In these interesting times, when a virus sweeps over the globe and leads to surprising toilet paper shortages, our Stuff You Should Know hosts Josh and Chuck think it might be a good time to talk about bidets. When were they invented? What are they like? Are there true health or environmental benefits to them? And, perhaps most importantly, could these nifty bathroom appliances be the answer to our lack-of-toilet-paper prayers? “This episode is chock-full of TMI,” Josh warns, as they get into all the details about the device. Like, first of all, what is a bidet? A classic bidet kind of looks like a little bathtub next to your toilet, Chuck describes, and people squat over it to wash themselves after using the bathroom. Modern bidets are more convenient, basically modified toilet seats; some even have features like heated seats, bacteria-killing UV lights, or self-cleaning capabilities.
Bidets originally were manually operated – you would splash yourself with water using your bare hands. Hygienically, this wasn’t a winner, so by 1750, a spray pump and a refillable tank were added, and “you were pretty much good to go, as far as bidets are concerned,” Josh jokes. Though bidets are very popular in most of Europe, Asia, South America, and Japan, they never really took off in America; this might be because the English hated anything associated with the French, who first popularized bidets, and carried that prejudice with them to the colonies. Another theory is that American soldiers during the world wars saw bidets in brothels and thought they were associated with sex work, making them inappropriate in a family home.
So it’s somewhat surprising to learn that the more modern, modified-toilet-seat bidet design was actually invented in the States, by a man named Arnold Cohen in the 1960s. Though it proved useful for people who have rectal health problems, and though he argued that we use way too much toilet paper, it was very hard to market, so he licensed the design to a Japanese company. They improved on it and released it as "the Washlet" in the 1980s, and by 2007, they had sold 17 million worldwide; by 2019, they were up to 50 million sold. So bidets certainly seem to be catching on. Listen to this episode to hear more of the what, why, and how of bidets, and free yourself from toilet paper tyranny, on Stuff You Should Know.
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