Mila Kunis Breaks Silence Over Bathing Debate Following Hilarious Controversy

Mila Kunis addressed the seemingly endless debate about how often she bathes her children in a new interview with Ellen DeGeneres on Tuesday. Kunis appeared on the talk show for the first time since July, when she and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, said that they don’t bother bathing their children until “you can see dirt on them.” She clarified that the remark may have been blown out of proportion.

“My intent every day is to bathe my children,” Kunis promised in Tuesday’s interview. “I wake up every day and I’m like, ‘Today I am going to shower my kids.’ And then bedtime happens, and I forgot to feed them, anyways… This story has taken such a turn.” Kunis and Kutcher were both guests on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast back in July when they said: “If you can see dirt on them, clean them. Otherwise, there’s no point.” Many commenters took this as misguided advice or a sign of how the rich and famous truly live.

Kunis said that that’s not the case and that she was not referring to a philosophy, just the exhaustion parents experience when trying to keep up with their children’s daily habits. She also noted that her children got clean on their own more often than not during the summer.

“The kids, there’s a body of water that they touch just about every day,” she said. “Almost every other day. Sometimes it’s the pool, sometimes it’s a sprinkler. It just depends. It was COVID! Who showered in COVID? We didn’t leave the house! Who cares?”

“I don’t think I made this story any better,” Kunis added as the topic was winding down. Kunis and Kutcher have two children — 6-year-old daughter Wyatt Isabelle and 4-year-old son Dimitri Portwood. In fairness, the podcast episode in question does include some discussion about alleged health benefits from bathing less frequently; Shepard said that people “should not be getting rid of the natural oil on your skin with a bar of soap every day.”

Kutcher, at least, agreed and said that he does not typically scrub the parts of his body that don’t need it. He said: “I wash my armpits and my crotch daily, and nothing else ever. I got a bar of Lever 2000 that delivers every time. Nothing else… I do have a tendency to throw some water on my face after a workout to get all the salts out.”