A new exhibition celebrates the aesthetics of the soap powder box. Despite our obsession with hygiene, we are making the world dirtier
''No scoop, no ball, no mess. Just the simplest way to enjoy all your clothes." Those of us clever enough to really enjoy our clothes properly gave up on soap aeons ago, darling. Enjoying your clothes obviously means washing them more than you ever thought possible. And how we have washed them? Soap powder is so over, except in a retro sort of way. Washing liquid? Been there, done that and dripped it all over the bloody place. Tablets? Fine if you are sad enough to kid yourself that lumps of soap powder are some sort of technological advance. Sacks and balls? Please. Great for nerds and the gadget obsessive - in other words, men. Fabric conditioner? Don't be soft. No, those of us at the cutting edge of detergent delivery are into capsules.
We are young, we are modern, we like little plastic bags full of translucent green gel. We know that the future is clear and round and see-through. We want to be part of a world full of iMacs and Dysons and we want our washing "systems" to reflect this. Persil Capsules come in a curved box because we like the new soft shapes. Curves are the new straight lines. Inside is a plastic bag filled with 20 green bubbles. Or are they flying saucers? Ariel's Liquitabs, on the other hand, open up like a box of chocolates, with the Liquitabs packed in layers, as if they were a luxury good. For in a way they are. Ooh, you are really spoiling me, Procter and Gamble . . .
This is washing as personal grooming rather than mundane chore. These gels are designed to look like something you put in the bath rather than a household product. They come individually wrapped, as though washing clothes was somehow an act of pure self-indulgence. Despite our stainless steel washer-dryers, doing the laundry remains a largely unrewarding task and one still primarily done by women - hence those revolutionary ads a few years back that showed young men trying to work washing machines.
The successful TV series The 1900 House, which featured a modern family living as they would at the turn of the century, showed the female members of the household driven into the ground simply by the amount of washing by hand. The irony is that, as technology has improved, so that it is easier to wash, we insist on washing everything far too often. The increasing number of cases of asthma, allergic reactions and overall decreased immunity may be one side effect of removing all "dirt" from our lives. We now douse our clothes on a regular basis in chemicals that, undiluted, are classified as "irritants", dropping them into the washing basket after the merest contact with our bodies.
Though we overwash, that we no longer do it by hand has removed a huge amount of drudgery from women's lives. It is often said that the single invention that most improved the lives of women in the last century was not the pill but the washing machine. Somehow, instead of liberating us, we have also allowed it to create more ridiculous standards of cleanliness.
This may be why we need constant novelty, as a "once-weekly" task is done almost daily now. We end up with the barmy reinvention of the detergents that we put into the washing machine. Plastic bags that miraculously dissolve in water added to our clothes. Where does the soluble plastic go, you might ask, but probably won't.
We neither know nor care what these capsules contain - shower gel, shampoo, toothpaste or the requisite mixture of enzymes, gunk and good old-fashioned soap. We know that green is the magic colour of natural goodness. We don't have to worry about a thing . . . We chuck away the unnecessary plastic packaging as we gaily purge our clothes of our smells and stains, looking after number one. We are shiny, scrubbed, clever people. We may use too much water, discharge too many chemicals and pile up layers of quite unnecessary plastic waste, but individually, selfishly, we are clean and pure and almost see-through. But we are living in a bubble. No man is an island and no woman is a capsule. In our obsession with cleansing ourselves, we refuse to see that we actually make the world a dirtier place.
Suzanne Moore is a columnist on the Mail on Sunday
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