Source: NBC / NBC
OK, here’s a new rule for our non-melanated friends: Either practice good hygiene or, for the love of God, stop telling Black people about your bathing habits—or lack thereof.
Comedian and SNL veteran Kenan Thompson recently made an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show to promote his new memoir and humorous advice book, When I Was Your Age. There’s a part of the book where the All That actor gives very basic “shower advice.” It appears to be really standard advice that would never occur to most Black people to give because—duh.
For example, Thompson doesn’t advise that people brush their teeth while taking a shower because, as he told Clarkson, it’s “gross.” Now, obviously, there is absolutely no reason anyone should have to explain to an adult that while they’re washing the dirt and grime out of their hair and off their faces, they probably shouldn’t be sticking a toothbrush drenched in the same water trickling down from their scalps into their mouths, which they’re supposedly trying to clean.
But Kelly Clarkson appeared to take issue with Thompson’s practical advice to avoid flagrant nastiness.
“Here’s the thing. I don’t regularly brush my teeth in the shower. I just do if I’m in a hurry … Now, I do happen to be in a hurry often,” Clarkson told Thompson, who looked appropriately repulsed for a split second but then extended Clarkson a little grace.
“That’s fine because that’s where you’re at in the world,” Thompson responded.
Then Thompson mentioned the thing that appears to be the Kryptonite to good Caucasian bathing practices—he told people they need to wash their legs.
“Like, get all the way, don’t just leave your ankles out,” Thompson said, to which Clarkson responded by essentially confirming a white stereotype that Black people get a lot of mileage out of when the jokes start flying.
“But wait— when you’re washing up here, it does wash down,” Clarkson said.
It’s slowly becoming one of life’s great mysteries why so many white people have it in their heads that washing one’s upper body and letting the soap and water trickle down to the lower body constitutes a full body wash. You’re literally (or hopefully) SCRUBBING the top part of your body, but you don’t think you need to do the same for the rest, why? (Actually, another stereotype implies white people don’t use wash cloths, and if that’s true, then it’s very possible they’re not sufficiently scrubbing any parts of their bodies in the shower.)
“I guess I shave my legs almost every day in the shower,” Clarkson said. “So I’m kind of [washing my legs] anyway.”
Again, this is why some people should just stop telling us things. We just don’t need to know.
