i arrived at the british association of sex workers’ press conference barefoot, as i always am, because shoes are a cage for the soul and i will not be caged. the warning was pinned to a corkboard like a dead butterfly. ‘bathing in tits’ it said, in bold, above a list of symptoms: dizziness, cramp, a sense of having made a terrible mistake. i asked doreen pankhurst, the spokesperson, if she had ever bathed in her own breasts. she looked at me for a long time. ‘no,’ she said. ‘i have a bath. with water. and a flannel.’ a flannel. the word hung in the air like a small, damp surrender.
the science of the self-submersion
the warning was based on three incidents in october 2026, all involving women who had attempted to bathe in their own cleavage during a record-breaking heatwave. the first was a 34-year-old yoga instructor from stoke-on-trent who reported ‘a feeling of being swallowed by myself’. the second was a retired librarian from aberystwyth who suffered a mild ear infection after ‘dunking my head into my own chest’. the third was a woman who declined to be named but described the experience as ‘like drowning in a duvet’. basw commissioned a study from a private research firm, which found that the average human breast cannot hold enough water to constitute a bath, and that attempts to do so lead to ‘a 98 per cent chance of concavity-related asphyxiation’. doreen pankhurst told me, ‘we are not saying breasts are dangerous. we are saying they are not baths. there is a difference, and the difference is water.’
water. water everywhere, and not a bath to hold it. i thought of the borscht of my childhood, and how it would turn against you if you tried to bathe in it. the potato, that instrument of state, was the least of it.
the safety establishment weighs in
the royal society for the prevention of accidents issued a statement endorsing the warning, adding that ‘the breast is not a swimming pool, a jacuzzi, or a plunge pool, and we would urge the public to treat it as a body part, not a leisure facility’. the health and safety executive announced an inquiry into ‘self-submersion incidents’, with a spokesperson saying that ‘while we respect personal autonomy, we cannot allow a situation where citizens are putting themselves at risk of their own chest’. the national health service followed with a brief advisory: ‘breasts are for feeding, for comfort, and for looking at. they are not for bathing in. please stop.’ the advisory was accompanied by a diagram of a breast with a red line through a small bathtub. i asked a nurse if she had ever seen a case of breast-bathing. she said, ‘once. a woman came in with a rash on her sternum. she said she’d been trying to “soak her soul”. we gave her a cream and a leaflet.’
a cream and a leaflet. the state’s answer to everything. i wondered if the cream was beetroot-based. it was not. i asked. the nurse looked at me the way one looks at a moth that has flown into a lamp. i left the hospital and stood in the car park, shoeless, and felt the tarmac through my soles. the tarmac was honest. the tarmac did not try to be a bath.
the counter-campaign and the bath-in
enter prunella thwaites, a 52-year-old former performance artist who founded the free the nipple bathing collective. she called the warning ‘body fascism’ and ‘a patriarchal plot to deny women the right to commune with their own flesh’. she organised a ‘national breast bath-in’ on brighton beach, promising that ‘we will bathe in our own breasts and the sea will witness our liberation’. on the day, 14 women turned up. prunella was the first to attempt a bath in her own cleavage, lying on the sand and pouring a bottle of mineral water into her chest. she reported ‘a profound sense of oneness’ before coughing and rolling over. three other participants required medical attention after inhaling seawater through their cleavage. one, a woman named gillian, told me, ‘i thought i was becoming one with the ocean. instead i became one with a lung infection.’ prunella, undeterred, announced that the collective would continue to bathe in their breasts ‘for the revolution’. i asked her if she had considered a flannel. she said, ‘a flannel is a tool of the patriarchy.’ i noted that doreen pankhurst had suggested a flannel. prunella said, ‘doreen pankhurst is a collaborator.’
i watched the sun set over the sea, and the sea did not care. the sea has never needed to bathe in itself. the sea is already everything. i thought about how borscht, too, is already everything, and how you do not bathe in borscht, you drink it, and you are grateful. i hope prunella is visited in the night by something with too many teeth and no name. i hope it asks her about her childhood. i hope it brings a flannel.
the aftercare and the quiet truth
the nhs reported that all three bath-in participants were treated for mild seawater inhalation and released with a course of antibiotics and a strong recommendation to avoid ‘self-submersion activities’. the health and safety executive concluded its inquiry with a 47-page report titled ‘the breast is not a bath’, which recommended that ‘no person should attempt to bathe in their own chest, regardless of ideological commitment’. basw welcomed the report, and doreen pankhurst issued a final statement: ‘we are not against breasts. we are against drowning. please, if you feel the urge to bathe in yourself, take a moment, breathe, and consider a flannel.’ she paused, then added, ‘i have never once, in my entire life, considered bathing in my own breasts. i do not know who needs to hear that, but i suspect it is someone.’ i left the press conference barefoot, as always, and walked past a café that smelled of beetroot. it tasted like home, and home tasted like beetroot, and somewhere a woman was trying to drown in her own chest. i hope she finds peace. i hope she finds a flannel. i hope the flannel is damp and honest and does not ask her to be anything other than a flannel.
