To think many people in England don’t shower, apply deodorant, wash and dry their clothes properly

[Smellypeople]

Telling by the smell on public transport; also my kids tell me is the same in their schools and classrooms and teachers don’t open windows.

Have people lost the sense of smell?

I come from a developing country in the tropics and most people shower every day.

@Thepeopleversuswork

a weird flap about “germs”

When my mama was very little, she told me, she somehow thought that 'germs' and 'Germans' were kind of connected in some way. They were both bad things, she gathered, from hearing her parents talk (especially her mother). I mentioned this to my husband, and now we say e.g. 'wash your hands after using the toilet because they will be covered with Germans'.

You really don't. Washing is washing

😂

How can it be offensive to say some people in smell? There is a difference between saying “some people in England/Japan/India smell” versus “English/Japanese/Indian people smell”. The latter is offensive while the former is factually true.

I know what you mean...

Since having my second bout of covid in June last year, I've become super-sensitive to body odour smells - much MUCH more than I ever was before.

I'm still really surprised by the number of people who walk by me, who look very smart/nicely dressed/well put-together, who have a BO'y whiff.
There was a lady in Tesco this morning that I passed a few times. Hair and make-up done, a nice summer dress, and a proper honk to her.

That is a different kind of smell and not one that I encounter very often (if I do it tends to be younger single men who don't know how to dry their clothes properly so tend to have washing hanging around for days).

No they don't, a shower rinses with clean water, and removes almost all of the mix of soap/dirt/skin that you create when you rub the soap around. It's virtually impossible to do that with a sponge, without leaving a huge puddle on the floor.

I have literally never heard anyone say they wash their kids once a week. You maybe heard about that in the 1940s and 50s when people didn't have bathrooms and indoor toilets etc but nowadays definitely not the norm.

In short leg ulcers or as my treatment room nurse said when I asked her how many ulcers I had ulcerated legs caused by the autoimmune disease I've developed.

Trust me I cannot wait to be able to have a shower again. At the moment though I'm having to make do with using a flannel to wash down below and a squeegee thing for my body, arms, tops of my legs and pits along with soap/shower gel of course.

I don't know why, but I really don't like people writing or saying stuff like this.

Could it be what I call 'rotten cotton' smell? Very pungent.

Exactly.

Funny how it's apparently fine the other way around.

Most people do shower every day, use deodorant and do their laundry efficiently. The few that don't, stand out because the smell is unusual and noticeable against a background of most who don't smell.

Anyway I'm sure this post is just another wind up one so meh.

I flannel wash 🙋🏿‍♀️😂 as do my primary aged kids. It saves me valuable sleep time in the morning.

I have never understood this. I can shower MUCH much faster and more easily than faffing around filling a sink, twisting and turning to get all the bits washed (feet into a sink is a nightmare when you're older!) then again to rinse. Urgh.

The time our boiler failed and I had to have a sink wash with kettle water before nipping out, took me over twice as long as my usual quick shower. And I didn't feel properly clean or rinsed.

Did she tell you she was English?

There are plenty of generalisations about my home country.

I didn’t say all English smell and many people in England are not English themselves; but I do feel people have gone more relaxed about it

The bus and underground are worse than the trains.

My colleagues are fine though so is not everyone.

Classrooms? Try teaching in a classroom full of teenagers who I assume eat their dinner wearing their blazers. Indian cuisine is delicious but the smell sticks to your clothes and if they’re not changed every day, the classroom will whiff!

@SeeSeeRider

Could it be what I call 'rotten cotton' smell? Very pungent.

It's like the smell of damp dishcloths.

Or to put it another way, if you went to uni in the 90s, remember those students that wore black in the summer and didn't see much sunlight and wore megadeth t-shirts? Yeah, that smell.

My DH says he calls it 'mildew smell'.

I’ve never heard it in real life either. However I I have read multiple threads on MN where people have written this. If you Google the subject and add Mumsnet to the search term the threads will show up. I always read them in equal parts horror and fascination.

There was a thread I will never forget where OP was annoyed that her daughter’s nursery had expressed concern about the child’s hygiene. The reason was they noticed she often came to nursery in the morning wearing the same nursery issued nappy they had changed her into the day before. OP was bemused that this was a problem. As far as she was concerned, if her DD hadn’t done a poo there was no need to wash or change her overnight.

As said, I’ve never ever met a parent who behaves like this IRL but Mumsnet is an…interesting place.

True 🤣

Showering and deodorant isn’t necessary. Just splash yourself with white vinegar.

What's that? You have your own twig? Luxury! I have to share a twig with the rest of the family. There's 13 of us, you know 😮😳

What a horribly xenophobic thread OP.

If you said you were white British and said that people from Pakistan stink and don't wash enough the screams of racism would be deafening.

Perhaps you need to examine your own motivations for your sweeping deeply unpleasant generalisations.

I live in London and use public transport a lot. In the last month or so I have only come across three real stinkers.

• A group of teenage lads travelling back on the bus from football practice on a day when it was 31 degrees.

• A well presented French couple in their early sixties couple on a morning train from Paris to Montpelier who stank of stale booze and tobacco. It was like being face down in a pub carpet for four hours.

• On a local bus a few weeks ago, a very elderly and frail man who had that long term unwashed smell of someone no longer able to look after themselves.

@Ginmonkeyagain the last one 😢