Damn it feels good to use a loofah
By NSB
(This was written for The Spin, opinion blog for the University of Pennsylvania.)
I still remember my first time.
I was a Sophomore living in High Rise North. The water in my apartment wasn’t running so I went next door to use my friends’ shower.
My friends were girls.
Stepping into their shower I took in a bewildering scene. Every surface was crammed with bath supplies. Big baby blue bottles touting immediate results. Little pink ones claiming to fill needs I didn’t know existed. Was skin even supposed to “glow”?
I clutched my shampoo/bodywash all-in-one and felt afraid. That’s when I saw her, dangling enticingly from the spigot like an exotic forbidden fruit. I reached out and seized her by her slick white rope. She felt good in my hands. Coarse, yet feminine. Rough, yet somehow soft. She was a delicious paradox.
She was a loofah.
It got me clean, too. The exfoliating action gave my skin new life; the spongy absorption ensured total coverage. That day I went to Fresh Grocer, bought my own loofah, and never looked back.
Until now. Just the other day a close friend and casual homophobe saw me carrying my periwinkle loofah to the shower and said something along the lines of:
“Dude, that’s really gay.”
His comment pierced my heart with doubt. Does using a loofah – a product targeted and definitely colored for women – compromise a guy’s masculinity? I wasn’t sure, so I turned an ear to the the vox populi.
Said College Freshman Jared Newman, “Loofahs are girly. I’m a bar-of-soap kind of guy.”
Newman’s words were troubling, but I wanted to know what the fairer sex thought. “Loofahs are great,” said College Senior Rita Schmidt. “They clean and exfoliate. Everyone should have a loofah!”
But when asked whether or not she would want her boyfriend to use one, Schmidt hesitated. “I like men who groom, but I don’t want to know about their grooming utensils.”
Schmidt’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ stance is all too revealing. Loofahs may be great for men and women alike, but they’ll never be seen as acceptable for guys until companies market them accordingly.
It shouldn’t be that hard. You wouldn’t even have to change anything – just repackage loofahs as “Man Scrubs” and give the colors impressive-sounding names like Macho Mauve and Fierce Fuchsia.
Are you listening, CVS?
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Cullen’s Thoughts,
Although I am certainly glad that you male Hets (short for heterosexuals) are finally starting to take an interest in your personal hygiene, lets get one thing straight (no pun intended) A Bath or Shower Poof is NOT a Loofah… now I know that alot of people have started calling these shower gel accessories “Loofahs” these things are NOT LOOFAHS!!!
As someone who (as a child) had the extreme displeasure of being bathed by my mother with a real Loofah I find it necessary to educate the Tumblr world to the brutal Middle Eastern reality of what a “loofah” truly is.
loofah, or lufah (from Arabic لوف) are tropical and subtropical vines comprising the genus Luffa. The fruit of at least two species, Luffa acutangula and Luffa aegyptiaca (Luffa cylindrica), is grown to be harvested before maturity and often eaten as a vegetable, popular in the Middle East and Africa.
The ripe, dried fruit is also the source of the loofah or plant sponge.
The fruit section of Loofah plant may be allowed to mature naturally and then used as a bath or kitchen sponge after being processed to remove everything but the inner network of xylem. Marketed as luffa or loofah, the hard sponge is used like a body scrub. This version is called lifah in Arabic.
A real Loofah is more like a torture device than the pretty pastel bath sponge which has stolen its name…. Loofah hurts like hell, but it does the job…. If you really need to exfoliate dead skin, scrub baked on Baba Ganoush off of a pot or remove the lead paint from a 1957 Buick I’d advice you use a Real Loofah.
