To not 'get' anti-perspirants

[bakeroony]

I think this is going to be a controversial one

The thought of using an anti-perspirant gives me the creeps. To me, it's like using a product to cut down on your saliva, or other secretions, and it just seems unnatural and wrong. I haven't used it since I was a teenager and got fed up of all the white marks, not to mention the scaremongering about products containing aluminium.

I'm slightly more comfortable with the idea of deodorants but again, I hate the thought of slicking my armpits with a sticky product just to smell a bit more like a toilet freshener. I'm 'lucky' to have the dry earwax gene and everyone I've asked (I did a study as part of this at Uni too) says they can't detect an odour, but I think I'd feel this way even if I did produce BO.

I usually just spritz a bit of perfume and get on with it. To me, sweating is a beneficial thing for the body.

Does anyone else feel the same or am I completely on my own here?

And I cannot do italics either!

Happy interesting that you've had that conversation with your GP. My blood pressure gets commented on too but as a compliment.

I've can be really anxious too .

Hazel - my mumsnet twin

Hazel and Sauce are you both saying you are both sweaty and hairy?!

Can I join your club?

Waves

Welcomes fellow hairy sweaters

Is this a quiche?

waves back

apologies for hairy, sweaty hijack

*This is one of those stealth boast OP's.

"I don't sweat or smell, don't need deodorant therefore what is wrong with those of you who do you dirty stinking mingers ?"

YABU - for not having the imagination to realise that some people sweat and smell and for boring us all with how dry and odourless you are. Lucky you, well done.

Reminds me of those threads where the OP doesn't understand why some women wax. Then delights in telling us about her perfect, neat, triangular lady garden and soft, blond leg hairs*

^ this ^

Another sweaty Betty here waving her deodorised armpit decorously.

I know someone who doesn't sweat. His nickname is the lizard

I've got dry earwax but am sweaty!

OP - please can I ask, do you not notice when other people have proper sour nasty BO? Surely you can recognise that it's unpleasant? Because if all I produced was wetness and a bit of a natural musky odour I'd bin my antiperspirants and be as happy as Larry.
However, before DC, I'd shower before work, apply antiperspirant or deodorant, dress in freshly washed clothes, and then head to work. By the time I got to the office an hour later, I stank. Often had to wash my armpits again and put another clean top on, and repeat as necessary.
Really very unpleasant.
Fortunately I seem to be less stinky these days as a SAHM and only have that grim stench occasionally in summer. BO seems to be linked to my stress levels, and I get especially stinky in situations like flights and commuting.
Oh how I'd love your non-stinky gene!

I really don't get the point of this thread. Advertising tells me I need to wear foundation, however I don't like it and don't believe I'm in need of it so I don't. Other women want to or need to, hence the product existing.

As a side note, a Japanese ex boyfriend had a cool earwax thingy, apparently the normal tool over there - a small wooden stick with a scoop shaped end like a miniature boat oar (4" or so long), and a fluffy thing on the other end. He explained that Japanese tend to have dry earwax, so they use the scoopy end to remove it and the fluffy end to sweep the crumbs out!

I have dry ear wax, but I have stinky pits without antipersperant/deodorant.

You know what I don't get? Coconut water. It doesn't really have the same texture as water, it sort of has a flavor but not really, it's weird.

Surely the majority of people need at least deodorant. I don't understand what the OP doesn't 'get' about something the majority of people use. Am sure the OP would feel differently if they stunk of BO few hours after a shower. They would reach for the unnatural roll on.

*just find it sad that a natural function is regarded as so disgusting. Fair do's that some people want to disguise the smell, but stigmatising sweat in such a way? ComposHat's post further up is a prime example of how extreme some reactions have become.

No it is not extreme to objecting to reeky bastards honking the place out because they think they don't smell (usually they are just used to the smell of their own stale sweat) or because of some vague hippy dippy bullshit about 'y'know we are meant to smell this way maaan.'

Either way it is the height of rudeness and no different to deliberately farting in a lift.

I agree Compo

Interested in the low blood pressure thing - I have low blood pressure when pregnant and at the moment, my deodorant is not getting me through the day! By lunchtime I am desperately paranoid about this. Am also very anxious (not just about being stinky, but in general). Not sure a super-strong extra-chemicals type of AP would be a good idea during pregnancy, but it's definitely something that bothers me a lot. Sweating may well be a natural function but right now it makes me uncomfortable and I don't like it. It doesn't smell nice to me and I can't get away from myself! Or shower in the middle of my working day!

There are plenty of adverts aimed at people who are not me though, for lifestyles I will never adopt and I just tend to ignore them rather than thinking the advertisers are shouting at me personally!

I am shocked no one has mentioned what ones eats and how it affects body smell. After a dance class at the gym I go to there is a smell of food in the room, that's the only way to describe it.

Drinking lots of water and eating plain, non spicy food will affect the way your sweat smells!
I find the way I smell after a boozy night out is awful but normall my sweat doesn't smell as I have quite a bland diet.

If you wear loose fitting tops, and you don't really sweat much then you can probably get away with it.

I need to wear anti persperant or I smell by lunchtime otherwise!

I love SDTG

Your OP is as daft as complaining that Fixodent want you to buy denture fixative, but you don't have dentures, so you don't need it.

:o

How long have human beings been using deodorant? 70 or 80 years? Difficult to say in that case that we "need" deodorant. There are smells all around us, and we just get used to them. When I was a child lots of people stank of cigarette smoke but hardly anyone seemed to mind.

I use deodorant but every time I spray it on I think I'm being foolish. It's just that advertisers have managed to instill in us a fear of smelling sweaty.

Didn't they put onions in their pits in Tudor times? Yum.

That's one of the reasons why people who are nostalgic about the past are idiots not thinking things through - everything would have SMELLED.

hack we have only had antibiotics for 60 years, oral contraceptives for 50, and a minimum wage for less than 20. Our flat didn't have an indoor bathroom until the 1980s.

Whilst socety functioned without these things for100s of years and we don't 'need' them, but I am glad I live in a society with them rather than one without them. Likewise antiperspirant.