Women's Deodorant

Does anyone know why there don't seem to be many--or any?-- deodorants for women? I live in a hot, humid climate and I've never been one of those rare people who look fresh and cool as a morning flower even when working outside, so in the summer I use the strongest antiperspirant I can find: Mitchum. Mitchum's old slogan saying it was so strong you could skip a day was no joke and a couple of years back they strengthened the formula even more. It would be overkill in winter, so when the weather cools down in fall, I switch over to something cheaper and less powerful. (Suave is the cheapest brand here, so it's usually that.)

But I'm the sort of person who won't take anything to bring down a fever (unless it's dangerously high) because I figure that fever is there for a reason and I should let it do its job. I hate getting all sweaty, I don't want to stain my clothes with perspiration, and I have enough social strikes against me without adding the great American taboo of stinking, so I'm okay with stopping my armpit perspiration in summer. But there's not much of it in winter. So a couple of months ago I was thinking maybe I should just use a deodorant, rather than an antiperspirant, in winter.

But women's deodorant is missing in action. Men's deodorant is everywhere. Male-marketed deodorants are more common, or so it seems, than male-targeted anti-perspirants and anti-perspirant/deodorant combos. This is despite the fact male deodorants must be harder to make than female deodorants. Males are the stinkier of the species--of this species and every other species I have any familiarity with. Male deodorants must cover up the powerful male armpit sweat smell without stopping the sweat--and they do, and very well at that! So I know it's possible to make deodorants that cover up the lighter female sweat smell without stopping the perspiration, but going by the shelves in local stores, no one does any more. (For the record, I didn't check any health food stores in this little local search.)

Most women aren't going to use male deodorants because they smell like male cologne and the smell is strong (it has to be). There are some unisex anti-perspirants (like Mitchum), but I could only find one deodorant that seemed to be unisex: Tom's of Maine sat at the intersection of the men's and women's underarm products and was not noticeably targeted to either. It also claimed to be unscented, which means it only has the scent of the essential oils used in it. Pleasant enough, no doubt, but it was also nearly five times the cost of the Suave anti-perspirant. I bought the Suave. I also experimented a little with a homemade concoction, but my solution so far is just to use less of the Suave.

But the question here is why no (or so few) women's deodorant? Why do the manufactureres think there's less of a market for it? Uncle Pookie and I discussed this and our best guess is that women just don't like to sweat. Uncle Pookie also had a theory about these sort of products coming on the market back when many men still labored outside in the sun all day, so they needed to sweat, but I'm skeptical of that explaining it, because at that time few people had air conditioning yet and most people didn't eat out mucy, so most women spent hours over a hot stove every day. I don't remember what other ideas we came up with, only that our best guess was that women just don't like to get sweaty, so with women choosing anti-perspirants, the market for women's deodorants dried up. (Hardy har har.)

Is It Like the Turtles?

You know how some people say no one has free will, that everything we do is just the product of our upbringing and societal influences. And that the people who brought us up aren't responsible for their behavior either, because they also are the products of their upbringing. And the people who brought them up are just the products of their upbringing, and so on. Well, does it just keep on going and going, all the way back to the first recognizable human? Is there any point at which someone was responsible for his behavior, or is it just upbringing all the way down?

Pharmacies Should Carry Mental Purgatives

It's amazing the amount of mental junk that we carry around. For example, for years part of my brain has been working on the question of why the Figurines commercial had the woman singing, "I love how I look in my gabardines, so I keep myself fit with Figurines." Well, it rhymes of course, but those were '70s style gauchos, and I never heard them called gabardines and who would call them that--no one says, "I love how I look in my twills/crinkle cottons/houndstooths"--so why have it? Would the audience even know what "gabardines" was supposed to refer to if she weren't kicking up her legs as she sang? Or am I just a non-sophisticate who never knew that all the cool people used to call their gauchos gabardines?

I think the part of my mind that keeps worrying over this ancient commercial is the part that should have been trying to get me into MIT. Or at least keep track whether I need to buy more postage stamps or not.

I also wonder if this is something that has only started happening since the advent of mass media, or if ancient Romans used to find themselves unable to enjoy the latest gladiator spectacle because their mind was insisting on going over the odd word choice in that play they saw twenty-five years ago.

More on the Humpty Dumpty Question

A few entries back, I posted Uncle Pookie's question about Humpty Dumpty. Well, I then happened to be rereading the Alice books (which, incidentally, I did not enjoy as much as when I was a child, although the songs are still great fun) and noticed that even back then Humpty Dumpty was already being depicted as an egg. Hmm. Why? Wikipedia offers four suggestions. One was that the nursery rhyme was originally a riddle, the answer to which was that HD was an egg. There were also two military explanations and a political explanation; I'd suggested to Uncle Pookie that the rhyme might refer to a political downfall, but I'm not so sure I buy the Wiki explanation of its referring to Richard III--for one thing, by the time he fell off his horse in Bosworth field, it was pretty much over for him and I don't think any of his men or horses were trying to put him together again.

Dog Soldiers

I wonder if military service dogs are ever spit upon.

"Let 'Er Rip"

I don't care enough to actually research this, but my theory is that the saying "Let 'Er Rip", often used when starting up something dangerous of noisy, comes partly from the term RIP--Requiescat in Pace, or Rest in Peace.