There are some things all girls are supposed to love: watching YouTube videos of unexpected animal friendships for hours on end, spending triple digits on a Sephora run and complaining about it afterward, and only ordering beverages from Starbs that have a seven-word minimum. Unfortunately for me, another one of these items is taking baths.
In theory, I get it. You light some candles, turn down the lights, pour yourself an evening glass of wine, and read a book surrounded by luxurious, scented water. Every book, movie, and sitcom paints this as the epitome of relaxation that all girls must enjoy. I’ve tried bath after bath in every attempt to get this right, but for some reason, I just haven’t really been impressed. I tried one last time to pull out all the stops and relax in a feminine way to see if there was something I was really missing in all of this. As it turns out, I was right all along — baths suck.
I got every stereotypical bath item I could possibly think of to make this journey a success: a Lush bath bomb, a Yankee candle, a new book, and a bottle of wine, which meant I was already stressed out from spending the cost of feeding a third-world family of four for a month on bath preparation, but whatever — as long as this bath thing works, it’ll all be worth it. When I got home and started to arrange all of my bath items to get ready for what was quickly becoming a huge event, I realized something really, truly horrifying. My bathroom is absolutely disgusting. How could I possibly relax in a bath after realizing that I had apparently never once scrubbed my tub or shower liner and hadn’t swept one stray hair off of the bathroom floor? After approximately an hour of sweeping, scrubbing, and overall feeling like a less poor Cinderella, I was ready to collapse in bed, but I still had a bath to take. At this point, I could have showered four times, but I was already committed. It was happening no matter what.
I started filling my tub with hot water and waited. And waited. And waited. I was spending the length of an entire episode of Friends watching myself create a Shamu habitat, but I was convinced that the second I looked away, my entire apartment would be flooded, so I really had no choice. After I had aged approximately seventeen years, I dropped in the teal aromatic Lush bath bomb I had spent way too long picking out. As it turns out, I had made a terrible, terrible mistake. About ten seconds after dropping in my bath bomb, what looked like hundreds of small black bugs burst out of my bath bomb and I ran, naked and screaming, into my living room. After composing myself (and realizing that I was completely naked, at night, in front of wall-length windows), I tip-toed back into my bathroom and peered skeptically into the tub. What had come out of my bath bomb was (thankfully) not a swarm of bugs, but it was almost worse. Since Lush is all “natural,” some idiot chemist decided to bring the nature into my bathtub by filling it with millions of little leaves. Fantastic. I stepped into the tub, right on a pile of these leaves, and was horrified to find that the water had made them squishy. I was trying to clean myself by laying in tub full of moss, and I was disgusted.
The smell of the bath bomb completely overpowered my hazelnut vanilla candle, and I felt like I was in a pond in the woods, which trust me, is somewhere I would never want to be. After about sixty seconds, I started to feel more like I was in a hot tub in the middle of the woods. After sixty more seconds, I felt like I was in a boiling water spring in the middle of hell. My “relaxing” bath was making me sweat like I was five days late for a period, and I mentally congratulated myself on never attending a hot yoga class. I tried to take my mind off of the heat by reading, but if you’ve ever put a paper product near a boiling vat of water, you’ve probably already figured out that this is a terrible idea. I got through half a page while holding my arms up in the air before I was completely exhausted and had to give up. Since the last time I lifted weights was never, reading wasn’t meant to be. I then tried to pass the time by scrolling through Insta, but that only lasted five minutes due to the panic attack I had that I would inevitably drop my phone in the tub. I decided though that my heart rate had been so elevated from the fear that I’d basically just worked out, so I gave myself permission to skip going to the gym next week. Not that I was going to anyway, but at least this way I wouldn’t feel bad about it.
Now that I was officially out of things to do, I supposed I actually had to bathe. I started scrubbing, and that’s when it hit me. Everything I was scrubbing off of my body, I would be soaking in for an indeterminate amount of time. I picked up my razor, and that realization got even worse. At this point, I was done. I had spent four hours and $112 to be cramped up, hot, sweaty, uncomfortable, and feeling more dirty than I had before I decided to take a bath in the first place. On top of all of this, the hot water had completely heated my white wine to an undrinkable temperature, and I was pissed. Screw what’s feminine. I was done with baths forever.
I got out of the demon tub, dried off, and picked up the phone I was no longer afraid to touch to call my best friend — Matt at Jet’s Pizza and ordered a large pepperoni pizza to be delivered stat. I retrieved the remainder of the wine that was actually still cold from the fridge, put a straw in the bottle, and curled up to some West Wing reruns on Netflix. For the first time all day, I breathed a sigh of relief — laying in bed, stuffing my face with deep dish pepperoni pizza while I drank wine straight from the bottle was relaxation at its finest. Forget smelly bath products and forget baths themselves. The next time someone claims to enjoy a bath, laugh in their face and order your favorite pizza instead. There’ll be no doubt who has the better night, and it certainly won’t be the girl in the bath..
Image via Shutterstock
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RecruitmentChairTSM
RecruitmentChairTSM (@TheRecruitChair) is a contributing writer for Total Sorority Move. This current grad student and ex-sorority girl survives solely on Diet Coke and the tears of the pledges she personally victimized. She's a Monica, a Marnie, a Miranda, and a Regina. Her favorite hobbies include drinking $14 bottles of wine and binge-watching season 2 of Grey's Anatomy until she cries. You can send her annoying e-mails at RecruitChairTSM@gmail.com
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