Back in something like 2018 I wrote a post (which I can't find) talking about how it's a bit ridiculous that bidets are not the standard utility in American bathrooms. Probably something about hating France and Freedom Fries. I know not.
I mean clearly it's a cultural thing somehow? I hear bathrooms in India are basically just holes in the ground that you squat over which, as an American, is pretty baffling to be honest.
Why are so many people smearing their shit around with a piece of paper and thinking they cleaned it? You would never clean any other actual gross thing with a dry paper towel and that's it. Remember when Covid hit and the stores completely sold out of all cleaning products including random stuff like rubbing alcohol? We were more worried about cleaning up an invisible germ than literal shit. Pretty crazy when you think about it.
I heard that around that time a bidet company called Tushy somewhat leveraged COVID and the Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020 to sell their product. We thought about buying one back then but never did. Not the biggest priority during that crazy ass time. But around six months ago I did just spontaneously buy one and was pretty surprised about multiple aspects of the thing... most of all the marketing.
Welcome to a HOLE new you!
Hm yes so let the poop humor begin. I open the box and am immediately greeted with a, "Welcome to a hole new you," title. These cheeky assholes have got jokes it seems. Then it lists like 20 aliases for the bidet including Bumhole Super Soaker, Bum Gun, Moon Magic, Booty Blesser, and Taint Tidier. It's like they couldn't choose their favorite one in the writing room so they just splattered them all in there. Okay then!
The instructions for butting this thing together were even worse than the packaging. Just absolutely littered with unprofessional poop and ass jokes. Can't say I was put off by it as it's honestly kind of my speed but whatever. It was still shocking to see a manual titled "how to put this shit together".
In theory the install of this thing COULD be super easy and take like 5 minutes but I had to troubleshoot like three different problems that I thought I might not even be able to solve at first.
If your toilet is connected to a water source through a rigid pipe this is not ideal because you have to add a T-joint to the connection to fork water pressure into the bidet. You want a flexible connection so you can kind of jam that in there and fork the water to both the toilet and the bidet. The Tushy website will offer you a "free" one if you end up having this problem, but "free" ended up just pissing me off because the shipping on the thing was almost the exact same price of the device itself. Also they wanted my email address so I said fuck that and just bought it on Amazon Prime.
We have this weird type of lid on the toilet that isn't the standard 2 plastic screws at the hinge. Instead it's more of a solid bar that it snaps into. I thought this was going to be a complete deal breaker and I'd have to give up, but when I took it entirely apart the screws were under it and I could barely make it work after cutting off some small plastic stabilizer tabs on the Tushy that were not compatible with what I was working with. Seared them off with a razorblade; ended up working fine surprisingly.
I honestly thought I was going to completely twist off the damn water pipe and flood my entire apartment. Gonna throw out a guess that it took me over 20 minutes just to get the previous fixture off without breaking it by anchoring wrenches in a way that would not twist the entire pipe when trying to unscrew it. This was definitely the most annoying a worrying part of the ordeal. It was super awkward and hard to navigate with no space so close to the wall and a toilet and a bathtub.
No more poop marker.
If you go to their website it looks like these things are relatively expensive. Everything is over like $100. The reason I bought the one I got is that it was $50, so less than half of the "fancier" ones. That being said the more expensive ones are also harder to install, mainly because you have to hook up a hot water line to adjust the temperature. I'd say this isn't worth the extra money considering I was using this thing in the middle of the coldest winter I've ever experienced and wasn't really bothered at all. The one's on Amazon for $50 are the first one's that will pop up if you search for it.
The device itself is a bit clever in certain ways. When the water pressure is low it creates a self-cleaning effect that douses the entire thing in water. Basically every time it gets turned on or off it will clean itself at least a little bit. Other than that it's a pretty basic thing and it works so there's nothing more to say.
There's a video game called Far Cry 4 where you as the main character talk to this radio operator about using a bidet to stay clean as an in game joke. Oh shit I actually found it. This is like the 4th time I've looked:
Certainly the most interesting thing about this product is the aggressively unprofessional marketing tactics employed. Seems like a perfect fit considering people are exactly comfortable talking about such things in a serious environment to begin with. Get your own Butthole Super Soaker today using my affiliate link! Just kidding I don't care.
