Same here. Except it’s hair spray. For my hair, not my pits.
If you’d been sterilizing your shirts while doing laundry, you could go for a few days without needing deodorant. One shower is automatically good for two or three days, but only if you go shirtless. If you wear a normal shirt, you’ll start to reek within a few hours.
To sterilize a load of laundry, just add about 1/3 cup chlorine bleach per load. That’s way too little to affect colors, but it’s more than enough to wipe out the “shirt-triggered stench disease.”
Most deodorant works to inhibit sweating, so it takes a few hours to really take effect. (That’s why putting deodorant on before going to bed the night before is more effective.)
So it probably doesn’t matter much – by the time a new application takes effect, you will be on the way home from work.
One application of Mitchum and you should be good for the week.
I’m reading this at 2:55 AM EST. I’m all agog–what technique did you ultimately choose and to what effect?
That was my first thought.
That simply is not true, at least not for me.
I recognize that different people sweat at different rates, and that people have different types of body odor, but if i shower in the morning and don’t undergo any untoward exertion, i an easily get through the day without causing olfactory offense, even without deodorant.
I mean, if i actually stick my nose in my own armpit, i can tell the difference between “deodorant” and “no deodorant,” but if i’m clean then the latter smell is still not especially offensive, and the difference is not significant enough for other people to notice in the space of a single workday.
mhendo said:
2 Things.
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What counts as untoward exertion? Walking to the car in Houston in summer?
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I’ve put on deodorant, and then needed more before the end of the day, and that’s with an office job. (I even changed deodorant brands because of this.)
While i realize that it’s not quite as humid as Houston, i’ve spent plenty of summers in Baltimore, where you start sweating the moment you step outside. Even then, though, i don’t think i was ever at the stage where my body became offensive to the people around me.
In my experience, as long as my body is clean (i.e., i’ve showered that morning), the presence of some sweat isn’t enough to make me stink, especially not to the extent that it’s noticeable to other people.
Fair enough. I conceded in my previous post that people’s bodies differ.
On the scale of men’s bodies, based on my observations in gyms, and in other settings where physical exertion occurs, i think that i probably sweat less than the average man. I don’t have a very hairy body (and body hair often contributes to increased sweating), and i’m not a really big guy (another thing that often seems to make people sweat more).
I used to play squash four times a week with a friend of mine. By the end of our warmup, before the game even started, he’d be dripping while i had barely started sweating at all. Maybe i’m just lucky.
When I forget to put on deodorant, as long as I am not sweating, going into the mens room and putting some liquid soap on my underarms works. Note I use no water other than that which is normally in the liquid soap and I don’t rinse it off. Even if I’ve been sweating up until that point, I’m good to go from that point on as long as I don’t sweat any more.
ETA: if I have been sweating I actually do clean my underarm, then dry it out as much as possible and then apply the liquid soap.
I’ve forgotten to use deodorant in the morning before work… >.<
Thankfully I only start to smell near the end of the day and it minimizes the damage done.
Are we talking about deodorants (scented) or antiperspirants? OP asked about deodorants, but a lot of responses aren’t clear. I hate scents.
I never knew there was a difference, to be honest. I just pick up a stick thing at the store and put it on. I do notice that I sweat less with deodorant, so I’m assuming it’s an antiperspirant. It definitely has a smell, too, but I’m not sure if that’s just like the way that the stuff smells or if the scent is intentional. Too lazy to go look at the label and see.
This.
Maybe not a week, but Mitchum will put the kibosh on pit cheese. In the summer months, I’ve been know to put a dab on my man-tit-pits to eliminate the “drooling stomach” effect. Fat men, you know what I’m talking about.
Yes, there’s a difference between deodorant and anti-perspirant. Deodorant works to stop the glands that make the stinkifiers. Anti-perspirant works to keep you from sweating at all.
I use deodorant only, not anti-perspirant. The one time I tried anti-perspirant, I got bumps formed that my doctor said were water from the sweat gland backing up under the skin. I try for the mildest scent deodorant I can get. I don’t want to smell like “a manly man” or a rutting deer or whatever, I just don’t want to stink.
I’ve worked with more than a few perfectly ordinary looking men, in offices, who apparently never even heard of deodorant and happily went about their work in their white dress shirts and ties, stinking to high heaven. Thanks for caring, you guys who don’t want to offend. If you miss a day, well, don’t sweat it.
Can you recommend the brand? (That way we can recognize each other across a room w/ our eyes closed).*
Or is this question stepping over the line of GQ…