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19 jun 06 "Is there a rule of thumb about how long a person can go without a shower before they start to stink, assuming they haven't been sweating inordinately?" it depends on the person, of course (the hairless, the female, the obsessive compulsive and the asian don't smell all that much; note that asian women tend to be hairless and obsessive-compulsive. just kidding on that last part). Roughly 50% of Korean people have no apocrine glands at all and only about 10% of Japanese people have any underarm odor at all. Japanese men with body odor in the past were exempt from the military! -- about.com it also depends on what you mean by "stinking," but to avoid crippling relativism, let's go with "three days." i don't know. it depends on what you're doing (sitting around vs. moving about, changing vs. not changing you clothes, applying vs. not applying deoderant, etc). for a 31 year old white male who eats pretty healthy who is quite active, and even on his less-active days walks around a lot, possibly up and down a really, really long staircase, i'd say to an intimate nose: one day, and to a personal space-minding nose: almost indefinitely, provided clothes are changed and deo is applied. even better if it's wintertime. this is provide you're sweating "not inordinately," as you specify. furthermore, if you sat around, perfectly still, and didn't take a shower for a month, you might start to smell like an "old person" (the person who submitted this also sent in the same submission the question about the age threshhold for developing "old people smell"). "stink" is a little more problematic. why is the smell of a dirty, sweaty, armpit-y body unpleasant? a dog doesn't think so. a dog (or any animal) doesn't think there's such thing as an unpleasant smell -- there are, to him, only less-interesting and more-interesting smells, as well as less-powerful and more-powerful smells. the closest thing he comes to disliking a smell is avoiding eating poisoned or rotten food because it smells a particular way. we're missing a whole world of artistic experience by avoiding smells, as we do. when we think of the word "odor", or "smell", the first thing that comes to our (at least to my) minds is "an unpleasant smell". personally, i find laundry detergent to be offensive, as well as a neck sopping wet in cologne. but, this must be (anti)socialized. i'm inclined to think everyone's smell-preferences are socialized, which is a bit of a moot point, because if there are humans, there will be human society; we are gregarious creatures, and a physical fact of our being is that we are going to hang out together. so, socialization isn't really that seperate from instinct, innate preference, etc. in fact, humans are almost totally dependant on socialization for behavior -- they have almost no natural instincts, other than crying when hungry, rooting at a nipple, etc. but, it's still socialization. in other words, relating to smells, there aren't any inherently unpleasant smells -- the experiencing of a smell as unpleasant has mostly to do with hygeine, which can be real survival/health issues if poor hygeine is taken far enough (think: the year 800, sewage flowing down the street, dumping poo out the window, etc). of course, a stinky armpit isn't going to kill anyone; the whole hygeine thing has been taken to the extreme, i think just because we are capable of doing so. we all have running water, loofas, and shower gel. well, at least there's a "bath and body works" nearby, unless you're in the mountains of west virginia, married to your one-toothed brother, in which case you perhaps wouldn't smell like roses whether there were a "bath and body works" nearby or not. over-civilization is responsible for our smell value-judgements -- proclaiming "look at what we can do! look how far from nature we've come! look at our loofa-technology!" so, tell people to get over it, and rejoice in the quiddity of your smell -- experience it for itself, without comparing it to anything, as a thing-unto-itself. probably three days or so, on average. good rule of thumb. |
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