Rise of the no-shame society

Sitting on the Tube the other day, I was assaulted by the suffocating stench of something solvent. Imagining the worst – a fuel leak leading to an explosion – I started to panic, before realising the overpowering chemical odour was coming from the woman next to me who, without shame, was painting her nails.

Once I’d got over the shock of someone carrying out such a personal, not to mention pungent, act in public, and actually doing it well – considering the stop-start motion of the train, her flawless application was, quite literally, a stroke of genius – I began to fume at the, well, fumes.

Welcome to my daily commute, where Personal Displays of Grooming (PDG) – much like Western Personal Displays of Affection (PDA) and Personal Displays of Skin (PDS) – have become not just numerous in Britain, but the norm.

A recent study by department store Debenhams found that 67 per cent of British women apply full make-up on their morning commute.

What I discovered shocked me: not only is PDG a worldwide practice so common campaigns have been set up to tackle it, but far worse Tube Taboos than powdering your nose – chin hair plucking, fake tan application, spot squeezing – are taking place.

One twitterer revealed he’d sat next to a woman clipping her toenails; another, next to a woman flossing her teeth; and yet another, opposite an old woman who removed her false teeth, before cleaning them, and in a first-class train carriage no less. Have these women no shame?

But it’s not just women using public transport as an extension of their bathrooms. Men have also been spotted using grooming gadgets to extract hair from their nostrils and ears.

This uncivilised act of publicly plucking stray hairs from our orifices makes me want to defect back to Dubai, where you’re probably more likely to come face to face with Simon Cowell dancing down the street in a sarong than with a public plucker.

How has personal grooming slipped so shamelessly into the public domain?

“It’s attention-seeking behaviour,” says my mother, who admits she would rather throw herself under a train than perform her grooming rituals on one.

And like most people of her generation, she blames social media, reality TV and YouTube for making it acceptable not only for us to share our private lives in public spaces, but to celebrate making a spectacle of ourselves. “We are a society without shame,” she announces.

The make-up mafia, however, disagree, insisting lack of time drives them to such indiscretions. “I spend two hours a day on the Underground, so this saves me time,” explains one twitterer, admitting to daily applications of full make-up and a ‘full monty manicure’ – cut, file, paint – once a week.

But while the public primpers may be reaping the benefits, their co-commuters – the polite people, who pass their time in transit with something as ordinary as a book – are suffering; subjected not just to such spectacle but to the detritus left behind.

“I usually exit the Tube along with other people’s bodily parts – hair, skin and nails,” moans Rachel*, an anti-PDG campaigner, who recalls several hygiene-hazardous journeys: one where strands of someone’s just-brushed-and-sprayed hair slipped into her coffee.

Then there’s the health hazards: one commuter recalls being temporarily blinded by someone’s botched body spray application; while another, being burnt by a pair of hair tongs, which some woman had whipped out to flatten her fringe.

So what do we do when the unwritten rules governing our society – of modesty, manners and morality – start to disintegrate?

Do we, like Japan, run an anti-PDG subway system campaign? Or like Dubai and Singapore, implement public transport rules – no eating – with fines as punishment? Or do we, like the US, confront these no-shame citizens with their weapons of mass irritation by naming and shaming?

No, we Brits do none of the above. We simply keep quiet, with a lift of our perfectly plucked brows the only sign of our discontent. Someone could slip off their tights and start waxing their legs and I doubt anyone would voice their disapproval – not publicly anyway.

So, despite the rising fumes – the nail lacquer ones and my own bubbling anger – I keep my eyes and brows down, breathe in another lungful of hairspray and wait for the next Public Display to rear its oh-so-ugly head. Tube Tanning, anyone?