Today you have the bidets you can install on your toilet, but traditionally they were a thing on its own, that required about as much space as a toilet and all the extra pipework associated with it.
In some European/ Mediterranean countries (I suspect France may have started the trend) this caught on well, and bidets were a must have in most houses that had toilets as part of their main architectural structure. Most people in South America had bidets this way, it's rare to see a house without at least one bidet, and this comes from the culture inherited from colonial times .
Now, things are different in othe parts of the world. England seems to traditionally have the toilet separate from the house and for some reason the bidet trend never caught on. This is in turn reflected both in USA and Australia. I don't know about bidet popularity across all of Europe, but this is definitely a cultural thing and I suspect distance and language may have kept UK without bidets until relatively recently. And as you know, old habits die hard, so... Yeah in Australia I use the shower.
No one understands what a bidet really is.
In the old days, they were a separate free-standing device. Not a lot of people have space or money to add one of these types of bidets to their bathrooms
Now they make them as toilet seat attachments that don't require extra space and really aren't that expensive.
But people don't know. Older people will be like, "Oh a bidet? No I don't want another toilet like device in my bathroom"
So that gets rid of all those people.
Next you have the people that know about the new style bidets that's just a fancy toilet seat.
Their biggest deterrent is probably cold water. Spraying cold water on their butt doesn't appeal to most people.
You can get bidets that heat the water, but you have to have power behind your toilet, which not everyone has.
Then you have older people that just can't work them or don't feel like they can. Like my grandfather, I installed one with all the bells and whistles for him. Yet hitting a button and doing all that was too complicated. He was 90+ and could barely use a cell phone for basic functions. But he'd rather wipe his butt like he knew than mess with the "complicated" bidet.
Eventually everyone is going to own a bidet, it really is the way to go.
We just aren't there yet.
I think you me question is missing some key words. “Why isn’t the use of the bidet more widespread in the USA and other western countries?”
I am in Vietnam right now and nearly every bathroom has a bum gun to wash your bits. When I was in Japan nearly every bathroom had bits to wash you built into the toilet seat with digital controls. These are not just in homes and nice places, but also at 7-11, train stations, airports and even hole in the wall places. Wish USA/Canada had this as we all know how much it sucks when out and you have a forever wipe.
toilet paper mafia.
It's a matter of planning and availability. In my country people don't renovate their houses often and even rarely build them from scratch. Having a bidet requires planning and leaving space for it. Japanese style toilet seats are easier to install in smaller toilets, but they require electricity and/or hot water.
I was overseas and recovering from surgery. I'd never seen a bidet before arriving in Argentina a few days before, so I still wasn't used to them.
In any case, I was sitting on this bidet at 3am or something, on painkillers, and almost falling asleep while I sit there. I'm leaning forward, and turn the bidet, and it turns out this bidet has a jet of water almost powerful to reach the roof. And because of the angle I was sitting at, I get this jet of high pressure water right on my clit. I'm pretty sure the noise I made woke most of the neighbours! It was not a fun experience
That being said, I'd still get one here in Australia if I could :)
Big TP conspiracy :)
I once read a book where this particular bathroom appliance was very intimately connected with prostitutes throughout history and that association created a big push against having it in every house. It was an interesting read.
In my country in particular, it became mandatory in every newly built house starting around the 50s and later it became mandatory to have one bidet and one bathtub in every house.
This was pushed to enforce a notion of hygiene that was lacking, as the country was very poor at the time. Paradoxically, it was easier to have higher standards of hygiene in the country, where access to water was easier and the field labour demanded a minimal cleanliness to be at the table and socially than in the growing cities, where poor living conditions made very difficult for the poor to access running water.
American here. Thanks to woot regularly selling them, I have a bidet on each toilet in the house. I have a battery operated travel bidet, because now I'm hooked.
It has certainly led to.... "Interesting" responses from house guests. There's always TP in stock, so it's not required. Butt I'm never going back if I can help it.
In America? Because we are barbarians.
I kinda think that’s why we are all so pissed and ornery most of the time….because our tushes are dirty.
I paid for a 250$ bidet toilet seat and i don't even use it. How is it supposed to work? My stool are soft sometimes, and even with the bidet pressure to the max, it doesn't fully clean it. I'm left with dripping wet ass covered with shit. Then i need to use toilet paper that's literally melting from all that water on my ass. As a result i use 3x more toilet paper and my hands gets dirty. Very unpleasant.
Am i using it wrong?
Not gatekeeping, but if you have never seen one, this is a proper bidet https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/35/Bidet_weiss.jpg/623px-Bidet_weiss.jpg
Perhaps people feel homophobic or something about having water squirted on their ass?
Idk. I love my bidet. Especially when you have those wonderful shits with the consistency of clay that sticks to everything.
A few squirts, and a quick wipe of TP, and all done!
I got one during the "TP Crisis" during 2020ish. Drastically cuts down on the amount of TP required, and does a much better job of cleaning.
I bought one couple of weeks ago, one of the best things I've ever spent money on, can never go back.
I really just don't like the idea of it, feels like a very uncomfortable situation for me. But I'm pretty uneducated on the topic.
- It'd have to be warm water
- Wouldn't it be messer, spraying it all over?
- Don't you still have to wipe, ya know cause your wet now.
- Too much work to implement when the TP has been successful (No problem to solve)
once you go bidet you never go back.
I can't get a bidet because my friend is fat and breaks the toilet seats on the regular. He of course replaces them. I've tried bidets at other places and it was nice but i still had to use toilet paper to clean my now wet ass so I'm really confused when people say they don't need toilet paper anymore. I really hope they aren't just wiping their ass on a towel or some shit.
I don’t know but the greatest thing for me from the pandemic was adopting the use of them. I cannot understand why people wouldn’t want to use them (apart from some misplaced unease with something twiddling d. butthole)
Why So Many Countries Use Bidets But the US Does Not from Weird History does a good job explaining why.
I sense that it may be due to a combination of outdated holdover ethics inherited from puritans and shit, as well as a new culture of anti-education which dolls out disdain for nerds who learn to interpret data and studies, etc. At least in the Dvided States.
I have a theory. Almost every hot country I've been to has bidets. So you have to ask yourself why? Well I'll tell you. After I moved to a hot country (Spain) I realised that if you don't use a bidet and go about your day, the shit in your ass will begin to liquify and you will get very itchy. This is not good. This also doesn't happen in countries with a more temperate climate. That's the reason, I think.
In Finland you can find one in every toilet basically but majority of people don't use them. It's not something installed into the bowl itself thought but just a separate shower head next to it that's attached to the faucet so you get warm water too.
I've used both a Toto washlet and a cheap bidet toilet attachment. While I loved the Toto for all of it's cool features, the water pressure (which is powered by an electric pump) just wasn't there and didn't do a great job cleaning. The cheap attachment on my home toilet is powered solely by water pressure and that thing leaves me sparkling clean!
There are some informative answers elsewhere, however, I noticed a gap between the comments and my expectations, bidet-wise: here's a link to the relevant SNL Bidet sketch: https://piped.video/watch?v=zQx-ZbSQSBM&t=0. Enjoy
It’s quite widespread in some places. When I lived in the Middle East, every bathroom had one, a separate porcelain unit beside the toilet. Apparently the electronic ones built into the toilet seat are very popular in Japan. And bidets are taking off big in the US now too. Those are just the places I happen to know. How widespread do you need them to be? ;D
I've always thought it was silly when people are immediately grossed out by them for some reason.
The way I reason with them is I say "If you got dog shit on your hand - would you wash them, or would you use a napkin to wipe them off?"
Of course they're gonna wanna get water involved, so why aren't we doing it by default with our own butts?
Personally I find them uncomfortable
Not an answer for everyone, but I won’t be making the switch any time soon
I think at least some of it has to do with plumbing. There are lots of countries where you can't flush toilet paper because it will clog the pipes. In the US we avoided that problem cleverly by just shitting in holes until like 1950 when the majority of homes got indoor toilets and by that point plumbing tech had improved.
It is. Only not in stinky Western countries. Seriously, you stink. Like full diapers. Use bidets. Use it. Now.
Because its a hassle for landlords to install one
I don't know if I'm extremely disappointed or extremely impressed that nobody on this thread seems to have commented on the word choice of "widespread" when discussing the use of bidets.
Also, the only legit answer here is that there are fragile, ignorant men who think that a bidet makes you "gay" - these men are idiots with dirty, stinky assholes and stains on their underwear that their poor wives routinely clean for them.
BRRRRR skibidi bop bop bop yes yes
toxic masculinity (sp).... the number of 'bro's' that question my gender when they hear about my bidet is alarming. i honestly don't know when being a nasty, grimey dude became the 'straight thing to do' but i'm encountered it enough times to recognize the weird perplexed faces i get. for some perspective, i work in a 100+ yr old building in an industrial setting out in a farming area.
but yeah they can think what they want. i'll die before i give up my bidet.
edit- not that i mind, but more curious... why did i get downvoted for saying the same thing as others are upvoted for lol?
Because they just aren't very good.
Bidet people think bidets are incredible and come up with all these psychoanalytic reasons why people won't use them, but that's the reason.
I had one growing up and used it occasionally but always disliked it. They're inconvenient and don't make you noticeably cleaner than toilet paper.
IMHO they're for germphobes and people who do really sloppy shits.
