In Search of Deodorant

I know I said I would finish this post yesterday because I had no life, but suddenly I had a life, so this post had to wait until today. For those of you who struggled through yesterday because you couldn't function without knowing the end of the story ... well, I apologize that you, too, have no life.

To recap, I had to find a deodorant without anti-perspirant in it. Since not sweating is as important to me as not smelling bad is, I had no deodorant at home without anti-perspirant. So I headed to the store where I discovered that there is no women's deodorant made that doesn't have anti-perspirant in it. Trust me, I checked them all:  the solids, the roll-ons, even the aerosols. (Who knew they even made aerosols any more?)

Of course this made sense to me. What woman in her right mind is going to think, okay, I know I have huge sweat stains under my arms, but I don't stink, so I'm good. Women have more common sense than that. So I reluctantly crossed the aisle and began searching through the men's deodorants. To my surprise, several different brands had a deodorant only choice.

Am I the only one that finds that weird? Generally speaking, who sweats more, men or women? I can almost see a man thinking he's covered as long as there's no odor, but eventually you'd think he'd get the idea that the soaked shirt beneath his arms might be costing him some dates. Not to mention sweat causes odor, and there's only so much one deodorant can do.

Whatever the reason, there was deodorant without anti-perspirant. I just had to choose one. But which one would make me smell the least like a man? Women's fragrances are easy to understand. Deodorants are labeled "powdered" or "lavender". You know what you're getting. There's a specific scent you're looking to achieve. With men, their scents are labeled things like, "classic", "phoenix", "sport", "blast", and "thunder". Who comes up with this stuff? What are they hoping to achieve? If a woman wears a lavender scent, it's because she wants to smell like lavender. What does a guy want to smell like when he wears something called thunder? What does thunder smell like? I've never known a guy to smell like a thunderstorm, so I don't think that's the effect they're going for. I'm thinking the effect is psychological, but I gotta tell you--if you're personality didn't resemble thunder before, I don't think an application of deodorant is going to make a difference.

At any rate, I finally found one scent that was the same for men and women:  fresh. Fresh was fresh, right? Clean-smelling. Gender-neutral. Except, not quite. Turns out even fresh smells different for a man than it does for a woman. But still, it was better than some of the other choices, so I bought my man's deodorant, sans anti-perspirant and headed for home.

So I spent Tuesday smelling fresh like only a man can. Come to think of it, maybe that overly pink office had it uses after all. Perhaps it cuts down on the urge to scratch and spit in public.