Admit It, Bubble Baths Aren’t As Much Fun As You Want Them To Be

Ever sat in a bathtub sipping a glass of expensive red wine, watching premium content on your tablet, eating salad, with a bottle of perfume by your side? Me neither. However, if the media and bathtub sellers are to be believed, bubble baths are where women are at their luxurious best. No matter if the reality of our bath time is a hurried shower before the kids wake up and the doorbell starts to ring endlessly.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Ever sat in a bathtub sipping champagne, nibbling salad, watching something on your tablet? 
• Bathtub manufacturers and filmmakers have romanticised the act of taking a bubble bath for us.
• We grow up fantasizing about frolicking in bubbles, relaxing and feeling our glamourous best.
• But are bubble baths really that good? Or is it all in our heads?

Well, bubbles burst, and this particular kind leaves you soaking in tepid water, with shrivelled skin.

A recent viral thread on Twitter points out how bubble bath has been glamourised extensively. I, however, don’t just blame the bathtub manufacturers, but movie makers and advertisers as well, who sell us bubbles promising a relaxing time spent in luxury. Well bubbles burst, and this particular kind leaves you soaking in tepid water, with shrivelled skin. The selling of this bubble bath dream goes back decades, when heroines used to frolic in bubbles, singing songs, and rubbing soapy water over their chiselled and manicured legs and arms, because isn’t that what all of us do at bath time?

Love sitting in a bubble bath with a glass of wine and a small undressed salad pic.twitter.com/NgA3ri2wXb

— 🎹 Sharon Su 🎹 (@doodlyroses) March 24, 2019

Bubble bath has been sold to us as sexy, relaxing, romantic and glamorous. Even if you didn’t have the luxury of having a bathtub at your home, you would fantasize about coming across one in a luxury hotel’s room. To fill it up to the brim and watch as the bubble would rise to the surface, starry-eyed. This is how I get to be Saira Banu, Hema Malini or Julia Roberts…I’ll be the silver screen queen selling that overrated soap on television. I’ll be the sexy goddess who draws a bath and lights scented candles for her lover at the end of a hard day at work. I’ll be the working woman who unwinds with a glass of wine and reads a glossy magazine, on a holiday at a luxury resort, where you can see snow-capped mountains from the window next to the bathtub.

The EXCESS in this photo! White AND red wine! Green AND purple grapes! Eight kinds of cheese! And the piece de resistance...not one, but TWO phones pic.twitter.com/NulMR2S1yE

— 🎹 Sharon Su 🎹 (@doodlyroses) March 24, 2019

Besides, who is going to provide hot coffee with latte art on it, or delicious snacks and how?

Well, you will indeed be all that, but for ten or fifteen minutes, before the water begins to get cold and bubbles begin to disappear. Besides, who is going to provide hot coffee with latte art on it, or delicious snacks to munch on, and how? Would you let a waiter see you in that state of undress, with nothing but bubbles covering your dignity, for the sake of hot coffee or freshly made waffles? And who dares to take their electronic gadgets into a bathtub? I wouldn’t dare to do that with a book. Even at home, to put together that fancy tray of nibbles and entertainment seems like so much effort, it’ll take out the relaxation from your bath instantly.

Look if you're not chowing down on waffles and hot dogs while gazing at stock photography of the ocean then what are you even doing pic.twitter.com/2EQvQNsa9k

— 🎹 Sharon Su 🎹 (@doodlyroses) March 24, 2019

The point here is that most of us don’t have time to draw baths. Especially with water crisis constantly looming over our heads, this seems like a futile exercise, if done regularly. But then all of us deserve to live out our fantasies. So what if it spurs from impractical advertisements and glorified movie sequences. What’s the point of living, if you can’t even live out something as harmless and doable as a bubble bath, at least once in your lifetime? Whether it is over-rated or worth all the fuss, is something I’ll leave you to judge for yourself. But I guess one would never find out, if one doesn't give in to the temptation such pictures create.

Picture Credit: Sharon Su/Twitter

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Yamini Pustake Bhalerao is a writer with the SheThePeople team, in the Opinions section. The views expressed are the author’s own.