Marcia Byalick“Want to know a secret? More than my armpits stink.” No, I answer the lady on the TV commercial, please don’t confide in me. I don’t want to hear you go on about your pits and bits, your under boob, your tummy folds, and your thigh creases. I am offended…and saddened…and angered by the whole-body deodorant you’re selling. A new indignity to cause women to feel demeaned. And the solution? A spray designed to spritz the shame off your lady parts. What I really feel like saying to the woman on TV is, “be aware that if you really do stink all over, it’s no secret.”
I get that the job of the cosmetic industry (what deodorants are considered) is to answer a problem you don’t know you have. The dozen products on my vanity attest to their success. But by promoting this idea that a woman’s privates need perfuming, they’re adding more pressure to our already shaky self-esteem.
Decades after Our Bodies, Ourselves taught us otherwise, these ads try to convince us we’re unacceptable in our natural state. After millions of words exchanged about body positivity and acceptance, we’re still so vulnerable. Have we traveled back to the days when the area between our navel and our knees was unnamed territory?
The crass condescending tone of these advertisements floored me. “We don’t have time to shower after each and every whiff of stank from down there,” says the smiling woman in one commercial. “You won’t realize the body odor you’ve been living with till you try our whole-body deodorant,” promises another. “Enjoy a little weeknight spontaneity with no pre-shower,” the least erotic ad I’ve ever seen, advises. Ugh.
I watch my teenage granddaughter, “influenced” by the latest trends in brows and lashes and blush and nails. Upgrading your makeup routine is part of the price you pay when you’re a girl. But 2025 culture, back off when you warn her that body betrays her when it smells like a body. When you instill fear and embarrassment over a non-issue. When half a century after the women’s movement there are ever more unforgiving judgements about her physicality.
To me, if you go on a bike ride, you’re allowed to smell like you went on a bike ride. You don’t have to douse your entire body with chemicals to live up to a new faux standard of hygiene. These creams and sprays don’t claim to prevent you from sweating. Why is it new news that if you shower and change your clothes on a regular basis you don’t smell? I have a feeling what entices some women is the promise of 72 odor free hours. I figure if you’re too busy to shower, you need to change more than your deodorant.
I think the pandemic might have something to do with why sales of these products have doubled this year. I remember showering fewer days during those months. Maybe when the lockdown ended, daily showers, like favorite restaurants closing, were a casualty of those awful times. Also, after COVID, casual Fridays morphed into casual every day and wearing leggings from morning till night reinforced the need for more than two showers a week. Or maybe nothing really has changed and the heightened fear instilled in us that we smell EVERYWHERE (they use that word several times in 30 seconds) is fake news.
We live in a time where a TV commercial can declare that four out of five of the gynecologists and dermatologists surveyed recommend a whole-body deodorant. And 50 to 60 percent of people are concerned about groin odor. Does that sound right to you? NOW statistics report that 78% of 17-year-old girls are “unhappy with their bodies.” In the last six years the percentage of girls who report feeling confident has dropped to 55 percent. Unfortunately those are the numbers that ring true. Manufacturers of these products, it’s you, not us, who stink.