bathroom protocol<\/a>. \u00a0Saint Jerome, for example, recommended that young girls never (yes, never) take a bath, so as not to risk seeing their own bodies naked.<\/p>\nIt is said that Saint Agnes died at the age of thirteen without ever having taken a bath. \u00a0(If the lack of soap played a part in her death, I cannot say, although it isn\u2019t hard to imagine.)<\/p>\n
When the popular thinking became more \u201cprogressive,\u201d apparently it was OK for young girls to take cold\u00a0baths\u2014wearing a heavy frock the entire time, and in the presence of a nun.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure how things changed so much in Italy to the point where it is now; which is to say at the limit of obsessiveness over germs<\/strong> and such. \u00a0But it\u2019s true that in the country most influenced by Catholic traditions, the bidet has found its only place as an index of civility.<\/p>\nFor myself, I\u2019m not totally against it, but nor am I entirely convinced of its merits.\u00a0 However, I will say that I have already given my newborn daughter more bidets than the average American will take in a lifetime, so I guess it\u2019s slowly winning me over.\u00a0 And the truth is, she loves it!\u00a0 You should see her smile and laugh when she\u2019s getting her little culetto washed.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to argue with the unprejudiced reactions of an infant.\u00a0 As the saying goes, \u201cOut of the mouths of babes comes wisdom and truth.\u201d\u00a0 Well, my baby can\u2019t talk yet, so not much wisdom is coming out of her mouth at this point.\u00a0 But that doesn\u2019t mean that other parts of her don\u2019t have some wisdom to share.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Napoleon Bonaparte, on the way back from one of his many campaigns, famously wrote ahead to his wife Josephine who was awaiting him back in Paris.\u00a0 The letter was brief and to the point: \u201cI\u2019ll be home in three days.\u00a0STOP\u00a0washing up!\u201d We all know Napoleon as being a principal figure from French history, but in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,5],"tags":[177,173,52,351,48,15,70],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11887,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190\/revisions\/11887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}