Katy Perry recently revealed a startling piece of information about partner Orlando Bloom. During an interview with U.K. radio show Heart Breakfast this week, Perry was asked what Bloom’s worst habit is. And it turns out the actor engages in a highly questionable—okay, we’re just gonna be real: super gross—ritual surrounding his oral health.
It actually started out pretty positive. “He loves to floss,” Perry said. “Which, thank God, because some partners don’t, and it’s disgusting. He has brilliant teeth.” Indeed, daily flossing is crucial for good oral health because it cleans out particles of food and bacteria that can get stuck between teeth and potentially lead to serious issues like gum inflammation, bad breath, plaque build-up, and cavities, as SELF has explained. So we’re sure Bloom’s dentist is very happy with him.
But there’s a shudder-inducing dark side to Bloom’s good habit. “He leaves the floss everywhere,” Perry said. As in, used floss. Perry is living in a world where there are used strands of floss “on the side of my bed, and in the car, and on the kitchen table,” she said. “I’m like, there [are] bins everywhere.” How could this nightmare happen? Imagine, if you will, Orlando Bloom finishing up a flossing session and deciding, “I’m going to leave this right here on the kitchen table.” Now imagine, for a moment, the look of horror on Katy Perry’s face as she sits down for breakfast only to discover a frayed, stinky, saliva-crusted strand of dental floss with little bits of food debris hanging off of it.
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Now, look: A lot of us probably have weird, unseemly little habits, or repeatedly do things that annoy our partner. Maybe you clip your toenails in the bedroom or try to be a good partner by fishing your hair out of the drain only to routinely leave the slimy clump sitting on the side of the shower. We’re sure that Bloom has a number of redeeming qualities that balance out this extremely gross one—like those gorgeous pearly whites and being an “incredible” parent, in Perry’s words. But we must defend the right of partners everywhere to live in a home that is not littered with dirty floss piles.
You don’t need a Ph.D. in microbiology to know in your gut that leaving used pieces of floss lying around is gross—that’s just basic cleanliness and common decency. But if you’re going to ruthlessly drag the personal hygiene habits of famous people, a Ph.D. can’t hurt—so we asked one to weigh on on how wrong this habit really is.
“I honestly didn’t know people did this,” Omai Garner, Ph.D., assistant clinical professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and director of clinical microbiology in the UCLA Health System, tells SELF. Is it as unsanitary as it seems? Appallingly so, Dr. Garner says. “I mean, I almost would equate it to somebody who is just, like, spitting in their house,” he explains. “It’s just right out of the mouth, holding onto whatever is there and then sitting there waiting for somebody to pick it up.”
Source: SELF
