Previous installments of The Toast’s advice column from two disparate and imperfect persons can be found here. (We are STILL open to better names for it.) [Ed. note – It’s fine.]
What is the best way to call out someone who has been flirting shamelessly and you think is really into you, but who has a girlfriend, but you think if they left their girlfriend, you would totally date this person, but only if, so you need the call-out to be kind of flirty but not homewrecky. Asking for a friend.
Nicole: AHHHHHHHHHHH. IS YOUR FRIEND ROBYN? If so, she can’t help it and neither can he and he needs to call his girlfriend and tell her so. But there are also people who are just super-flirty? My all-time favourite thing is to tell attractive people they’re attractive. Mostly they just blush and look happy! My babysitter’s boyfriend is gorgeous, and he came by with her and I was all LOOK HOW HANDSOME YOU ARE! and he shuffled and looked pleased. Does this person (who could also be a woman, of course, I don’t know your life) flirt outrageously with other people, or just your friend? If it’s just your friend, then your friend should say “hey, I’m getting some weird energy here,” but you have to have kind of a sexy-hippie thing going to pull that line off. A few months ago, I would have said “tell your friend to find an available person to date,” but the current best couple I know fell in love and disentangled themselves from their existing relationships and are now blissfully happy. I think I’m getting soft on people who fall in love with people who are in low-level goofy HIMYM-esque two month relationship arcs. Unless you’re friends with the girlfriend, in which case, no, don’t do that, check yourself.
Mallory: I don’t want to answer any more questions about romantic grey areas for at least a month after this. We are now closed to questions related to romantic grey areas. Thank you for your interest in receiving clarification in regards to your particular romantic grey area. Your romantic grey area is very important to us.
I have no interest in this kind of person (not you, darling letter-writer and reader of this Toast; you are a delight and a joy and a thing of beauty forever and you are probably Still Figuring It Out and find sexual attention intoxicating, as is your inalienable right as a Whimsical Young Person). This kind of person is deeply and congenitally uninteresting, this person who enjoys signaling vague but deniable romantic availability to the hopeful and the nearby. He (or she, or xie, but let us be frank and let us be honest and say: this is a he) lives in constant fear of being found out. If he did not fall asleep watching something on his laptop to distract him every night, he would fall asleep weeping with horror.
I can give you the breakdown of every tawdry, boring thing he will do in an attempt to mine your attention and interest, if you like. At some point he will confide in you a minor secret, which you will take as a disproportionate sign of his powerful feelings for you. At another point he will say something that darkly hints at trouble in his relationship, which you will believe to be deeply significant at the time. In retrospect you will realize it was an almost offensively generic statement of malaise that could apply to almost anything. He acts bold and charming around you because he knows within his safe and secret heart that he will always choose comfort over honesty. He is risking nothing. You will both drink a great deal too much whenever you are together and his girlfriend is not present. You will feel both wretched and sexually powerful, neither of which will be exactly true. You will think about him roughly 400% more than he thinks about you.
It will fizzle out in a confusing and almost imperceptible fashion. Pleasantly but determinedly ignore his half-hearted attempts to stir your feelings, and he will vanish like the fog in the heat of the noonday sun. Goodbye, fog.
The brand of deodorant I’d been loyal to since 7th grade has changed its formula, somehow, and now it neither keeps me from sweating nor does it vanquish odors. As an experiment I tried a day without deodorant at all, and I can swear that the same beast that got me through middle and high school has betrayed me, in that I smell worse and more onion-y with it than without.
I am bereft. So I guess I am looking for recommendations, and I KNOW that there are other long ago comment chains about this elsewhere on the internet, but I just want you guys to talk me through this and maybe make some recommendations.
a) I would strongly prefer that it come in a stick form and I don’t have to apply it with my hands, nor make it myself, sorry okay I’m sorry.
b) I would like it to stop me from sweating AND obscure funk. My Late Beloved Deodorant was unscented, but I can bear fragrance as long as it’s good fragrance, you know, and not febreeze flowers over a distinct layer of BO.
c) Not prescription-level shit.
Frankly the selection at Target et al. overwhelms me so please remotely hold my hands and walk me through the ridiculous number of choices?
Nicole: I reject your first principles, because I love the prescription-strength stuff. I mean, it’s obviously not actually prescription-strength, because you can buy it over the counter, but I will assume you mean the stuff labelled, like CLINICAL STRENGTH, and which has all the aluminum, which does not actually cause cancer.
But maybe you do actually mean prescription-strength stuff, which must exist, in which case we are back to our starting point. People say great things about Soapwalla, but you do have to apply it with your hands. WOW, I hope Mallory has better advice than this. All anyone wants is a clear stick that works and makes you smell like a human person, so let us know!
I do want to step in here before the non-deodorant-wearers arrive to place this down gently: you cannot smell yourself reliably, and your friends will NOT necessarily tell you if you smell even if you ask, and I do have one male non-deo friend who actually does just smell sexy and amazing, but the rest of us live in the modern world and should wear deodorant.
Mallory: Your great-great-grandmother did not die of dysentery and puerpal fever both at the same time so that you could worry about whether or not you’re allowed to smell nice. There is no reason to double-check whether or not the human body produces unpleasant smells when deodorant and antiperspirant are removed from the equation. This was not a worthwhile experiment. Trust that the human race has conducted a generations-long clinical trial on “Does sweating make me smell better or worse?” and that the results were conclusive. Imagine God in a long white lab coat looking down at our smelly dark crevices and saying “Hmmmm” repeatedly, if that is helpful.
I reject completely this modern delusion that we are too good for chemicals, which still persists among certain segments of the population. Rub your body with chemicals (within reason. DDT is still bad, I am sure). Put real shampoo in your hair. Apple cider vinegar is thin, sour nonsense and your scalp smells terrible. It’s a macerated mess of old fruit. That’s not for you. If your mascara has a preservative in it, you will not die in your sleep. Go to a Target, or a Walgreens, or some either giant chain that’s poisoning the earth. Smell the air conditioning and be grateful you don’t have cholera. Buy a stick that’s brightly colored and smells like something. Not lavender. Lavender is not a smell you can trust. Lavender is for the half-hearted who wish to bridge the gap, and you are no longer of that tribe. Supplement this with Certain-Dri. The Certain-Dri you put on at night before bed, after your shower (shower before bed, never in the morning. This is just common sense) and it keeps your armpits from sweating quite so much. You can sweat through the other 98% of your skin. The brightly-colored stick full of scented goo is so you don’t smell like an onion. That is what onions are for.
You’ll be great. Buy yourself some gum, while you’re there.
What would be a good birthday present for a gentleman turning 22 that I can ship cross-country via the US mail? He is not that into videogames, I regret to inform you.
Nicole: Deadwood DVDs. Justified DVDs. Or Tolkein-inspired beer steins, all of which are things my little brother likes.
Mallory: My little brother likes surfing and hiking with the family dog, which is not very helpful as you cannot mail either of those things. Does he enjoy reading? Men seem to enjoy humor. My first book recommendation is Baratunde Thurston’s How To Be Black, as it is a very humorous book. My second book recommendation is Jerome K. Jerome’s (real name) Three Men On a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). He will enjoy them. This is all I know about men, I think.
Tags: advice, advice from two disparate persons, deodorant, flirting, presents
LW3, after your gentleman reads Jerome K. Jerome’s book, send him Connie Willis’ book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, a lovely and hilarious book about a time-traveling historian who comes upon Jerome, two men, and the dog in their boat in the course of his Victorian adventures. So good.
It’s time for a Connie Willis reread. That book was so damn charming.
buying To Say Nothing of the Dog right now. thank you for the rec. i love jerome k jerome so much.
I’ve read The Toast for years, but this comment more than anything else convinced me that this is my home.
Yes, read To Say Nothing of the Dog! I recently described it to a friend as a story about time travel, colorful characters, and farcical failure. The plot is mind-bendingly clever, and the ending is enormously satisfying.
I’m a Devoted Soapwalla Fan and applying it with my fingers is nothing compared to the wonderful, absolutely no smell result. I use Certain-Dri at night too. Perfect combo. But I shower in the morning (and also sometimes at night)!
I want to buy it so bad but I’m in Canada and protest that everywhere- even the Canadian online retailers- will charge me like $8 in shipping.
I liked Soapwalla until I got a yeast infection in my armpit about a month into using it, which is exactly the same thing that happened to someone else on the Hairpin, so now I’m back to using regular deodorant, ’cause that stuff never gave me a yeast infection.
Mallory I made homemade coconut-shea body butter recently and there is jojoba oil and smelly vinegar in my medicine cabinet and there is plain cornstarch in my hair RIGHT NOW what do you think about THAT
I think you could probably pull off saying “hey, I’m getting some weird energy here.”
heyyyyyyyyyyyyyy mannnnnnnnnnnn
Your auuuuuuura. It’s puuuuuurple….
What is the cornstarch for? Is it like a DIY dry shampoo?
YUUUUUP
I carry it in a spice shaker in my purse and all bathroom counters in my wake are sprinkled with a suspicious white powder.
Have you tried powdered clay? That’s my favourite. It works SO WELL and with cornstarch I leave little white flecks when I brush my hands through my hair. The only problem is that it makes my hair feel weird.
Yeah. If you have super-thin light fluffy white girl hair, of the sort that converts easily to an aryan pageboy cut, cornstarch or a bit of drywall dust gives it volume and soaks up the grease and helps you have a nice hair shape with little washing.
It is not a coincidence how many people learn this the week after the Druids return from Henging.
Mallory, you are SO CORRECT about #1 that it is frightening. I have just waved goodbye to a piece of fog myself. I mean, a friend of mine did. So I hear.
One of my friends spent six months doing this fog dance, until she finally realized it was never, ever going anywhere. Six months!
A lot of people are more into the Feeling of Being Desired than the actual complications of A Relationship. A lot of these people are in their twenties. I have heard this is one of the main reasons everyone should be glad to turn thirty.
You’re right, you’re right. I know you’re right.
“A lot of people are more into the Feeling of Being Desired than the actual complications of A Relationship. A lot of these people are in their twenties.”
whoops that sounds a little too exactly like a certain early twenties walrus and a lot of things just became clear to me.
yeah it’s almost eerily accurate, isn’t it?
I know from fog, guys!
can you please please please please please please please please write more about the fog? not to perpetuate or elevate fogginess but to strengthen and support those who have been lost in the fog? or whatever? please?
DOVE INVISIBLE SOLID ANTIPERSPIRANT. My cancer risk if already high enough so I may as well use the shit that keeps me from being a gross sweaty mess (and like Nicole said it doesn’t cause cancer ANYWAY so, jeez people). Here is why I love this Dove stuff: keeps me from being sweaty/stinky (and I am a naturally sweaty person who also goes to the gym on a regular-ish basis) so it’s strong enough but not so strong that it makes my armpits feel weird; it’s not a gel or any of those things that are “invisible” but also “sticky”, it’s just a classic-looking stick but whatever they make it out of, it pretty much disappears on my skin once applied (do get the occasional deo-streak on shirts but they’re easy to remove); most importantly it doesn’t stain the armpits of my shirts yellow or make the fabric there weirdly hard like some deos do (looking at YOU Secret). Comes in unscented, but even the scents are mild/unoffensive. I know it’s not the most exciting of antiperspirant options, but, you know, it works!
Seconded. I am a stinky man but most deoderants make my skin break out but the “Sensitive Skin” flavor of this stuff does the trick for me.
YES, I was just about to write all of this but you did it better. It’s the best. Get the sensitive skin version, like the gentleman above me said. It’s harder to find so I buy two when I see it, but even the scented ones (which I’ve had to buy in a crisis) are okay. Also, Certain Dri sucks, it makes my armpits feel like they’re on fire and then you never know what you can do about shaving in the morning. Dove is the jam.
JASMINE you’re not putting Certain Dri on right after you’ve shaved your armpits, are you??
No, that is one of the big problems with it! You put it on at night but then what do you do about shaving in the morning? Will shaving cream and a razor remove the certain driness of it all? WHO KNOWS? Plus, it stings and is terrible. And it doesn’t have the nice smoothing qualities of a nice Dove or even Secret so your skin sticks together.
It just seems like so much to remember! I like my deodorant simple, guys.
You can shave the next morning and even wash with soap. I’ve felt stinging sometimes and now I’m used to it, I guess. But since everyone’s skin is different, it might always sting you! You don’t need much, just a few swipes.
Seconding this recommendation! It’s all I use. I personally like the cucumber-y scent. It’s very fresh and not overwhelming or sickeningly sweet. AND IT WORKS. Thank jeebus, it WORKS.
YESSS was just coming down here to sing the praises of Dove! I am not the type to be passionate about a personal hygiene product– I will use whatever toothpaste, soap, etc. but for deodorant it is Dove or nothing. All the scents smell good, it doesn’t leave streaks on my clothes, and I never sweat or stink, so it is all the things deodorant should be.
Yessssss unscented Dove is the best.
I agree with Dove Invisible Solid, and can also recommend Degree lady stuff. I use multiple deodorants depending on what I want to smell like, and these ones all do it right.
Also, Tom’s of Maine unscented or Apricot worked without being overwhelming. It didn’t do so much about not perspiring, but knocks out the odors.
seconding (or more like seventh-ing) this recommendation. Partial to the pink / “Visibly Smooth” flavor myself. Works like a dream, and even if the stubble-reducing aspect is a myth and a lie, I still like to feel like I’m taking proactive steps to reduce active grooming time.
All this recommending of Dove is cheering me up. I used to use Soapwalla, and did about 11 months with it, until suddenly weirdly over the summer my skin developed some kind of awful allergy involving my armpit turning bright red plus peeling plus (TMI alert!) the peeling skin smelled intensely of garlic. It was… startling!
Soapwalla says on their website that if you have a reaction like this it’s just your skin detoxing as you begin using Soapwalla and that this will go away — but I was already 11 months in. Whatever the natural chemicals they’re using, those are some unreliable natural chemicals!
soapwalla also made my armpits kinda dry (i think it’s the tea tree oil? it tends to make me kinda flaky), but i still like it so i just use it occasionally. this works well because it can’t stand up to my Major Sweaty Days anyway, so if i know it’s going to be hot or i’m going to be working out or whatevs, i use normal deodorant; on cool light-activity days, i’ll use soapwalla.
AHHHH I’m so glad I’m not the only one having allergic reactions to the soapwalla deodorant, I was feeling like I was failing at all-natural sexy hippiness for awhile there. At this point I’m pretty certain it’s the tea tree oil I’m reacting to, because I have the same reaction to a tea tree oil deodorant I got from Lush. Uuuuugh, there’s nothing as horrible as having itchy armpits full of fire and despair during the hottest parts of the summer!
Dove sensitive skin is the only brand of antiperspirant/deodorant I can use without getting a rash.
I generally hate wearing scented deodorant because I swear all I can smell all day long is fake flowers wafting from my pits, but I have had good luck with both Secret’s and Dove’s cucumber scents. So that’s an option. I sweat like a beast everywhere else on my body, but both of those ones do the trick.
The last time I hung out with my sister she ducked into my bedroom to change and applied her deodorant and it left my room smelling like the Victoria’s Secret body spray section. The alleged culprit: her pomegranate deodorant. POMEGRANATE?!?
I heavily endorse non-teenager-scented man deodorant for sweaty people of all genders. Personally, I use Old Spice’s rugged-outdoorsy-man smelling ones that come in the tan packaging, because they a) they have more anti-perspirant ingredients than lady deodorant because MANLY and b) because they smell like sexy-person-smell rather than like flowers or lavender or baby powder. I have also had success with Speedstick and Adidas, but they are more hit and miss, with regards to teenage-boy-scent . Old Spice is almost never going to steer you wrong as long as you stay away from the original formula. (Bonus- man deodorant doesn’t seem to clump pit hair together as badly, which is important when you are a Stereotypical Gay such as myself.)
I use Speed Stick, either the green stuff or the blue stuff. It works really well, and I don’t smell like fake flowers or pomegranate.
Wait, what’s wrong with showering in the morning?
Nothing, it’s just a deeply pleasant feeling to get into bed feeling clean at the end of a long day. Keeps your sheets from getting (as) gross (as quickly).
although my pillow gets wet because of my wet hair, but I never have time to shower in the morning (fuck getting up earlier, fuck it)
Oh, that makes sense. My hair gets crazy oily if I don’t shower in the morning, so I don’t really have a choice. I like showering in the morning anyway since I’m not a morning person and t’s a good part of the ritual for me.
Not having to wash your sheets as often does sound great, though. Ah well.
This is exactly how I feel. Plus I have bangs, so I HAVE to get them thoroughly wet in the morning to be able to style them. (My hair refuses to hold any sort of curl or shape EXCEPT for “unattractive bedhead,” go figure.)
I have the same hair as you! Bangs, and it refuses to do anything intentional, yet I still get bedhead (even when it’s dry).
Yeah, if I shower at night, I wake up slick with grease and also my hair’s flat in some places and sticking up in others.
This is my life. I have to shower in the morning unless I want to look like a months-of-not-showering Aragorny type by 5:00.
You have to wake up earlier?
I don’t understand people who shower at night. Doesn’t your hair get all weird and bed-heady? Do you sleep with curlers in? I DON’T UNDERSTAND THEM.
Mine gets weird when I go to bed with it wet, too. And then I have to rinse it thoroughly and dry it again in the morning. Too much work!
Showers also wake me up in the morning, so it gets me through the part of the day before I’ve had my coffee. Morning showers 4 life!
My morning shower habit is at least partly responsible for my success as A Morning Person.
Hair pretty much always looks fine. Go to bed with wet hair, comb it vaguely in the morning, now your head has hair on it, everything’s great.
Unfortunately this advice only applies to people who brush their hair. For those of us with curly (or probably even wavy) hair: for the love of god, do not do this (unless you DO want to wear curlers I guess).
Mallory, I defy you to see my morning hair and say “It looks fine” with a straight face. If I go to bed with wet — or even slightly damp — hair, I wake up looking like an exotic bird, or Doc Brown, or a New Wave bassist. Or all of those. It’s a reliable source of delight in our home.
It looks fine. Everybody looks fine. Shave your heads, or don’t. I firmly believe that everyone’s hair looks at least 60% better than they think it does, and that 70% of their exhaustive efforts to make it look Perfect are imperceptible to outsiders.
Clearly we need to have a sleepover at which I take a shower before bed.
I will bring the popcorn if you will pick the movies.
i believe this is true! BUT i also believe that how you feel about your hair is important, so even if morning showers will just make you FEEL like your hair looks better (regardless of whether it makes an actual difference in your appearance)… go for it.
sincerely,
girl with the thickest curliest hair ever, and also a habit of scooching down as she sleeps so she wakes up with just a pile of curly hair on her head a la marge simpson
And conversely, there are some who clearly, objectively have terrible hair that they have obviously styled that way in the belief that it looks good.
Just in case Mallory’s lovely reassurance was too comforting.
I think it depends on your hair’s temperament. My hair is unruly wavy, but if I wash it at night, put in a little curl definer, and sleep with it in a french braid, it forms awesome waves the next day.
1) you have to get up 30 minutes earlier
2) you have to put clothes on your freshly exfoliated skin (which I hate pretty much all the time, but was especially unbearable when I had to wear uniforms)
3) if you have washed your hair, you either need to dry it or go about your morning with wet heir (and mine takes HOURS to dry)
4) if your day involves getting sweaty or grimy or otherwise Not Clean, it is better to shower in the evening and wash the grime away and then put your nice clean body in your nice clean bed
But it really is a personal preference. My absolute favorite showering as soon as I get home and then lounge in PJs the rest of the evening before bed.
Yeah, if I shower* in the evening, I wake up with hair like a cockatoo’s crest. I will never really understand nighttime-washing people. If I wash in the evening, it’s because I need to relax, or I just changed the sheets, or both.
*Bathe, actually. I know some people find baths repugnant, with the sitting around stewing in one’s own filth, but I have tried showers and I have tried baths and I gotta say, showers are for chumps.
Baths are relaxing, but I never feel clean when I take one. But hey, to each her own!
My boyfriend loves baths when he’s really dirty, but he doesn’t always rinse out the tub afterward. :/
You’re right; I take it back about the chumps. I would be a chump to switch to showers, and a shower-person would be a chump to switch to baths.
> Baths are relaxing, but I never feel clean when I take one.
That’s how I feel after a shower: refreshed, but not really clean. My bath ritual allows me to (for a perfectly chaste example) scrub my feet with a nice stiff brush.
(As for the stewing in one’s own filth: I have been known to take a shallow bath, scrub all the horrid dead skin off myself in a disgusting slough that scuds over the bathwater, then drain the tub, rinse it quickly, and draw a fresh shallow bath to wash my hair. This is An Extreme Measure, not an everyday or even every-week event.)
I need some new deodorant too, for the same reasons! In the last three months my standby deodorant has somehow bonded with my natural body odor to create a horrific beast of unpleasant smells. What the frick frack.
I will only use gel deodorant/antiperspirants. Currently I use Secret which surprisingly works even though I’m very sweaty. I used to use exclusively products made for men because the women’s were bullshit and didn’t get the job done.
(Un?)relatedly, I will also only use toothpaste gel, that paste stuff is bullshit.
Everything is bullshit.
Dude, Old Spice!! The blue gel kind. I currently use “Swagger” and it is great. I smell like a fresh man, it lasts like 24 hours, and it doesn’t leave any gunk in my armpit hair.
LW#2: Secret Clinical Strength (light and fresh scent). I have tried many, many antiperspirants (including dude antiperspirants!), and this is the only one doesn’t make me smell like a moldy field of flowers, and manages to keep me dry.
OK LW2, don’t get the Secret Clinical, because it is BULLSHIT. Get Dove or Degree, far superior.
LW1, you can bet your booty that this wonderfully flirty, hot person will continue to be flirty with everyone but his/her girlfriend even if YOU are the girlfriend, so I would let it go and find someone available.
Hmm okay guys. But. Okay. Regular deodorants and antiperspirants make my armpits itchy, because I have skin like ancient encyclopedia pages. It is unpleasant. And I was using Tom’s deodorant for a while, and that was lovely but is SO expensive. And so I made my own (shea butter, coconut oil, baking soda, THE END), but it has to be kept in the fridge to stay solid, and I’m traveling this weekend and I DIDN’T THINK WHAT WOULD HAPPEN. I will be smelly on this business trip, I fear! Anybody else with similar problems find a deodorant that works, is not a liquid, and doesn’t make their armpits turn into Fire Swamps?
Have you tried Dove Invisible Solid? Most regular deodorants and antiperspirants make my armpits really itchy, but I’ve used this one (in the Fresh scent) successfully for years. I still get sweaty, but it keeps me both un-smelly AND un-itchy.
Ooh, thanks! I’ll see if I can grab a stick of that before my trip. You’re the best!
it took me years to find a product that didn’t give me an armpit rash. Dove unscented/sensitive skin is my go-to, even though it is NEVER on sale EVER and many places don’t even bother to carry it. If you find that doesn’t work for you, though, try picking up a travel sized pack of wet-naps or wipes or something similar that you can tuck into your purse/pocket. Excuse yourself to the bathroom from time to time and wipe your pits down, maybe add some powder to absorb dampness.
Along those lines (if the Dove doesn’t work), I use Gold Bond Ultimate Comfort Body Powder as a dusting powder, which seems to keep my eczema-prone skin a little less itchy and a little drier in the summer (heat and sweat make my eczema worse). I’ve never used it in the armpit area, but in an emergency, it might keep things a little drier and nicely scented. The one I use comes in a white bottle and smells way less medicinal than the original Gold Bond Powder. BUT if you do try the Dove and it makes your armpits itchy, the original Gold Bond Powder would probably be a good bet for masking odor, absorbing sweat, and soothing the itchiness. Neither of the powders will do as good a job as a deodorant/antiperspirant would, but they meet your criteria, they’re widely available at most drugstores and grocery stores, and combined with some baby wipes, like brigidkeely suggests, they would probably get you through the trip!
Yeah, if I was suddenly unable to use my go-to anti-perspirant (I have 4 unopened sticks sitting around JUST IN CASE, bc it can be hard to find) drwitchbaby’s suggestion is one I’d follow.
Dove unscented is the only one I have ever found that does not make my pits itch.
Maybe you could switch off between different kinds? For a while I was using Soapwalla and sometimes subbing in Dove when natural just wasn’t cutting it.
I’ve seen travel sized Tom’s deos! Maybe get one of those? As for fire pits, oddly, the worst fire pitty deodorant that I tried was a LUSH brand. IT BURNSES!
I believe that when I think a deodorant is no longer working, it’s because I’ve trained myself to associate the smell with my own BO so I have to change deodorant scents twice a quarter.
It’s weird changing deodorant after years of wearing one kind. I just moved to France and I forgot the bag that had my toiletries. By the time I realized that I needed deodorant/a toothbrush/etc, it was late enough that I just ran out to a tiny store down the street, so my deodorant choices were limited (arguably a good thing?) I am now reasonably used to wearing weird roll-on liquid deodorant that has an initially strong but non-specific scent, but it’s strange to think about how I probably have a subtly different smell than I used to. On that note, I did like my old deodorant, which was the powder scent of Dove, and would recommend it if you are at all in to the idea of smelling like baby-powder.
I also recently learned an important life lesson about how it’s a BAD idea to put on liquid roll-on deodorant immediately after shaving.
Salt crystal deodorant.
This is maaaaybe in response to LW2, and maaaaybe in response to LW1. I don’t think it’s in response to LW3 but Mallory your brah actually sounds like just the kind of guy who might also enjoy using a salt crystal as deodorant (how about your cross-country birthday acquaintance,
LW3? Hmm? HMM?!), so y’all’s MMV.
Seriously though as a sweaty Greek semi-hirsute lady who does a lot of sports and who only showers and applies deodorant at night, salt crystal deodorant has all my love.
I’m also a big fan of the salt crystal deodorant, but I wasn’t going to suggest it since the LW specifically said she wanted something to keep her from sweating. But… I loves it.
I’ll third this endorsement. After my favorite (Dove unscented) stopped working, I then turned to Soapwalla (which worked for a few months then made the skin around my armpits turn puffy and red — allergy?) and finally tried the salt crystal.
It’s amazing. You still sweat, but don’t stink. Which makes sweating, suddenly, not a big deal. They say they last for a year, but mine generally last for about six months until suddenly they don’t work anymore, so I buy another for $6.
Wait, why can’t I shower in the morning?? My hair gets greasy & gross, if I shower at night then by 3pm my hair is unacceptable.
I buy men’s deodorants, honestly. They work so much better. PH balanced for a woman MY ASS.
Me too! Only it gets gross well before lunchtime.
Old Spice Fresh Scent. Or any of the Old Spice non-antiperspirant line. You will sweat less, no yellow stains – that’s why all Old Spice sticks are bright, serious-business blue or purple, it’s bluing built in, if you don’t know what bluing is, go look up Jolie Kerr on the topic – and you can pick whatever flavour of fresh-citrus-musk you like.
I was just going to comment with Old Spice (the classic old grandpa scent). It’s a no-bullshit smell and seems to actually smell better when I heat up and start getting sweaty (which happens a lot).
For the longest time I was convinced that I didn’t need to worry about deodorant or anti-antiperspirant because I was magically/genetically gifted with less stinky sweat glands* but now I’m starting to wonder if this was a delusion on my part and I’ve actually stinkier than I realize. Is there any way to objectively test this?
I also use Tom’s lavender scented deodorant because I was foolishly worried about aluminum giving me cancer and Alzheimer’s at the same time, but I’m relieved that isn’t the case. I still enjoy balancing my love of various nail colors and lipsticks by using minimal or hippie toiletries for my body and hair though.
*to get this out of the way: “Congratulations, how wonderful.” Thanks!
yeah my husband is convinced he is one of those people but my nose is closer to his armpit level than his is, and he is… incorrect.
same same same re: boyfriend!! I have more than once subtly and definitely not subtly told him he is wrong, but nothing has worked yet. And I’m the one who is much closer as you say! advice anyone?
Some of us like our own smells. Have you read the Joy of Sex? They throw in some fancy french word for BO and tell you to let it stick around during sexy times, so you know, he could just be embracing that stink for all the pheremon-al gold it is.
My earwax is genuinely different than those from people of European and African descent, as living with my husband has demonstrated.. and I have actually gotten accusatory questions of “how come you look like you’re not sweating at all??!?!” during hot days outside so I think the wiki page is correct but now I’m worried I’m smelly.
My husband, in addition to having more stinky sweat glands from being a man and from other genetic reasons, can’t smell so he’s always lived in a state of Constant Deodorant/Anti-perspirant Vigilance. He does sweat a lot but he never stints on the use of appropriate items or extra t-shirts.
Yes, you are probably stinky but we all love you anyway so we don’t say anything.
nooooooooo my greatest fear!!
…
I also only rinse my scalp with water so I’m probably extra stinky. 🙁
For what it’s worth, I’ve definitely smelt worse.
darling I am sure you smell fine!
(but if you don’t, well, Mr. Fire isn’t going to know, is he? and who else gets close enough to worry about it?)
That is true! I’m honestly generally okay with these things, but you know, sometimes things just tap into a feeling of “OMG, what if everyone actually feels like X but they’ve never told me?!?”
I feel that way about my breath – what if it’s really awful, like charnel-house awful, and nobody wants to tell me the truth?
I usually feel that way when I’m around someone with terrible breath and they clearly have no idea about their oral funk – if I’m not telling them their breath stinks, what are people not telling me?
I think we should all just assume we smell terrible.
I just stick some old encyclopedia books under my arms when I start to stink and blame it on that old-book smell. It’s not my pits you’re smelling – it’s OLD WORLD REFERENCE MATERIAL. Sheesh.
If I didn’t shower in the mornings, my hair would be a greasy intolerable mess all day long. That is all.
Also flirtatiously unavailable people are the Demon Seed.
You will pry my apple cider vinegar/chamomile hair rinse from my cold, dead, pH-balanced hands.
I wouldn’t dream of touching your chamomile-ridden carcass. GET IT AWAY FROM ME, SPRAY IT WITH AXE
Mallory, I am very impressed with your deodorant rigor as I assume you also adhere to the home office lifestyle. I did, in fact, shower today but understood that any further grooming would be a waste of resources and because it is casual Friday around my computer (again).
SO WHAT if you can only wear those weird crystal deoderants because your skin is so fucking rabidly sensitive that even the ‘sensitive’ formulas make you come out ina horrid, oozy rash, which, btw, is also why you no longer shave your armpits.
what do i dooo
am I doomed to smell like a hippy foreveeeer
(weirdly this thing does not respond to certain things – my face is an allergy-free zone so decent makeup is ok, Not teh cheap stuff, though, because redness and puffyness. Some body lotions set it off but others do not.)
So I had this same thing (suddenly became allergic to seemingly every deodorant except the crystal…actually I think I accidentally sensitized myself by writing a perfume blog, OOPS) and finally saw a dermatologist about it. Turns out it’s the fragrance that I was allergic to (even/especially “all-natural” fragrances). She recommended the Dove fragrance free stuff (http://www.dove.us/Products/Deodorant/Solids/Dove-go-sleeveless-Fragrance-Free-Deodorant.aspx) which has worked like a charm so far (several months in). It has to really be the fragrance-free variety though (greenish cap), not the “sensitive/unscented” (but still has fragrance) kind.
Really happy that Nicole mentioned that antiperspirant does not cause cancer; the number of people who are convinced of this untruth baffle me.
I was using Soapwalla and loved it! There was no smell, not even late day “my deodorant is working too hard almost-funk.” I had to stop using it though, it kept turning my left armpit (just the left) dark and scaly. No amount of exfoliation would fix it. So I’m back on Secret, the one with the motion… techonology? Just the Clean scent though, the other scents don’t seem to work as well.
My boyfriend bought Hawkridge scented deodorant from Old Spice and it is so good. So, so good. It’s this sage-y desert smell. I’ve been stealing it for my own use sometimes. It’s not super boy-deodorant-y, it just smells so damn good.
I recently came out of four years of The Fog. Now that my head has cleared, I look back and think “oh my god, did I just invent this out of nothing? Was I delusional?”
My friends inform me, no, he was definitely as much to blame as me, but only so far as I was always at arm’s reach for a self esteem and attention bump when the girls he was really interested in didn’t pan out or weren’t around.
Also, now everything he does pisses me off. I think I’m overcompensating.
I don’t think you’re overcompensating. I sentence you to 30 plus listens of , “You Keep Me Hanging On” (whoa ooo ooo oooooo)
A) Awesome username.
B) Yeah, you’re right. He sucks. I probably have a more accurate view of him now than I’ve ever had.
yes i had this same experience with soapwalla! i loved it, the smell itself, how it made my body completely odorless, and then i developed the same rash (both arms): itchy, flaky, red, inflamed. i stopped shaving for a couple days and experimented with when i applied it to see if it made a difference, but no, my armpits weren’t having it.
That was a great advice column! I still think it lacks a certain older-sister flavor, but you did manage to recommend Certain-Dri and evening showers, so.
LAURAAAAA you’re EMBARRASSING MEEEE
Oh man I just realized that you Night Shower people probably don’t become Human Heating Pads when you sleep. I am a FURNACE overnight so there’s no point showering before bed when I’m just going to be gross when I wake up anyway.
I’m sure it’s too late for this comment, but this column’s proper name is clearly “In a Jam.” (“Toast on Jams” is also catchy, but could be easily confused with a mixtape series.)
oh my god
Antiperspirant/deodorant recommendation: Donna Karan Cashmere Mist. It does have a smell, but that smell is delightful. It’s expensive but it lasts forever and works all day long. Definitely one to check out in person and see if you like the scent:
http://www.sephora.com/cashmere-mist-deodorant-P3…
This just blows my mind. Deodorant is not just for Dove but is produced by such glam names as
Oscar de la Renta
Armani
Gucci
Dolci Gabbana
Givenchy
given that I only know those names from Project Runway, this is kind of incredible to me, and why haven’t there been deododant challenges!
couture arm de-smellifiers, i am dying
MALLORY.
Your advice is spot on. Certain Dri at night (use it for long enough and you’ll be able to apply it once a month or less!) and Dove during the day. PROBLEM SOLVED.
Also, The Fog. Please come be my life coach. I will pay you in pasta salad.
really really really love that 80% of the comments are about showering and deodorant, and no one really cares about the Fog. Toasties, you rock.
Mallory, your response to LW#1 is literally all the romantic advice I have ever needed to hear (that I didn’t realize I needed to hear) in my life. Thank you.
This is my life. I have to shower in the morning unless I want to look like a months-of-not-showering Aragorny type by 5:00.
MALLORY I am so glad you are with me on lavender, lavender is the worst and most untrustworthy of scents and i will suspect it until i die.
MALLORY I am so glad you are with me on lavender, lavender is the worst and most untrustworthy of scents and i will suspect it until i die.
Wow – now I know Graham Greene did not exaggerate when he asked, in The Quiet American, “did they take deodorants to bed with them?”