Body lotion is like hand cream, but not

At the weekend I met some friends in a slightly upmarket pub and was startled to see bottles of "body lotion" in the unisex toilet cubicles:



Handwash and body lotion as spotted in a London pub


Handwash I could understand. You need to wash your hands; you use the handwash. But body lotion? Who would want to apply lotion to their bodies in a pub toilet? (Rhetorical question.)

I returned to my friends and said as much; the girls in the group laughed at me, and not for the right reasons. Apparently the body lotion is to apply to your hands after washing them, to moisturise them.

Surely that would be hand cream, I pointed out. But no - hand cream is more expensive than body lotion and has a different consistency.

So are there such things as hand lotion and body cream? Are they all types of moisturiser, or is moisturiser something else again? I think I'm going to stick to soap and water...

3 comments:

Daga Daga Bush said...

Must be a bloke thing as I also would have had no clue what this was supposed to be used for.

You should have lathered up and walked back to your table in a little cloud of soap bubbles.

Stan said...

Don't most soaps dry your hands out? I'm already out of my depth here, but it's a curious conundrum.

The Ridger, FCD said...

Yes, soaps do dry your hands, which is why many people (mostly women, I guess) put lotion on after ward using it.

Hand cream is upscale (expensive) body lotion. You wouldn't want to use it on your feet, elbows, etc, but it does a better job keeping your hands very soft (if that's what you want). It's not surprising that mass-use outlets like restrooms wouldn't have it but would offer the cheaper does-a-good-job stuff instead.