this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2026
141 points (100.0% liked)
Slop.
939 readers
347 users here now
For posting all the anonymous reactionary bullshit that you can't post anywhere else.
Rule 1: All posts must include links to the subject matter, and no identifying information should be redacted.
Rule 2: If your source is a reactionary website, please use archive.is instead of linking directly.
Rule 3: No sectarianism.
Rule 4: TERF/SWERFs Not Welcome
Rule 5: No bigotry of any kind, including ironic bigotry.
Rule 6: Do not post fellow hexbears.
Rule 7: Do not individually target federated instances' admins or moderators.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Humans have odors and stigmatizing them is doing the work of capitalism.
Nah, I disagree. Most human cultures have practiced regular or semi-regular bathing , to different extents, but this whole idea that we just naturally smell fine in our "state of nature" is largely BS. The whole idea that medieval people only bathed once a year is misinfo, most large medieval towns had bathhouses and we have illustrations of people bathing in rivers and ponds from that period. Even our paleolithic ancestors probably dipped themselves in rivers after a hot day so they don't stink up the longhouse.
Well, it seems obvious to me that the point is not "never showering", but that the human body is likely not properly evolved to shower every single day, especially with soap + shampoo + deodorant. There is an arguable extent of natural body odour which should be normalized, and people likely, for health reasons, shouldn't be applying soap and germicides on their armpits daily as we (myself included) do.
please do not normalize BO
Sure, let's keep normalizing painful rashes instead like the one I'm having for the past 2 months already as a consequence of socially requiring to apply soap and deodorant daily. Continue stigmatizing normal body function. All socialists should also continue to stigmatize those who don't perform such wonderful and healthy traditions as teeth whitening proceduresb or laser body hair removal. /s
It's maddening hearing self-reported socialists/anarchists propagating "continue stigmatizing normal bodily functions!"
unlike the teeth whitening or the body hair, odors are inherently unpleasant to be around. i'm sorry you have to deal with that particular problem. maybe there's a sensible middle ground to be reached here?
Odors aren't inherently unpleasant to be around, and you're being incredibly uncritical by believing that. Humans routinely condition ourselves into not just accepting but loving pungent smells like funky cheese, vinegar in our salad, durian, and we even condition ourselves to associate chemical lung-burning smells such as bleach or chlorine with cleanliness and start to like their smell.
If you can't critically examine smells and the social conditioning around them, I don't have anything else to say to you. I just hope one day you can feel the love I feel for my girlfriend when I smell her faint scent in the morning after waking up before she showers.
i get into internet arguments about showering specifically so i can critically examine my own opinions. but you bring up durian as an example. you would expect that if it were as routine as you say, the people most exposed to it would be happy to marinate in durian smells. i can't find a single airline anywhere in the world that will allow you to eat durian during the flight. yes, there are sociopolitical implications, but unsealed durians are prohibited on singaporean transit. how, then, could it be as simple as "routine conditioning"?
Great job overfocusing on Durians and bringing up private airline policy instead of responding to the idea of social conditioning of smell
ok well that was my response to the idea of social conditioning of smell
A private company's policy during capitalism?
first off, it's not a private company. it's (more or less) every airline and metro, public or private. secondly, so what? capital isn't a black box that takes any input and returns the most evil output. it acts according to laws that can be understood and studied. what particular law of capital produced the result in question?
I feel you. The soap I use or the deodorant I use (I switched both recently), caused the skin to peel under my armpits. It happened once before when I had aluminum-based deodorant, this time I'm not too sure what the problem is but ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
I feel terrible if I don't shower though, if I go even a day without showering I feel disgusted with myself
Well. Except for that period when Europeans believed bathing let "bad airs" into your skin and made you sick.
Yes, and there's some historical evidence that it actually made people MORE sick.
Jewish and Muslim communities weren't nearly hit as hard by the Black Death than Christian ones, and it's theorized it's because Judaism and Islam requires regular ritual bathing. Turns out it's important to wash your penis.
Europeans were also well known for smelling like shit. There's stories about people lighting incense whenever Europeans are around, and the Europeans thought it was some kind of ritual, but actually they were just chasing away their stank.
Yes they were. Eurocentric histories just dont focus on how the black death affected the middle east. It was apocalyptic in north Africa. Centuries old infrastructure could no longer be maintained causing ecological change and desertification that still scar the landscape to this day.
What an absolutely reactionary and uninformed take. Like, showering everyday probably doesn't have a direct health benefit, and in fact it is damaging to your hair to shampoo it every day, but perfumes, unguents, bathing habits, and general cleaniness, as well as a general public disagreement with strong body odors has been a thing since well before capitalism has been a thing.
There is a good goddamn reason that frankincense and myrrh were part of the royal gifts supposedly given to the infant Jesus by the wise men. They were ritual perfumes, as good or different smells that have been associated with divinity forever. Unfortunately, the stigmatization of smell has much less to do with capitalism, and much more to do with enculturated practices that extend far deeper than capitalism. Capitalism absolutely takes advantage of that stigmatization, but it is not the cause of it, which means that socialism is simply the first step in addressing it, not a solution in of itself.
Note you acknowledge theres a spectrum of body odors.
Smell is the most stigmatized sense; where if its noticeable its considered bad. Go outside and you will see and hear many different things but smell? Realistically itll just be cars. So smelling anyone (outside of a few highly commodified fragrances) is experienced like when someone plays loud music from their phone in public.
This has absolutely nothing to do with my point, in the slightest and yet again it is absolutely horseshit.
For one, I don't live in a city, so the most often disagreeable smell that I encounter regularly that is noticable is quite literally if I am downwind of manure.
And for two, people love it when there is a noticable smell of flowers, they love the smell of a bakery. I know some people who absolutely love the smell of rubber, leather, and grease, and others who it will make sick to their stomachs. Some people even love the smell of cigarettes, while others absolutely can't stand it. The smell right before it rains, or fresh earth is absolutely wonderful and agreeable to most people. So it has absolutely nothing to do with if the smell is 'noticable' or not.
A smell is absolutely NOT disagreeable simply if it is noticable and stigmatized to people 'outside of a few commodified fragrances', these fragrances are commodified because they are already considered to be generally agreeable. It is enculturation heightened by commoditization. You are putting powers onto marketing and commoditization that they simply do not possess..