Bacteria don’t lie. Somebody should write a song.
I’ve heard this said of the Japanese, but I was talking South Asians, and there is an extremely strong smell among many. There is a stereotype among the Thais that all South Asians smell foul, and I have to say some of the ones visiting here that I end up stand near on the Skytrain and such really reek.
My wife was on a bus one day that a South Asian boarded; he was not sure where to get off and so asked the conducter after a while. (A conducter sells you your ticket on board Bangkok city buses.) The conducter told him it was here just to get the guy to get off the bus and go away. The wife said all aboard were gagging from his smell, which was compounded by the air-con being broken on this very hot day.
I noticed this smell, too, while in South Asia, but again, after a while you stop noticing it when the vast majority smell that way. Possibly akin to way back when I worked in Dunkin’ Donutrs in Texas right after high school and could no longer smell doughnits after a while; the shop smelled like nothing.
Shampooing is one thing – everyone’s hair is different. My mother only washes her’s once a week, because otherwise it would dry out. My sister, every other day. As I mentioned above, I have to wash my hair everyday, because it’s so oily.
And not everyone needs deodorant/anti-perspirant, I guess. (Although I think it’s probably a good idea to keep it around for those times when you DO get all sweaty).
However, I absolutely stand by the idea that bathing daily is a must.
Very interesting. Thanks for the clarification, and additional information.
My SO doesn’t wear deodarant and doesn’t stink. He does shower daily, but he’s Chinese and I’ve noticed that before.
I, on the other hand, MUST wear deodarant. I’m Indian. Sigh.
Hair can get into a viscious cycle. I have oily hair too, but I also have some dandruff issues. My dermatologist recommended shampooing my hair on alternating nights as an experiment. After about a week my hair started being less oily. It’s as if I reprogrammed the oil production. I’m now trying to shampoo every third day with good results so far. I often wondered if my daily shampooing in the old days (we’re talking decades) beat the tar out of my scalp and caused my dandruff problems in the first place.
As a side note, my friend’s dad was a beat cop in New York’s lower east side (with plenty of vagrants in his district). These folks were not known for their hygiene.
His quote was “In all my years on the beat I never saw a bald hobo”. So maybe shampooing is a factor in aggrivating those who have a genetic predisposition to baldness to actually go bald.
Another one here who doesn’t use deoderant and doesn’t smell bad .
I shower regulary interspersed with baths.
I think some people shower more lightly then others, by that I mean that though they go in there regulary and often they don’t really make much effort to get really clean, just token clean.
Likewise showers take off the light grime but every so often you need a bath to open up the pores properly and get some of the deep down out.
Also some people sweat more then others.
If this sounds like I’m obsessively hygenic I’m not, its just the way i was trained.
Finally deoderants don’t cleanse they just block up the pores and mask the smell.
The more you use them the more crap you’re embedding in your skin.
Slate is calling this a false trend story.
I personally avoid antibacterial soaps as much as possible to keep the good bacteria around and try to use deodorant instead of antiperspirant because I hate how APs make my arm pits feel gummy and sticky. I still were APs when I expect to be sweating a lot.
Oh yeah. A lot of false trends are also promoted by advertisers trying to sell something. In this case, maybe it’s dry shampoo. I have no idea why I’d need that unless someone came up with a really good explanation. I’m still dubious about this product.
I could see a use for it if I was camping in the desert, or on a long road trip with unknown sanitary facilities on the route. Kind of like all-in-one biodegradable camping soap, a niche product for specific situations. That does not seem how it is marketed though. This seems more a market segment grab than anything else.
Yeah. I felt the same way about “push presents” (men getting gifts for their wives after they gave birth).
This is something I have been thinking about a lot of late. I am currently on sick leave with a slipped disc, which will be operated on on Friday. Because of this I haven’t washed as often, at times it has been too painful to shower or bathe and I wasn’t going out anywhere anyway.
I for years have had bad skin. Greasy, causing not so much spots these days but blackheads. Somehow I don’t seem to have many of them anymore. I am convinced that in some way I was over cleaning to the point that it encouraged bad skin, possibly by overstimulation of the glands.
I honestly haven’t had skin this good at any point in the last twenty years.
One thing I’d like to add is that there’s nothing better than that nice, clean feeling after a hot shower. Even if it WASN’T needed, I’d still shower every nice, just because it feels good.
(And I’ve never had a problem with dandruff. Unless you count “flakes” from too much hairspray back when I was in junior high back in the early 90s. 
My wife is nominally Southeast Asian (Thai nationality) but of Chinese ethnicity. (There seems to be some question of whether there’s any actual Thai ancestry on her father’s side; the family is divided about this.) She wears deodorant, as do most urban Thais of the middle class and above.
No one else is ready to scream at the frequent misspelling of deodorant? Just me?
Here’s a hint: the purpose of deodorant is to mask/neutralize/magically eliminate ODOR. Not “oder” or “odar”.
Yes, I am picky. But I shower daily and don’t smell.
Ha, that’s very interesting. Makes a lotta sense. Perhaps if LoL went more public with that people would reconsider washing. Although knowing people, they’d probably just stop donating to LoL. I definitely have less breakage (close to 0 now) and flyaways than I did years ago.
How long do you have to leave your hair unwashed then before you donate it?
They actually ask you to donate clean hair - so you can wash it before you donate it as long as it’s dry before you cut it. (I’ve donated to Locks of Love 3 times now)
The problem isn’t washing just before you donate, the problem is frequent washing over time, or dousing your hair with lots of chemicals, which weakens the strands. I use only very mild shampoo on my hair with a homemade, vinegar based rinse, and don’t shampoo every day (2-3 times a week). My hair stays strong, strong enough I can grow it down to mid-thigh with no problem. I know people who wash their hair daily and use lots of “product” and their hair never grows longer than shoulder length - because it weakens and breaks off at that point.
So, if you want to donate your hair to make wigs for the bald use minimal chemicals and don’t overwash. But you have to do for years, not just the week before.
In my case, I was treating my hair like that anyway, so I never changed anything, it just works out that every 2-3 years I can cut off my braids and send them to charity. Before the hair collecting charities the hair was just thrown out.
I wash my hair every day but it’s always had a huge amount of body and gets a lot of compliments. I know, people talk about how they stop washing and then their hair looks gorgeous, but I’m pretty sure that if I ever up and donated it anyone that they’d be very lucky.