act with a redhead.

*This study was carried out by Ifop for Unbottled using a self-administered online questionnaire from April 9 to 12, 2021 with a sample of 2,027 people, representative of the population aged 18 and over living in metropolitan France.