How Do You Wash Your Butt?

A question nobody asks. An answer everybody needs.

Let's address the elephant in the room — or rather, the question nobody asks at the dinner table, the doctor's office, or literally anywhere, despite it being one of the more consequential hygiene decisions a person makes every single day.

How do you wash your butt?

Not the general area. Not the surrounding vicinity. The butt. Specifically. With intention.

We asked the internet. We read the forums. We consulted the discourse. And what we found was a civilization largely winging it.

The State of Butt Washing in America

Here is what most people do: they get in the shower, they wash their hair, they wash their face, they wash their body — and then somewhere in the final act, they wave the soap in the general direction of their lower half and call it done.

This is not washing your butt. This is acknowledging your butt's existence. There is a difference.

The comments sections of Reddit threads on this topic — and yes, they exist, and yes, they are illuminating — reveal a wide spectrum of approaches ranging from meticulous to deeply concerning.

We are not here to judge. We are here to help.

What People on the Internet Actually Think

Since nobody talks about this in polite company, the internet has become the unlikely home of serious butt-washing discourse. Here is a rough survey of the prevailing schools of thought:

The Minimalists believe water is sufficient and soap is an overcorrection. They are, by most accounts, wrong, but they are committed.

The Generalists use whatever soap is already in their hand when they reach that part of the shower. No particular method. No particular attention. Just soap, vaguely applied, and optimism.

The Thorough have a whole system. Specific products. A sequence. Possibly a philosophy. These people are onto something, even if they will never tell you about it at a dinner party.

The Bidet Converts discovered bidets, usually during a supply chain crisis, and will never go back. They now look at the rest of us with quiet, well-rinsed pity.

Most people fall somewhere in the first two camps. This article is for them.

The Generally Agreed-Upon Approach

We are not doctors. We are soap people. But here is what the general internet consensus seems to land on when this topic comes up:

Use actual soap — not just water, not just a passing gesture. Soap exists for a reason.

Pay attention to what you're actually washing. The general vicinity is not the destination. You know what the destination is.

Be gentle about it. This is not an area that benefits from aggression.

Rinse well. Soap residue anywhere is annoying. Soap residue here is more annoying.

Dry off properly. Pat, don't aggressively rub. Again — gentle.

That's more or less it. The barrier to doing this correctly is not difficulty. It is simply the fact that nobody ever told you there was a correct way to do it, because nobody talks about it.

Inside or Outside? The Question That Divides the Internet

While we're already here, we might as well address the most frequently debated sub-topic of butt washing discourse: do you need to wash inside your butthole, or just the external area?

The internet has feelings about this. Strong ones.

The general consensus — and again, we are soap people, not doctors, so take this as crowd-sourced wisdom rather than medical guidance — is that the external area is the focus. The inside of the body is self-cleaning by design. What requires attention is the exterior: the crease, the surrounding skin, the area that actually encounters the world.

Attempting to clean beyond the external area is, by most accounts, unnecessary and potentially counterproductive. Nature has a system. The job is to clean what's on the outside, not to interfere with what's on the inside.

So: external. Thoroughly. With soap. That's the answer.

The Bidet Question

At this point in any butt-washing conversation, someone brings up bidets, and they are not wrong to do so.

Much of the world has considered the bidet completely standard for decades. Americans largely resisted, then a certain global toilet paper shortage happened, and suddenly the bidet became the hottest home appliance on the internet.

The case is simple: water is more thorough than dry paper. You do not need a study for this. It is intuitive.

If you have one, use it. If you don't, a good shower and some actual attention to the task does the job fine.

Enter the Zing: The Shower You Didn't Know You Could Have

Let's talk about the shower routine for a moment.

You wake up. You get in. You go through the motions — shampoo, conditioner, face wash, body wash, the whole choreography — and then you get out. It is functional. It is fine. It has been fine your entire life. Fine is the ceiling.

Nobody has ever stepped out of the shower and said: that was an experience.

Until now.

There is a category of shower that most people do not know exists. A shower that ends differently than it began. A shower where the final act — the washing of one's undercarriage, that most routine of routines — becomes the part you will be thinking about at your desk two hours later.

This is what BumZap does.

Yes, we wrote an entire article about how to wash your butt. Yes, we make a soap called BumZap with the tagline "The Soap That Zings Your Butthole." We are aware of how this looks. We planned it this way. Because we genuinely want you to wash your butt correctly — and we also genuinely want you to have the time of your life doing it. Both things can be true.

The sensation is cool. Tingly. Startlingly alive. It arrives in a place that has spent its entire existence being ignored, and it makes itself known in a way that is impossible to describe accurately and impossible to forget entirely. Wide awake is the closest approximation. Clarifying is another. There is a third word that people reach for and then abandon because it sounds implausible, but it is: delightful.

Your shower routine has been the same for years. The same products, the same sequence, the same fine. BumZap is the thing that changes the last thirty seconds of it permanently.

You wash your butt every day. You might as well feel something about it.

A Practical Summary

For those who came here wanting a checklist:

1. Use actual soap
2. Address the specific area, not just the surrounding territory
3. Be gentle — this is sensitive real estate
4. Rinse thoroughly
5. Pat dry
6. Consider, at least once in your life, what it might feel like if the soap made the whole experience unforgettable

That last one is optional. Highly recommended, but optional.

The Bottom Line

(Yes, that was intentional.)

Butt washing is one of those topics that society has collectively decided not to discuss, despite being universally relevant. The result is a lot of people making it up as they go.

The good news is that doing it correctly is not complicated. Soap, attention, gentleness, thoroughness. That's the whole framework.

The better news is that doing it with BumZap is, by most accounts, an experience that reframes the whole endeavor.

Shop BumZap — The Soap That Zings Your Butthole.

BumZap is a premium handmade soap. It is a real product. It also zings your butthole.