Why Don’t Americans Use Bidets?

Because we’re backwards, uncivilized animals.

Bev Potter
3 min readJan 27, 2023
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Yes, I’m still obsessed with bidets.

And in case you think Americans only recently became backwards, uncivilized animals — say, since 2016 — you are wrong.

Bidets are a common fixture throughout the world and they were invented many hundreds of years ago (this isn’t a history lesson). It’s not like toilet paper grows on trees (well, I mean, technically it does, but anyway) so I assume people have been splashing water on their nether regions for a very long time.

Where it all went wrong for America is when soldiers went to France during World War II. And by soldiers, I mean “men.”

Your average American GI, fresh from the cornfields of Iowa or Nebraska or wherever there’s a lot of cornfields, had never laid eyes on a bidet before.

And where did they see them?

In brothels.

So basically it’s all men’s fault that Americans are gross because in their sex-mad brains, they associated bidets with loose women washing their vagines after having had sex with multiple strangers for money.

--

--

Bev Potter

Legal secretary by day, insomniac by night. Ally. BA, MA. Humor, pop culture, and things that make you think. My weekly-ish newsletter is bevpotter.substack.com