http://www.okcupid.com/humor/stinkyfeet-home.html
I don’t know if you need an account to read this but I cannot believe this thread made it this far without this link showing up.
OkCupid is free, and the link goes to the stinky feet project.
I remember that one! Absolutely hilarious!
Ummmm…okay. If you say so.
I used to shower pretty infrequently. For a few months, it’d be once or twice a week maximum, and I didn’t always go to work with super clean clothes either. I’m sure I occasionally reeked, and I’d like to thank my coworkers at the time for putting up with me. However, I had a pretty good excuse.
I was secretly homeless. Due to a mixture of unfortunate circumstances and my own stupidity, I was living out of my car. My part-time, minimum wage job didn’t afford me the opportunity to save up for a new apartment, and I had a ton of old bills to deal with before I could get any utilities turned on in my name, anyway. I showered at friends’ houses when I got a chance, though. And I would occasionally shell out for the laudromat. Before this happened, I would shower almost every day and NEVER wear dirty clothes.
Nowadays, if I deal with someone who obviously doesn’t wash a lot, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. I can’t tell the difference between someone who’s lazy and someone who has had their water turned off or something.
When I was depressed, I would take a lot of baths, with the lights turned low. I knew exactly what I was doing! But the mimicry of being warm and dark and surrounded by buoyant water was very soothing. I could stay in the tub with a book for a long time.
I have a friend who has told me he doesn’t shower; I also know the housemates he had before he moved into a van, and they told me he’d showered maybe twice in the 6 months he was living there, to the utter horror of one of the girls- both times when he’d just been to a festival, and was splattered in mud.
You know what?
He doesn’t smell. At all. I’ve hugged this guy quite a lot, and took the chance at a pretty close-up sniff last time, and… nothin’. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t use deodourant either.
Steve deserved to be shamed into bathing if he never bathed or washed his clothes despite being a fry cook and still didn’t bathe even though he had mold growing on his feet. If this was 20 years ago and Steve didn’t take up bathing sometime after that, my guess is he’s dead. He just sounded like a disgusting individual that felt he was too good for bathing, you even said he took the time to style his hair and shave, idk about depression being the issue.
People who don’t bathe smell like zombies.
Ooooh Ooooooh that smell. Can’t you smell that smell?
You weren’t in any way to suggest to her she needed to bathe despite her smell getting into your car just because you were near her? Entitlement much? (On Stinkys part)
Though since this is on the topic of not bathing, I knew a kid in high school you could smell if he entered the room. Really Bo smelly, really greasy hair and had horrible acne on his face and scabs on his body. Supposedly he had asbergers but judging from his verbal skills, I was surprised when he did announce he had it. And not like he didn’t know he stunk, he mentioned once about how he’s not allowed to eat at the table with his family in his house because of his smell and guessing not being able to afford soaps and running water wasnt an issue if he was being banished from the table because of it, meaning his other family members must have bathed.
I work in mental health. I have given people their first baths in over a year. One fellow had the sandwich cut out of his beard the first day in the unit, I didn’t help give him the bath until the next day. (I wish I had seen the sandwich in the beard. Knowing his wife and daughter I find it really hard to believe this, but everyone attests to the sandwich with all the hair grown through.)
Bathwater on a person who hasn’t bathed in a year is BLACK. Even if the guy isn’t covered in mud, the water is black, as though someone poured some poster paint into it. The next one was a dark grey. The third tub of water was sort of a pale grey. This guy stunk so bad at first we could smell him 150 feet away when I entered the unit.
I currently know a mental health patient who will stick his head under a sink faucet and get the top surface of his hair wet then claim he had a shower. He still smells, he is still wearing the same dirty clothes, he still has mustard on his face from supper. But he insists that he had a shower and gets belligerent with male staff who suggest they will accompany him into the shower to make sure he is clean. He has lost his passes to go outside, to go for coffee, to leave the unit. He used to like going to the nearby store for chips, and he has lost these privileges. He still won’t shower and won’t allow staff to come into the shower with him.
Its horrible. I know daily showers were not always the norm, but I am unable to wrap my head around forgoing things you enjoy for the purpose of avoiding bathing. We can’t find a way to make him feel safe about it, as he will not talk about his fears, concerns or anything. He just wets his head and challenges us to believe him.
I’ve never been the most regular bather - consistently. I was raised taking a bath once or twice per week (it was a cold climate), and I guess it stuck. Jumping in the shower is the easiest way to style my hair, though, so I take them at the least every 3 days when I am going through a super-lazy period.
In the summer when a cold shower is the only thing that makes me feel human, I’ll sometimes take two or three a day. Also when I am in a relationship I like to be freshly bathed if sexual activity is imminent. Otherwise - I don’t have very strong BO, and I have dry skin and scalp, and I am very lazy. I’ve never had any complaints about my smell, on the contrary I’ve gotten a lot of compliments.
I used to have a friend who smelled. I brought it up to him once after knowing him for a few years and being very close friends. He knew it and said he was trying new medication to help with it, or something. It was bad and I felt sorry for him. He didn’t have a problem with bathing though.
I had another friend, mostly over the internet, but a couple times in real life, and he was one of those rarely-showered types. He also did not wear deodorant. He claimed he didn’t need it. HE DID. I just rolled my eyes at how proudly he would boast about his infrequent showering and lack of deodorant use and not smelling. He smelled pretty bad.
Poor people probably jumped in rivers/ponds/lakes in the summer time. Winter they may not have bathed for long periods, but between the smoke from indoor fires and livestock frequently occupying half the hut no one may have noticed. And at least everyone stank more or less equally.
Although some place did have things like saunas, which would have allowed cleaning in the winter.
I think some people don’t understand that there is dry normal skin, and then there is eczema. While eczema superficially might resemble dry skin it’s not the same thing. It involves damage to the skin that can not be corrected by simply putting lotion on the damaged skin. The damage has to be prevented, and if it’s not, it can take a couple weeks to a month (or more!) to heal no matter what you do.
So some of us with skin problems really can’t bathe daily without causing real damage to our skins, damage that can’t be corrected by simply applying something to the surface. That said, we still need to clean the stinky bits (face, hands, pits, crotch, feet) daily, AND we might also have “regular” dry skin on top of that. But I’m also the first to say someone with such problems really should consult a dermatologist (and I have) for individual advice and recommendations on skin care, and enlist the help of a loved one to double-check for stink issues.
Actually, there’s more than one form eczema can take. It’s not just a surface condition but can involve the full thickness of the skin. Diagnosis and treatment can be quite complex. It’s a problem that can be managed, but I just wanted to clear up any misunderstanding or ignorance that what some of are talking about is “just dry skin”. I wish some of my skin problems were that easy to solve.
What did the ancient Romans smell like? They had their public baths, but I don’t believe that they used soap-they relied upon sweating, then applying olive oil to their skin. They wold then scrape the oil off-and then rinse off in a hot water pool. Would this have removed the odor-generating skin bacteria?
If they did the routine every day yes, it probably did take care of the body odor problem. The scraping would remove oil, dirt, exfoliate, and so forth.
Of course, they didn’t have deodorant so a couple hours later they might have had notable odor.
I retired this year and noticed my showering habits have changed. If I have a do nothing day I will often just forget to shower. If I miss 2 days I become uncomfortable withmyself.
A very good friend of mine really, really hates the feeling of soap. He doesn’t like the feeling of water much either. I’ve seen him wash his hands, he washes them in this weird, hesitant way. It looks like it hurts, or like he’s washing them with something disgusting or something. You know how handwashing looks, familiar, routine and simple? When he does it looks like he is doing something new, like he’s hesitant.
It’s not that it irritates his skin or anything, he just doesn’t like it. He doesn’t shower much, and smells pretty bad. We tell him to shower more, and he will if you ask him. But if you leave him to it he’ll skip showers. He’s a lovely guy though, so I’ll grin and bear it 
And this would have been seriously dangerous, if a nearby community was voiding waste into that body of water. There would have been good reason for poorer folks to have mixed feelings about bathing.
And of course, there are worse things than simple failure to wash: Formal Reprimand Issued To Flatulent Federal Worker | The Smoking Gun