We have to brush our teeth twice a day or they rot, shower or we smell like shit, wash our face or we get blackheads etc.
In: Biology
Like all animals, there is benefit to what we do otherwise we wouldn’t do it.
We brush our teeth to protect them which betters our quality of life. Domesticated animals like cats are fairly clean, tend to groom themselves and don’t stink, but they can’t clean their teeth and they often suffer from gum disease and end up losing teeth as a result even though they don’t consume refined sugars that make our teeth decay. So basically, cleaning teeth would benefit many species but only we have the conciousness and tools to do it religiously.
As for washing, like I say, other species do it too via different means because body odor is an important factor to socialization. For some animals, that can mean stinking helps with socialization or more accurately having a specific smell. That’s why cats like to groom themselves as opposed to allowing foreign smells on them because smell is important to their socialization and individual behaviors (they like to get their smell on their territory). For us, social constructs have become such that stinking is bad form and a barrier to human relationships. So basically, washing is a vital need to our survival in society because the continuity of our involvement with other humans is essential to our survival. And it’s also beneficial in prolonging our lives by preventing disease. To a certain limit ofc, as excessive grooming can cause issues for cats and humans alike. We can disrupt our natural mechanisms of defense like the vaginal microbiota which could lead to vaginosis and yeast infections.
Now for your last point, blackheads, they’re a result of clogged hair follicles with sebum and dead skin cells. They become black if the bump opens and the oil is exposed to oxygen. If you don’t wash your face, they would be natural and a mere side effect of having sebum and hair follicles (along with dead skin cells) on your face which are both there to protect your skin and health. Preventing them isn’t really vital because they aren’t lethal or too terrible. And you also get them no matter how hard you wash. But it’s terrible for socialization to have a greasy visibly unclean face, so we tend to wash our faces regularly for the same reasons we don’t like to stink.
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