I used to run up the racks on dry shampoo. Bottles of Batiste and Dove and Pssssst! clanked around in Coach purses to save the day as I compulsively stroked my waist-length mane. Full weeks would pass without a wash and I’d measure time by the granularity between my fingers. White. Chalky. I felt powerful—Dia Becker: non-conformist, Dirty Girl.
I leaned into the grime when I discovered dubstep and learned that hundreds of thousands of people far dirtier than I congregated in open fields all summer to hear amplified computer sounds. Every wub and womp is the best thing you’ve ever heard on LSD. We baked in the sun and “showered” once over four days with a bottle of Deer Park. And so smelliness and rogue dreadlocks became social currency—signs that one could handle the demands of modern psychedelia, bonus points if you were pretty and looked like you didn’t belong in that world, but by the grace of Derek Vincent Smith, there you were. A lotus grown from mud of the old Woodstock grounds in harem pants and no shoes.
Over the years that lifestyle started to catch up with me. Now mostly removed—even somewhat matured—when I do endure moments of hygienic precarity, I’m taken right back, and the anxiety of regressing overwhelms me into dysfunction.
Last week when I moved back to my parents’ on a whim, I broke into panic. They weren’t prepared for my arrival, though knowing them, conditions wouldn’t have been much better if they were. My dusty bedroom was being used for storage. The armoire where I hang my clothes became a gun closet, and I was promptly told it would remain as such to keep them “in the dark and away from moisture.” The bathroom hadn’t been cleaned in god knows how long: old toothbrushes lined the sink and the shower was a scum circus, and there’s no company less welcome than a million microorganisms in the very place you go to get clean. I scream-sobbed “HOW CAN YOU PEOPLE LIVE LIKE THIS?” and tried sleeping in my car; the disorder was too much to bear on top of everything that led me to Danville in the first place.
In the midst of that turmoil, I neglected washing my hair. By day four, I couldn’t think. I couldn’t hold a conversation. The grease came through my follicles and my thoughts grew slippery. I shuffled chunks into different positions every minute, praying each looked cleaner than the last. When you’re already down bad and your looks follow suit, that, my friend, is the pièce de résistance. There’s a reason they always portray broken-hearted people physically disheveled in movies. I was chaos embodied.
Eventually I found myself Magic Erasing the walls and lighting cheap Eucalyptus candles from Marshall’s. (Apparently it costs $400 to “make myself at home.”) I unpacked and hung some macramé bullshit above the bed. Scrubbed and sanitized every surface, took a long shower, crawled into fresh sheets, and asked myself:
When did I get so clean?
I practically *require* crisp white bedding to relax now. I stopped using St. Tropez, too bothered by the stickiness that precedes a deep fake tan. And whenever a drop of food touches my shirt, I don’t just change, I take a full shower. (I swear I’m mostly well-adjusted.) Certain parts of the girl who’d attend six festivals in a single summer, attached at the hip with a long-haired boy who lived on a floor mattress in a grimy basement and peed in bottles, now read unrecognizable. My tolerance is shot.
I had a hard time differentiating between personal growth and assimilation: did my newfound cleanliness mean I was becoming a better version of myself, or that I’d finally succumbed to something I’d meant to subvert—another cog in the wheel afraid of the stink that makes us human? Like most things, I’d say it’s a little column A, a little column B. Maybe I’ve lost that youthful rebellion against polishing oneself shiny and digestible. It’s a trade-off for the invaluable peace a sense of order brings my otherwise messy life.
When I was doing the hippie thing in pursuit of some higher consciousness (for the record, it did work), dirtiness was just another form of escapism like drugs and music. We underestimate the connection between our mental and physical worlds—when you’re a human tornado you are responsible for absolutely nothing internal. And when it does creep up, you can simply lose yourself in house music under rainbow lasers. Being clean physically, and maintaining a relatively clean space, has forced me to slow down and confront my surroundings, removing the clutter and filth that accumulates in a life on the run from myself. I like to think it’s less neuroses and more owning my shit (though, I should probably work on that whole needing a shower whenever food touches my clothes thing). My body, my living quarters—their clean state offers inspiration to feel and do the things I’d once avoided out of fear, like writing and getting a good night’s sleep. So maybe I’m clean because I’m not hiding anymore. And maybe the next level of consciousness comes from a bleached toilet. I’ll let you know when I get around to it.
Yes, baby, the rumors are true: Broke But Moisturized is $30 for an entire year now through the end of May. That’s like a gel manicure or a tank of gas, both of which are way more essential to your daily well-being, but we encourage frivolity in this space.
PS: I’m TWO paid subscribers from my goal for the first year of launching. Let’s go!