The Next Notebook

Thursday, July 22, 2010: "Paula, one of your fellow housekeepers, mentions to you that she recently read about the dangers of chemicals on the body. She has decided to stop wearing deodorant and recommends you do so as well to protect your health. She says that her long-term health is more important than a little bit of perspiration on her body. You disagree with Paula. You think that deodorant is important. Bathing by itself is insufficient for the work that you both do each day."

I had to do customer relations training through an online program at the hotel I was working at in Jackson, WY, and some of these situations were hilarious enough for me to save into my email and find a year later.

I, like Paula, have avoided deodorant partly because of the carcinogens, etc. And partly because I have always found it easy to ignore hygiene in favor of my ideas, imagination, work. And though I've never really worked as a housekeeper, my mother could always smell my non-deodorized body from a few feet away...though it was probably at least half due to the fact that I would wear the same clothes over and over as a teenager.

Anyway, I do better overall as I'm older and in Bangladesh I bathe more anyway, since I sweat a lot walking around, standing around, and most of all doing karate. But since there's a guy from karate who likes me even though he's really only ever been around a version of me that is not only usually not-deodorized but also dripping with sweat and sometimes red-faced, it reinforces the third "partly" to my reason for avoiding deodorant: I'm paranoid it messes with my pheromones, and that will not do!

once I get to Bangladesh.