Marilyn Monroe in Los Angeles in 1954 splashing around in the bathroom during a break in filming "The 7th Year Itch"
Source: Sam Shaw / Shaw Family Archives / Getty Images
Actually, I'm a one-minute shower.
No woman who deals with goat milk baths, algae serums, eyelash curlers.
I don't have the time or patience in my job.
I was never interested in expensive products and brands either.
The only thing I don't like is cheap shower gels, so intensely flavored washing creams with rose flair or “Tropical Kiwi”, that makes me feel cheap.
It has to smell good.
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Anyway, I'm brisk in the morning.
The alarm clock goes off at half past six, and then it goes quickly for me.
In the evening, however, I sometimes treat myself to a really great, long bath.
Then I tüddel my hair up, turn off my cell phone, let me have a nice bathtub and make myself nice in my bathroom, like in a small spa.
When I'm tired I take a bath, when I'm not in a good mood I take a bath.
Even when I'm happy, I take a bath.
Light a couple of candles, step into the warm water, carefully test the temperature with your big toe, and sink into a mountain of foam, inhale the scent of spruce or lemon oil that you think you are in Italy - that is my answer to almost everything.
The wet and cold season, in the morning it's hard to get out of bed like a bent hanger, so I'm looking forward to my evening bath.
I could just lock the door behind me to really be undisturbed for a moment.
But then I felt like I had something to hide.
Of course, someone keeps stumbling into me with some kind of concern.
But I can switch to run-through well.
My bathroom is not a home office.
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Scalding hot that all the windows in the house fog up, I can't stand it.
I like it to be pleasantly warm and I'd rather let it run hot in between.
Full to the brim, I have no rationing level.
If so, then already.
Half full is like a wine spritzer for me, it doesn't do any good.
I think it's wonderful when the whole body is generously covered with water when lying down and not the knees look out like the Faraglioni rocks of Capri.
You also want to sit.
Some have a suction pad stuck to the back wall or a rubber mat so that they don't slip away, especially when the legs don't come to the end.
I have long toes, as everyone knows since my vacation snapshot on Instagram last summer, and that's why I can support myself well.
There are some who take foot selfies of themselves, even in the tub.
Raised feet are the social media statement: I am off. The foot is also such a counterpart.
If no one else is talking to you in lockdown, then keep your toes wriggling.
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Bathrooms are revelation rooms.
I once had a rendezvous with Pamela Anderson in Malibu for a report.
I imagined a copied Château Chambord.
The house wasn't that big at all, everything in dusky rose.
In the bedroom the legendary pole on which she did her pole dance.
She lived without a husband back then, that was immediately apparent in her bathroom.
A girl's dream full of beautiful pots, bottles, tubes, Fiji water, loofah sponge on the vanity.
Long stemmed roses.
It's different with us.
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My parents have always been very clean, also because our family has a grocery store with its own butcher's in Wunstorf, where I come from.
Elsewhere they bathed once a week, and then one by one went into the same bath water.
We were allowed to shower whenever we wanted, but with the note that water is precious.
My brother and I even had our own bathroom.
Nothing fancy as we know it today.
An Allibert cabinet hung over the sink that could be opened.
Inside were my hairbrush and my "bac", my deodorant.
There was a sliding shower that did.
No bathtub.
But showers were considered cooler in my youth anyway.
Washing oneself with a washcloth at the sink or squatting in the tub was more reminiscent of the post-war era.
I like our bathroom today, bright with a window into the green and light to dim, although I usually have to shovel my way to the bathtub first.
There's a rocking chair, that Eames classic, that my husband likes to drop his clothes on.
They pile up there.
Not to forget the mountains of soaking wet towels when our daughters have showered with us even though they have their own bathroom.
Sometimes I complain like other mothers: Man, Kinnings, why do two girls use so many bath towels ?!
Our bathtub is nothing over-the-top with whirlpool jets, not a designer egg, but walled in like the shower, with earth-colored travertine stone on the outside.
For one person, quite normal.
My husband once wanted to hang a TV in my bathroom, I decided against it.
I don't want any music, books, or champagne either.
Dressed in the tub, I don't need that.
And then possibly being found like Whitney Houston, that's not what you want.
It might have been, like Marilyn Monroe, blond and nicely dressed up, lying in the foam with a tingling flute in his hand.
But I'm far too practical for that: dragging all the stuff, bottles, glasses, ice coolers, everything from the kitchen upstairs would be way too strenuous for me.
I just want to calm down.
Like a panda bear in a terry cloth turban
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If you define bathing as a pure relaxation method, that is actually far too short: it is a situation in which you can let your thoughts run free.
I like to spend a good 20 minutes in the water.
The first ten I just lie there, close my eyes, think, not thinking of anything.
Most of the time I think: I hope the dog doesn't do anything stupid.
We have had a young Goldendoodle - Cooper for eight months!
I feel my muscles relax, the feeling of wellbeing tingling from head to tiptoe, how everything loosens in the face, I feel light, weightless.
I save the second half of the bathroom for the actual cleaning.
I do all the care rituals in one go: pedicure, manicure, face mask, hair treatment.
At the end it is scrubbed properly.
I had such an old, worn-out scratching glove.
Our youngest now gave me a massage brush for Christmas, I thought it was a cute idea.
And then it says: one arm, another arm, elbows, legs, back, stomach, bottom - and out!
My crowning glory: while the masks and body lotion work in, I clean up the bathroom, looking like a panda bear in a terrycloth turban.
I have to admit, I really like cleaning.
I also find doing laundry something wonderful, getting an armful of fragrant, warm sheets out of the dryer or folding freshly washed knickers.
But well, that's another story.
Quickly wiping out the tub and fumbling around is part of my overall cleaning concept.
You can see immediately what you've achieved.
A nice feeling.
Liz Taylor always bathed freshly made up because the steam took the shine off the make-up - perfect for going out.
Afterwards I just want to get into my pajamas, on the sofa and then into the trap.
Frauke Ludowig recording the WDR talk show "Kölner Treff"
Source: PA / Geisler-Fotopress
A brief cultural history of the bathtub
“The pleasure of the bath is primarily intellectual,” says the British-Swiss philosopher and author Alain de Botton. “It leads us to productive ideas more than the office, library or laboratory. The warm water lulls the nervous mind. Free to think nothing makes thinking easier. ”The Greeks invented the domestic bathtub. According to legend, the mathematician Archimedes discovered Archimedes' principle in his. Loriot chose the tiled bed as the setting for exposing two “gentlemen in the bathroom” who were debating in an empty tub about filling it. Half full, recommends Prince Charles, monk of the morning bath, that more is wasteful and tiring. George W. Bush, on the other hand, appreciates the full bath. After his presidency, he even painted his bathing feet as a tribute to their stamina. The brewery lady Daphne Guinness provoked what is probably the most expensive New York bathtub dispute with the tenants below her; she had flooded her Fifth Avenue apartment several times in the confusion of her jet set life.
The RTL “Exclusiv” presenter Frauke Ludowig, born in Wunstorf in 1964, wrote the book “Glamor is not a secret” in 2008. She lives in Cologne, married to advertiser Kai Röffen and two daughters.
This text is from WELT AM SONNTAG.
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Source: Welt am Sonntag