I can go a long time without bathing without feeling gross. I’ll stink, for sure, after a day or few (depending on the level of exertion), but I was never bothered by going camping for a couple weeks without any serious bathing and wearing only a few sets of clothes. And if I don’t think about it, I don’t really realize that I stink. Bathing as often as is socially necessary in the U.S. is definitely a learned habit, and if you don’t learn it, you probably don’t do it.
Dunno about the guys but some women from India put coconut oil in their hair often, I don’t know if the oil goes rancid or what but it can create a strong odor.
There is also an herb in common in Indian food I forget the name of, but it is an odd musty smell that really permeates. Starts with an A I think.
Hey, Grude, the spice you’re thinking of is asafoetida. My husband bought some once at the international food market…Lord only knows why. It smells like white pepper and ass.
Thanks, guys. Now all I can think of is
http://www.qu-i-x.com/dirty.html
Anecdote: My ex was one of those people. Could go days without bathing (or brushing teeth) and never seemed to bother him. It sure bothered me! My children with him have similar tendencies which drives me nuts, especially as they are now teenagers. Well, my son will spend a long time in the shower, but sometimes I don’t think he’s actually doing much washing, if you know what I mean. :smack: Uggghhh… It’s a battle.
Me, I don’t mind being somewhat unkempt if I’m not going anywhere, especially since the babies cover me in shmutz constantly. But I almost always shower and groom before I make dinner, even though I may just put clean PJs on and a ponytail, so that I’m not a total wreck when my husband comes home from work. 
About smells, though…I think my husband smells awesome even when he’s not so clean. (He says the same about me and actually asks that I don’t use deodorant, but I just can’t go there most of the time.) He usually even has good morning breath. I mean really amazing, kind of like how a newborn baby smells. I don’t get it…
It’s sometimes cultural. One entry on a very long list of things Germans do for which there is no reasonable explanation is showering more than 2-3 times a week. I’ve never asked, but from the way people smell, I’m pretty sure that deodorant/antiperspirants are similarly rationed.
Many Germans are also convinced that something terrible will happen if you open the windows on the dinky little local train, which makes those summertime trips into the city just lovely. I was always tempted to carry a bottle of air freshener with me and just spritz people.
Golly, NinjaChick, my experience here in Germany has always been exactly the opposite: I find the Germans to be exceptionally clean, tidy and unsmelly - and I say that as a card-carrying germaphobe. Now the French, OTOH, are another story entirely. I’d describe in horrifying detail how miserable it is to ride the Metro in July if it weren’t for the fact that this isn’t the week to diss the Parisians.
I was cautioned prior to going to France that the French had different bathing customs and deodorant/antiperspirant never caught on to the extent they did in the US. Which is true. But most of the French I encountered didn’t smell bad so much as… well, like people. Strongly like people. It was very noticeable the first few days I was there but by the end of my visit I pretty much stopped noticing.
There’s definitely a perception thing here. If you’ve been taught that the normal smell of the human body is something bad and disgusting it’s quite likely that’s how you will perceive it. If, however, you grow up in a society where that scent is considered normal and is a neutral thing someone would have to really, really reek to be commented on.
Most Americans seem to have an absolute paranoia about how even a clean human body smells, hence all the heavily fragranced soaps, washes, after shower sprays and powders and deodorants and all the rest. Other cultures have a different view of these things. Obviously, these differences can cause friction when they butt up against each other.
When the guy comes by from Seidl’s Sewer & Septic Sucking Service, he doesn’t smell. But I understand his nose runs.
As with so many insidious aspects of American culture, it was Marketing (especially modern Post-WWII era TV Marketing) that did this to us.
I had a very sweet coworker once. A homeschooled teenager. One day he had clearly just showered, as his hair was wet, but he reeked. Because he did a lot of activities, I knew he sweated a lot. I assumed he showered and laundered his clothes, but didn’t use soap. Water itself will wash a lot of smell away, but you need a soapy degreaser to get all of the funk off. It wasn’t like that episode of Seinfeld where the scent permeated the car and everyone who went in it wanted to die, but it was enough that you took a step back and breathed through your mouth.
Agreed. I should have clarified that this was a fairly sheltered young person and this was almost 20 years ago.
Let’s hear it for palek paneer. Yum!
I guess it depends on how you define clean. Clean of dirt or clean of odor. If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re defining a clean human body as one free of dirt, not odor.
It absolutely is cultural, but when an entire culture has been raised for generations to be accustomed to people being free of strong body odor (which should not and does not require heavy artificial fragrance at all, in my opinion) I don’t think it’s fair to describe the aversion to it as paranoia. Sure it’s a learned response either way, but given the choice, would you choose to share an elevator with a guy who smelled “strongly like people” or “like not much of anything”?
Correct.
Honestly… I don’t care.
Seriously, I really don’t care. I don’t care if the guy in the elevator smells like a “clean of dirt” human being or “like not much of anything”. My objection would be heavy artificial scents/musk which, frankly, I find more offensive than smell of a (clean) human being.
A culture that requires abolition of ALL body odor is unrealistic. And, really, it hasn’t been “generations”. My parents remember a largely deodorant/antiperspirant free US. That would be, what, three generations? Not really that long in a cultural context.
People sure must have stunk back in the old days, since Harry A. Cole came up with Pine-sol as a welcome alternative to ablute the spaces they’d inhabited.
Some people really do prefer “natural smells”. Or what we may call “BO”. My mother dated a Nigerian dude back in the 60s, and he would frequently request that she not use deoderants. Not because he didn’t like how they smelled, but because he loved how women smell naturally.
My mother found this too bizarre and dumped the guy. But it actually makes sense to me, from a pure biological/psycho-social stand-point. We react to pheromones just like any other critter does. How we smell probably provides a lot of useful information: our general health, our hygiene (a part from being able to douse on perfume), degree of kinship (you don’t want to mate with someone who smells exactly like you), and cultural background (maybe you don’t want to mate with someone who smells completely foreign either). Of course, all of this information is being delivered on an unconscious level.
The guy who doesn’t smell “like much of anything” does have a smell. It’s just that you’re acclimated to it and can’t detect it. Your preference for him over the other guy may be due not to the smell per se, but by what the smell indicates to your unconscious mind: ““Smelly guy” is a stranger. Beware of strangers.”
Ah, I hate people who bring in fish. We used to have two girls in here that always used to get nasty greasy fish fridays and bring it in. It’s obnoxious and rude. I feel self conscious when I even bring some Indian food in. People should be polite about overly smelly foods in the office.
As to the rest, I’m Indian. I submit I need deodarant, and you want me to have it. 
ETA: What monstro says is really true, I think. If you like someone’s natural scent, it probably doesn’t smell like bad BO to you. It just smells like them. But if you don’t, if the pheremones aren’t attractant or whatever, then it’s gross.
This of course excludes people who are actually smelly in a bad way.
Some people I have known are well aware that they smell, but think people that care are the ones with a problem, so too bad for them. They shower, but often don’t use soap or use some crap ineffective “natural” soap and won’t wear deodorant.
I think they just don’t understand how unpleasant they are making it for others and think that people are just pretending to be bothered, the way sometimes cigarette smokers refuse to believe their smoke is actually harming and disturbing everyone around them.
When they are around someone who is heavily perfumed though, they get upset. No matter how many times I tell them that the way they feel about the perfume is the way others feel about their stank, they disagree that such a thing could really be possible.
The historical archives contain letters from Napoleon to Josephine announcing his return within a few days, and that she should stop washing. One hundred years later, soap and razor manufacturers convinced women that they had actually been undesirable all these centuries.
Chiang Kai-shek would order the windows be opened after any meeting with Westerners, although the Chinese were no more circumspect than Europeans about washing. I’d be interested in what the mutually shvitz-happy Finns and Japanese thought of each other.
Meriam Webster’s definition of HOGO:now dialectal, England
*a notably strong flavor or smell *
Origin: modification of French haut goût high savor or flavor
(my go-to adjectives are halitotic and gingivitic)
Plenty of people microwave some vaguely stank stuff in the break room, but it usually just stinks up the break room. But for some reason, the fishy reek permeates a much, much larger area. I don’t know if it’s just more detectable, or if the other molecules react with oxygen or what, but the other stuff usually just smells funky in the actual breakroom, while the fish carries out into the work areas.
And some of us have serious allergies to the artifical scents. Going overboard on products can cause the person next to them to have an asthma attack.