Men Who Don't Use Soap, Explained

I had dinner in Paris recently with a photographer friend, who said something that shocked me. We ate at a noisy and delicious brasserie called Le Vaudeville, where my friend shared stories from his front-line reporting in places like Ukraine, Gaza, and Afghanistan.

Then he told me he hasn’t used soap in years.

How did this come up? He was telling me about a business opportunity he entertained. An artisan had approached him about collaborating on a soap; the money was good, so he took the meeting, smelled the product, and enjoyed the scent, but ultimately rejected the offer because, as he said to me, “I don’t use soap.”

I assumed he was joking. Who doesn’t use soap—especially someone whose job involves intense movement and stress? The expression on his face, however, betrayed nothing. He was serious. “You … what?” I asked.

“I don’t use soap,” he repeated. “Haven’t for years. I take a hot shower. The water is enough.”

He does wash his hands with soap and, in the cases where there’s actual dirt or grime on him, will lather up. He does not shampoo his hair. I could’ve asked him a hundred more questions, but I realized it might get weirdly personal. (“You don’t even soap up … your nether regions?”) So, we left it there. And before you ask: he appears well-kept, dresses stylishly, and always seems to be dating an impossibly beautiful woman. Also, he doesn’t smell. You’d never look at this guy and think: I’ll bet he hasn’t showered with a bar of soap in nearly a decade.

Later, I started asking around and learned that for some men and women, not using soap is, in fact, a thing. Yes, there are people among us who don’t lather up, including some very prominent celebrities. And the more I’ve researched it, the more intriguing the idea becomes.

This is not a Make America Healthy Again idea. RFK Jr. isn’t seeking a ban on Irish Spring (though Stephen Miller may try to deport it). You may even recall that in 2024 our Health Secretary appeared in a video—in the shower—to promote his wife Cheryl Hines’s beauty products.

As far as I can tell, the seminal moment for the anti-soap movement was a 2016 article in The Atlantic by physician and writer James Hamblin. He had given up soap, shampoo, deodorant, even showering. “At first, I was an oily, smelly beast,” Hamblin wrote. “But after a while … your ecosystem reaches a steady state, and you stop smelling bad. I mean, you don’t smell like rosewater or Axe Body Spray, but you don’t smell like B.O., either. You just smell like a person.”

“Because, evolutionarily, why would we be so disgusting that we need constant cleaning? And constant moisturizing and/or de-oiling?”

The idea gained momentum. In 2017, Men’s Health published a story by a guy who avoided soap for two weeks. “I noticed a significant difference in my skin from not using soap,” Concetta Smith wrote. “It transformed from a patchy dry scurf to a creamy soft glow.” The Huffington Post noted in 2019 that “an increasing number of people have decided to opt out” of cleansing themselves with soap.

The science behind this trend is compelling, and I’m going to explain it as simply as possible: bacteria live on our skin. Body odor is a result of some of the bacteria, but over millennia of human history, our bodies and the bacteria had established a healthy co-existence. Soap and detergents disrupt this ecosystem. “When you shower aggressively, you obliterate the ecosystems,” Hamblin wrote in The Atlantic. The bacteria “repopulate quickly, but the species are out of balance and tend to favor the kinds of microbes that produce odor.”

There’s also an increasing amount of research that shows the bacteria on our skin strengthens our immune systems and helps prevent certain skin conditions and autoimmune diseases, like psoriasis. James Hamblin and other pioneers have sought to restore this balance—and found they didn’t smell bad.

Hamblin wrote a book on the subject, Clean: The New Science of Skin, which received considerable critical praise. The media paid it some attention partly because the author said he hadn’t showered or used much soap in five years. But the book came out in the summer of 2020, aka at the height of the pandemic—not a great time to proselytize about skipping soap when people were cleaning their mail with Clorox wipes, and the president was suggesting that people inject bleach to treat Covid. Still, the idea of not using soap has endured. There are Reddit groups dedicated to the topic; the members ask questions, offer advice, encourage one another, and share stories about overcoming skin disorders—and smelling fine—because of their new soap-less lifestyle. Celebrities such as Jake Gyllenhaal; married couple Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis; and married couple Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell have said they avoid regular showering and suds. Just the other week, a hair stylist in L.A. told me her husband stopped using soap on everything but his armpits and crotch, and he's thrilled with the result.

“There are people who believe soap disrupts their skin barrier,” Garrett Munce, who writes about grooming trends and products for Esquire, confirmed to me.

Did my dinner conversation alert me to a cresting wave in the world of grooming? Likely no. The beauty industry was worth roughly $102 billion in the U.S. last year and is expected to reach $155 billion by 2030. If you’ve ever spent time with a teenager or pre-teen—girl or boy—you’ll recognize a generation obsessed with skincare and scents. For millions of adult men in America, the scene in American Psycho where Patrick Bateman discusses his grooming routine remains influential, even if they missed the irony of the main character being a, you know, psycho killer.

As for me, I am intrigued, but I’m not giving up soap any time soon. Maybe I’ll lather up a little less, avoid washcloths and loofahs (which are particularly astringent on the skin), and feel okay skipping a shower on a Saturday. But I like the scent of soap, deodorant, and cologne. I like the fresh feeling from a shower. And I couldn’t imagine walking into an important meeting with the knowledge that none of it had touched my body that day. Also, to quote American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, “because I want to fit in.”

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