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Short Black Haired Girl Having A Bubble Bath With A Foam
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Bubbles on top of the water, less ambiguously known as a foam bath, can be obtained by adding a product containing foaming surfactants to water and temporarily aerating it by agitation (often merely by the fall of water from a faucet). The practice is popular for personal bathing because of the belief that it cleanses the skin , that the foam insulates the bath water, keeping it warm for longer, and (as a lime soap dispersant) prevents or reduces deposits on the bath tub at and below the water level(called "bathtub ring" and soap scum, respectively) produced by soap and hard water. It can hide the body of the bather, preserving modesty or, in theatre and film, giving the appearance that a performer who is actually clothed is bathing normally. Children find foam baths particularly amusing, so they are an inducement to get them into the bathtub.
Surfactant preparations for this purpose are themselves called "bath foam", "foaming bath", or "bubble bath", and frequently contain ingredients for additional purposes common to bath enhancers. Used at much higher concentration (for instance on a washcloth), such preparations (especially in liquid format) may also be used to wash skin or hair, so they are sometimes marketed for combined purposes; in a few cases, mild household detergents for hand washing of articles have also been labeled for such purposes, or for preventing soap scum on the bathtub (with or without foaming).
Effervescent bath products came into use as effervescent bath salts early in the 20th century; the bath bomb became a popular form late in that century. The earliest foam baths were foamed with soap, which practice came about shortly after soap flakes were marketed. Saponins were also used to foam machine-aerated baths. Foam baths became more popular with later surfactants; an early publicized use of an alkyl sulfate surfactant as bath foam was in the original 1936 production of the play The Women, but it is possible that a similar composition was used to produce foams seen in bath photos since the marketing of Dreft in 1933. Foam baths became standard practice for bathing children after the mass marketing of products so positioned in supermarkets during the 1960s and thereabouts, Bub in the United States and Matey in the United Kingdom having been marketed shortly before 1960. the dubious claim had been made that their normal use (diluted in a tubful of water) would substitute for soap and/or rubbing to clean skin.
Machine-aerated baths originated in the early 20th century for therapeutic use, becoming more widely used with the introduction of the jacuzzi. Trends merged when the hot tub, which originally had still water, with its increasing popularity became more commonly a communal whirlpool bath. By the late 20th century jetted bathtubs had become popular for home installation.
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