Bingo.
The old me had virtually no scent at all, even when I worked out. I would have to be really, really, really hot and sweaty for a long time before anything was detectable, and it would only be from my armpits. As a result I never wore deodorant nor any added scents, because I didn’t need it. I showered and scrubbed well every day, sure, but just never needed any deodorant.
After about 3 months on my weapons-grade level of estrogen I started to smell “sweet,” according to people who are close to me. Not sickly sweet but just very slightly, like a floral scent but without the flora? You have to be virtually sitting in my lap (or me in yours) to smell it, but I’m told it’s there.
I’ve also been told I taste very slightly sweet, which I suppose explains a few wild and crazy nights.
FWIW, Alex Haley, in Roots made no bones about white people of the colonial era smelling bad, but I’d put that down to diet and hygiene. I don’t think anyone washed often–either their clothes or themselves, rich and poor alike.
My teenage boy stinks, and I ain’t basin’ that on any race, color or creed! He’s just jackin’ it too much and not cleanin’ up!
Disgusting! Smells like Day-Old Krispy Cream Doughnuts, all the time!
White person here, and I do kinda smell like a wet dog. Not as much as an actual wet dog, but…yeah.
In fact I have never ever liked the way I smell, which is why I use various scents, almost always.
But individual people have individual smells. I had a favorite uncle and one of the things I loved about him was the way he smelled. (ETA: Kind of, but not exactly, like baking bread as someone above said he smelled like.) He started taking…some drug for manic-depression, which is what they called it in those days, and it changed his smell considerably. I still liked him but I didn’t much like his smell anymore. He did not, however, smell like a wet dog, even remotely. I actually can’t describe it. There is a low note in some perfumes that kind of mimics it, his new, drugged smell. Eternity is one such perfume. I’ve picked it up in other fragrances.
I don’t notice black people smelling a different way* but I do think fragrance reacts more strongly to dark skin, or something in their chemistry. Or maybe they just put on way too much to cover up some perceived smell of their own.
*Except individual black people I get really close to who, like everyone on the planet, have their own distinct odor.
There’s also some ambiguity in the posts and responses about ‘skin color’, which is not the same as race. But in general the appeal to ‘common sense’ that 0.1% (or whatever small %) DNA difference can’t matter has no real foundation. The difference between the DNA of humans and other primates also sounds small qualitatively (though obviously not nearly as small quantitatively).
There is, perhaps understandably from history, an assumed subtext that ‘racial difference’ must mean some completely non-overlapping characteristic, virtually everyone of one race has it, virtually nobody of another does. Or if some capability or propensity is different on average, the greatest manifestation in one individual of one race is less than the lowest manifestation in another. How else could one even pseudo-logically attempt to justify a racial caste system, which people still did in the not that distant past?
But knocking over that straw man does not prove that the distribution of any characteristic across different human populations has to be exactly the same. The distributions could overlap a lot less than 99.9% (however we define that) while still being far from the level that could justify out-of-hand assumptions (especially serious ones) about a given individual solely based on racial identity.
As a white growing up in a white working class neighborhood in the US northeast in 1960’s, though going to a more integrated school, I recall some whites claiming that blacks smelled different. I don’t recall my black friends claiming, to me at least, that whites smelled different, nor do I recall myself concluding that my black friends smelled different. Asians (including Caucasians from the Indian Subcontinent and Mongoloids from East Asia) who still eat their traditional foods can definitely smell different, to ‘mainstream US’ nostrils, IME.
I have never noticed any change in taste when kissing. The only thing I have noticed in some is that in making love or other semi strenous activity they may be a little quicker to give off the smell associated with excersize. I was caught a little off guard the first time but quickly got past it and was never an issue after that.
I’ve always worked and schooled among whites and made friends with them. From kindergarten to now.
It has been my observation that white people, as individuals, are no more likely to smell “weird” compared to anyone else. But there are indeed certain smells-- baloney and wet dog flavorings–that I am more likely to smell when I’m around white people than when I’m around black people, or other groups.
I would not think about telling my white friends this, though. Why? Because it’s one of those things bound to hurt people feelings or elicit feelings of defensiveness. I wouldn’t want someone telling me I smell like wet dog, so why would I tell someone else this?
That .1% is enough to create a whole different body color. It’s not crazy to wonder if it could cause physical difference detectable by other senses.