Deodorant

crpgnut

SasqWatch
RPGWatch Donor
Original Sin Donor
Joined
October 18, 2006
Messages
8,821
Okay, I work for a massive world-wide company and recently we had several meetings with several nations in attendance. It was amazing how bad the smell would get in the afternoon meetings in Houston, TX as most folks from outside of the US didn't bother wearing deodorant.

It made me curious as to how many countries go without this nose-saving invention. Is it not customary to wear deodorant in the civilized world? I mean folks bathe/shower and brush their teeth elsewhere, don't they? What was worse was that many of the women would wear very heavy perfume trying to disquise the stench of their bodies. That was even worse than the body odor. I was also wondering if this was generational. It seemed that the younger folks all wore deodorant.

P.S. Houston, Texas USA is one of the hottest and most humid cities in the States.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
8,821
I don't use it.

I'm very careful about food. I adore garlic, but enjoy it endlessly only on weekends. Teeth? The stench from garlic comes out of your whole body!
Asparagus is awsome, but you'll smell like a piss from it so I'm avoiding it like a plague. Those are just examples, there are other stuff no deodorant will help you with!

I don't sweat much even when it's hot, I don't stink (okay, you can smell tobacco on me, but only that!) and my job are not meetings on some superhot temperature.
But to tell you the truth, meetings in my company are always in the morning. Probably to avoid later sweat odor. ;)

I hate heavy perfumes. I get a headache from those and just can't be near a person who has one.
However, I adore barely noticable ones - can't move my eyes from a girl that puts such perfume, I just have to check her from top to bottom. I know it's a trick, but my mind automatically tries to solve some mystery by analyzing "curves". ;)
 
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
23,459
Here in Sweden deodorant is the norm. Same seem to be true for the other Nordic countries. Sadly it's not all that uncommon for women to use too much perfume, but that seem to be a problem no matter where I go, with people who don't understand how to use perfume.
 
Joined
Jun 2, 2011
Messages
1,756
Location
Stockholm, Sweden
Sounds like a generalization. Another explanation could be that the men were running late and didn't have time for a shower or to use aftershave and deodorant. The fact that the women (according to you) used too much perfume to hide the stench of their body would suggest they didn't have time for showers either.

I was in a similar situation at a meeting once, only I met some of the people again where they were actually wearing deodorant so I wouldn't be quick to judge that people from their countries don't wear deodorant at all based on the people you met from a meeting.

But I can tell you that people do wear deodorant and aftershave over in the UK, France and Cyprus. Some of the best perfumes and aftershave actually come from France.
 
Joined
Aug 12, 2013
Messages
136
Yes its hot and muggy. I wear whats advertised as a 2 day deodorant. It works well.

Heh, it was 103 the other day when I did my bike ride. Todays should be in the low 90s I hope. Humidity of 50% is low for us.

The good news is we are not Australia so have very few animals that can kill us.
 
My experience is that at least Parisians are stinkier. Sorry. I've been in hot and closed locations on both sides of the water, and the Paris subways were the worst. London, no overpowering smells. Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo also, no problems. New York subways, not bad. Very limited sampling, I admit.
 
Joined
Aug 18, 2008
Messages
15,679
Location
Studio City, CA
Any floor of our company that utilizes an open plan, cubicles, pods, etc has a no perfume/aftershave/heavy smells policy. Its just too unbearable when you have a ton of people with clashing overpowering scents.
The floors that have offices don't have the same policy so you can stink up your office with whatever you like.
I've had meetings in many different places with many different cultures and I can say that my experience is that some cultures are extremely bad at managing body odor.
On the other hand, I've never met with an Emirati that smelled offensive. I think they are onto something with their traditional dress. I'd love to show up in my office wearing that. I'm sure my own staff would have me committed :meditate:
 
Joined
Aug 13, 2013
Messages
2,871
I was just wondering if it was a cultural thing. Houston is very hot, but these meetings lasted for a week and the bad smell was consistent. It was a "hot" topic of conversation back at the hotels. I'm not saying foreigners stink. I rarely travel outside of the US, so I have zero idea :p
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
8,821
But it still feels unreal. 7 days of constant stinking, how's that possible.
Maybe air vents got stuck or a dead rat was decaying in there?
 
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
23,459
Yes its hot and muggy. I wear whats advertised as a 2 day deodorant. It works well.

Heh, it was 103 the other day when I did my bike ride. Todays should be in the low 90s I hope. Humidity of 50% is low for us.

The good news is we are not Australia so have very few animals that can kill us.

Perhaps, but then your citizens with all their guns seem to do a much better job of killing people than our Kangaroos!! :)
 
Joined
Aug 31, 2006
Messages
12,806
Location
Australia
It seems to vary on a country by country basis, and so does daily bathing. I come down firmly in the daily bath/shower and deodorant camp. Even in Germany and UK it seemed to be uncommon back in the day but I think it's caught on finally.
 
Joined
Apr 10, 2011
Messages
777
daily deodorant is needed, period. Even if you think you don't smell, you do, you're just used to your own smell. It's just the way it is.

Those deodorants based on alcohol (like the original speed sticks) can be even worse than not using anything. The best ones are those where the smell is either not there, or very subtle. Use the white ones "anti-perspirant" not "deodorant".

This has been a message from United Federation of Planets (even Vulcans use deodorants!)
 
Joined
Sep 23, 2008
Messages
5,645
Location
Tardis
Showering and deodorant use is pretty standard here in Germany, although we're not as obsessed with showering as the US types ... we had some exchange students from the US who used the shower three times a day. That's a serious waste of water! They could wash if they felt dirty, couldn't they? One shower per day is enough, unless you did sports.
In addition to that, they also ran to the restroom every two hours latest to refresh their make-up.

About perfume: Man, I love perfume. Have about 30 different bottles in my drawer, everything from drugstore cheapos to expensive niche smells. But I don't like it when a person always uses the same perfume so that you start to link the smell to them. In the last company I worked for, there were two people whose offices were on opposite ends of a corridor, a man and a woman. She seemed to shower in Tresor (by Lancome) and he wore something oriental with a Patchouli base. You could always smell if they were in their offices or not, even if you were in the middle of the corridor and their office doors were closed. Oh, and my ex-ex boss wore a perfume I liked so much that I asked him what it was (and had hubby buy me the stuff for Christmas).
 
Joined
Aug 31, 2006
Messages
3,754
In Denmark, it's the norm to use it - no question. It's pretty frowned upon to have any kind of unpleasant odor in public. People seem to be very aware of how they smell around here, too, which suits me fine - as I'm not good with bad odors.
 
Perhaps, but then your citizens with all their guns seem to do a much better job of killing people than our Kangaroos!! :)

Flesh eating kangaroos are still out there ... somewhere.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/07/060725-kangaroo.html

Showering once a day is the norm here, 3 times is a bit excessive. The only time I do more than once a day is when we have extremely hot and humid summers and you need a cold shower to just feel normal again. This summer is pretty mild for Houston.
 
Here the use of deoderant is generally related to wealth/education: poor/uneducated people (usually from rural areas) tend not to use any, and it gets pretty hot in summer…I have been in queues where the person in front of me smelled so bad I felt nauseous. As for myself, I use it, but sparingly. There are lots of bad and dubious chemicals in your average deodorant and I don't feel entirely comfortable spraying/smearing that stuff on my skin. I have recently tried a 'rock crystal' deodorant which is composed of some kind of mineral salts which are meant to kill odour producing bacteria (its a roll-on deo). Doesn't work that well, imho, certainly not if you sweat a lot. Fortunately in winter I sweat very little so it's not that much of an issue.

As for the Paris underground, I was in Paris a few weeks ago, and used the metro extensively for a week- can't say I noticed that it was any worse than the london underground?
 
Joined
Aug 23, 2007
Messages
2,137
Location
Cape Town, South Africa
There's definitely some people in the USA who don't wear deodorant. I work a retail job and it's seldom that a week goes by that I don't get a whiff of someone who clearly doesn't believe in it.

I find a lot of the deodorant products & body sprays marketed towards men to be absolutely disgusting. Why do these companies think that men want to smell like a cross between a pine tree and sweat? Most of the colognes, aftershaves, and body sprays smell worse than body odor to me. Women's perfumes can be pretty offensive, too. I only ever buy unscented deodorant and wouldn't take that smelly stuff for free.
 
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
2,315
Location
PA
Haha, what a funny thread! I think that sometimes while traveling to a new place both for men and women, where you are not accustomated to the climate and don't follow your usual routines you might not be as "well-kept" as you'd ussualy be at home.

I am sure for some people it works the other way around too… of course.
 
Joined
Oct 25, 2006
Messages
6,292
I try to keep bad smells away from me, but my smell sense just isn't working very good.

The other day I was going home from an pizza restaurant with 2 friends, and in the dawn (it was late that evening) I noticed a sloppy looking man standing on the border of the street … I greeted him politely.
Afterwards, one of both friends (with the other one heavily nodding to his remark) said to me : "Be glad that your nose doesn't work that well ! [Note : We had been talking about this that evening as wsell.] I 've been smelling his alcohol smell *long* before I actually saw him !"
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,908
Location
Old Europe
Back
Top Bottom