Why Toilet Paper Became Popular in the United States After World War II
The Process looked at the history of toilet paper, how it is made, why bidets aren’t more popular in the United States, and why toilet paper became so popular after soldiers returned to the US after World War II.
The United States makes up four percent of the world’s population but burns through twenty percent of the global toilet paper supply. Seventy percent of the world’s population does not use toilet paper at all. They use water. A bidet costs about thirty five dollars. A year of toilet paper costs about a hundred and twenty. But most Americans have never even considered switching.
The popularity of toilet paper over bidets, like the rest of the world, was due to a rather ignorant misunderstanding regarding the bidets at the French brothels the GIs visited overseas.
During World War Two, American soldiers encountered bidets for the first time — in French brothels. The devices were kept for hygiene between clients. GIs associated them with vice. That stuck. When the soldiers came home, postwar construction boomed. Millions of bathrooms went up without bidet plumbing. The toilet paper industry filled the gap.
Why Bidets Aren’t Popular In the US
Why Americans Don’t Use Bidets
