There’s no sweet way to say this:
Sometimes, certain people don’t wipe as thoroughly as they ought.
Bull, um, shit.
I’ve heard the profession referred to as “Turd Herding.”
Several years ago my partner informed me that I smelled very different than before. Not worse, but different. I had just gone on a new medication, and blamed it for the odor. After about two years my medication was changed, and I returned to my usual stinky self.
Many older people have to take medications that change their body odor. And if you’re taking multiple meds, they all affect each other, and anything can result.
Regarding such things. There was a poster here that posted about being toilet paper challenged due to excessive hairage in the nether regions.
They used the words peanut butter and shag carpet to describe the situation.
One suspects some fraction of these fragrant people suffer from such an affliction combined with a lack of diligence to overcome their bodily challenges.
Apropos.
I think a lot of people are, but they can’t smell themselves so they assume they are doing it right.
Maybe their parents told them to take a bath all the time when they were kids. But just about everyone goes through a stage when they automatically disregard everything their parents say. And once you reach adulthood, you tend to drop habits that you were taught from your parents. Because FREEDOM.
Also, it’s possible for parents not to know either. I remember riding the school bus in middle school with three siblings who stunk really really REALLY bad. I mean, it was so bad that the bus driver would force them to the back of the bus (which was where the cool kids sat, so that was always funny). Someone was caring for them at home. Whoever that was, they obviously didn’t think the kids smelled bad. I’m guessing their parents were desensitized to funk and stink.
Issues with hygiene can also be a sign of clinical depression. You just aren’t motivated enough to take care of your personal needs.
I smell dead people.
Just another data point:
A few years ago I had to take some medication that made my skin extremely sensitive to, well, pretty much anything. I eventually found some hypoallergenic baby soap that worked, but I still could not use deodorant, shaving cream, or even laundry detergent.
I sure wasn’t thinking along those lines; I was considering very heavy people not being able to do a complete reach-around.
Would a bidet help in that situation? Having never used one, I have no frame of reference.
And kudos for the delicate way you addressed this.
What has been read cannot be unread.
I read somewhere that the ancient Mongols believed that water was a magic substance and that anyone who handled it must be a sorcerer. Their bathing was only accomplished by being outdoors in the rain (I’m guessing clothing optional, though I don’t know). They cooked food by burying meat with onions in a pit with red-hot rocks. They drank fermented milk. All water was given them from the Möngke Köke Tenggeri (Eternal Blue Heaven). Pious Mongol Tengrists would welcome water from Heaven but not pick up water from the earth and reuse it. I don’t know how true this is.
So that when they conquered Muslim populations, like in Khorazm (present-day Turkmenistan/Uzbekistan), and saw the Muslims constantly washing and bathing, several times a day every day, it kind of freaked them out. It took a while for the Mongols with their fear of water and the Muslims with their hydrophilic religious law to get their differences sorted out.
Daiching Tana, young ethnically Mongol singer on the shore of Qinghai Lake (Köke Naghur/Kök Nuur/Höhnuur), sings verses of praise for the lake and its blue water as she runs her hands through the lake water like it’s a lover’s hair and reverently anoints herself with it. Although her religion appears to be Tibetan Buddhist, to which most Mongols converted in centuries past. Sung in Mongolian and subtitled in Mongolian and Chinese.
Once upon a time, I had a coworker who’s scent everyone complained about. They’d leave him soaps and colognes as hints to wash. I never smelled anything odd. Because I was approachable, he asked me about all the soaps. I explained what I’d heard but also mentioned that I didn’t notice the problem. He said he bathed and never wore clothes twice without washing them and that he couldn’t smell a problem either. I just said, maybe you should talk to a doctor.
It’s odd that I couldn’t smell what so many others could. Usually, I notice body odor right away.
I’ve been through periods of depression when I didn’t bathe and I never noticed the smell. One day my sweet child let me know though and I’ve tried since then to force myself even when the feeling of the water hitting me makes me want to scream. It’s some weird sensory overload I guess.
I think you get used to your own stink.
I find it kind of painful not to wash regularly, but I can go longer in the winter when I sweat less.
And if one doesn’t have a functional water heater, bathing in mid-to-late winter is not much fun. Cold water is better than stink and itch, but suffering a little stink can be more appealing than frostbitten extremities.
As some people age, they get less oily…hair and skin gets dry and can have the misleading sensation of being able to go longer before bathing. And for some, bathing or showering is a physically taxing exercise.
There was a girl who rode the school bus with me when I was a kid who was Asian and I don’t know what they fed her for breakfast but she always reeked of sweet & sour sauce. 35 years later and I still can’t eat the stuff.
But I’m in the camp that it’s usually their clothes. They can shower all they want, but if their clothes are not clean, the odor lingers.
I gather that an aspect of Christianity up until at least medieval times, was a considerable degree of hostility to any kind of thorough washing / bathing. This was essentially on “ideological” grounds: in Roman times, bath-houses largely doubled as brothels and places of assignation (both hetero- and homosexual), so the early Christians abhorred those venues and and kept away from them. Later, there was a more general view taken, that care for personal cleanliness tended toward the luxury-loving / vain / sinful: this world was supposed, for the Christian, to be a vale of tears and misery anyway, so any measures to try to make life in it more pleasant, were suspect. Muslims, and Jews, did not share this hang-up; and the former (as above) actually had washing / bathing enjoined on them by their religion. Needless to say: the crowd that refrained from washing, saw the habits of the crowds that washed, as evidence of the satanic wickedness of their religions; and vice versa.
It’s interesting to speculate how things were in those espisodes in the Middle Ages, when odoriferous Mongols faced off against equally odoriferous Christians…
I’m wondering if maybe some less-well-off people don’t shower regularly because they want to save money on their water bill.