Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2021 October 26

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October 26

Personal grooming versus personal hygiene

What does this mean I don't understand it? Personal grooming extends personal hygiene as it pertains to the maintenance of a good personal and public appearance, which need not necessarily be hygienic. It may involve, for example, using deodorants or perfume, shaving, or combing, besides other practices.2001:8003:740C:D100:E173:93AB:4D55:7E17 (talk) 05:05, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

It means, basically, that the difference between "personal grooming" and "personal hygiene" is that grooming isn't just about being clean. --Dweller (talk) Old fashioned is the new thing! 08:44, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

(e/c) Hygiene basically means keeping your body clean through washing, bathing, showering etc. This is saying that there's more to a good appearance than that, using the examples given. --Viennese Waltz 08:45, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

In a formula:

personal hygiene     =  keeping oneself  clean

personal grooming  =  keeping oneself  clean and neat

Cleanliness is important for one's health, so it is an important aspect of hygiene. Looking neat is of no importance to one's physical health. The sentence comes from the section Hygiene § Personal hygiene, which is all about human hygiene. Personal grooming in (non-human) animals is generally not about looking good but a matter of hygiene.  --Lambiam 12:46, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Part of the problem here may be that what gets considered "necessary for good health" has a lot more to do with cultural norms than scientific or medical reasoning. For example, having a shower every day - or multiple times a day - is something that has only caught on in a few parts of the world in only the last few years. For most of human history, body odor was just something that people had - until it became medicalized as a problem that needed to be curtailed. Matt Deres (talk) 13:47, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Sort of... Some aspects of cleaning one's self; such as the washing of hands after defecating, are important to prevent the transfer of fecal bacteria, which can cause illness to both one's self and to others. See [1]. Full daily ablutions may be unnecessary, but situational cleaning is more than just culturally-derived grooming habits. --Jayron32 18:19, 29 October 2021 (UTC)