Bidets and butt wipes

A meditation on sopping ringpieces

I’m gonna come right out and say it: toilet paper is the worst.

Of all the things humans have normalised, wiping our befouled bottoms with rectangular shards of paper is one of the most baffling.

But you know what? It doesn’t need to be this way. There’s a brighter, smoother, cleaner world waiting for us — we just need to find a path there.

Trust me, it’s been done before. And to prove it, let’s do the only logical thing and go all the way back to the invention of toilet paper.

There’s no evidence toilet paper was created in the Big Bang — but neither is there evidence that it wasn’t.

According to Wikipedia, toilet paper originated in China. Its first known mention occurred in 589CE when a fella named Yan Zhitui quipped that he wouldn’t wipe his arse with any paper that had snippets from the Five Classics on.

Since that timeless hot take, China and much of Asia has moved on. They saw the winking light and embraced the bidet.

We had a chance to do similar, but, sadly, we lost our way.

The Romans had it right. They used something called a “xylospongium.” Effectively it was a sponge on a stick. A shit stick, if you will.

Disgusting? Kinda. Cool? Utterly. Better than toilet paper? Of course. And we abandoned it.

So how did we end up in our current state? Why do we use toilet paper rather than a squidgy poop poker?

We used to be a proper continent.

My borderline ridiculous answer to that is capitalism.

Yeah, that old argument. But when you really, really think about it, toilet paper is a pure encapsulation of consumerism.

It’s a mass-produced item that’s convenient, disposable, and hooks you into an endless purchase cycle — despite it not being as efficient as other cleaning methods.

There’s little more capitalistic than commoditising nature. Earth grows trees, companies turn them into toilet paper, and we’re sold it.

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Besides being symbolic of a system that greases its gears with the blood of workers, what actually is my issue with toilet paper? What has sent me down this stinky path?

It’s pretty simple: toilet paper is shit.

Does it do a job? Yeah, of course. But if you think it does an exemplary one, I have a request: go to the shops, grab some bathroom wipes (biodegradable, please) and give them a spin.

When you’re done, tell me with a straight face that the experience using rough bits of dessicated tree is at all comparable to the silky smoothness of a wet wipe.

And bidets are even better — so why aren’t we using them in huge swathes of the world?

Bidets: approved by the J Man.

The issue is all about people’s habits.

Take me as an example. When I first came across bathrooms without toilet paper I was both appalled and amused.

“Squatting down? Squeezing out a brick? And then spraying myself with a hose? No. Thank. You.”

Yet after some time travelling, I saw the light.

These days, if I stay at a hotel with a bidet, you can guarantee I’m saving up my poops for that room. But how do you convince the broader public of this universal truth?

For a time, I thought the pandemic would take bidets mainstream in Europe and America.

In a moment that now feels strangely quaint — although it was terrifying at the time — the first lockdown saw people wilding out for arsewipes. This led to a boom in bidets, especially personal ones that didn’t require any plumbing.

Yet, post-pandemic, we seemed to collectively agree to go back to the way things were before in as many ways as possible.

It’s not just our butts that lost from this.

Getting rid of toilet paper doesn’t just deliver hygienic benefits, there are also environmental positives too. Growing trees, processing the wood into paper, packaging it up in plastic, selling it in a supermarket, and then flushing into into the sewer system isn’t exactly ‘green.’

And as much as things like bidets can be pushed, there’s obviously a deeper, cultural aversion to them in certain parts of the world.

You can bet this sonuvabitch loves toilet paper.

My theory is people don’t enjoy talking seriously about shitting and farting and general bodily functions. Yeah, it’s fine to joke about, but a genuine, heartfelt discussion?

Could you imagine talking to your parents about how you wipe your arse?

This is a hampering force.

Because many of us didn’t grow up with bidets, we don’t have the innate knowledge of how to operate them. For example, how do you dry yourself? Do you keep a towel by the toilet? For how long? Where does that go? Can you wash it with other clothes?

There are simple answers to these questions, but that requires searching. Most people won’t be arsed.

You know what though? I take the Fox Mulder approach: I want to believe. I think we can change things with two basic methods: time and learning.

Just like how every new build house in England needs to have an electric charging point, every new toilet must have a bidet attachment. Make them inescapable.

Then get people young. Indoctrinate them. Start teaching a section about bidets and personal hygiene in science class.

Most importantly, don’t position the bidet as a tool of the future, do the opposite. Focus on how natural it is. Our ancestors washed themselves with water. Toilet paper is modern and corrupt and wrong. Bidets are a return to our roots.

With time, hope, and a whole dollop of patience, the entire world can know what it’s like to have a truly clean asshole.

It’s a dream, yeah, but it’s my dream.