You’ve had a busy day, dropping the kids off at school before that 9 am meeting, wolfing down lunch at your desk, getting home just in time to make dinner before whisking the kids off to bed. You take a seat on your couch and notice a small smell, so you do a quick whiff test and wrinkle your nose when you realize it’s you.
Your partner wants to cuddle on the couch but you say you’re not into it when in reality you’re worried they’re going to be put off by your body odour.
But why?
Our society leads us to believe that we’re meant to smell like coconut and cool cucumbers from morning until night, despite the millions of things our bodies and minds are doing at any given moment. We’re constantly walking, thinking, working, processing, all of which generate sweat. Because guess what, humans sweat.
Our society leads us to believe that we’re meant to smell like coconut and cool cucumbers from morning until night
We sweat a lot in our daily lives. In fact, the only areas on our body where we don’t have any sweat glands are our ears, nails, and lips. While different activities trigger different kinds of sweat, all come with the same negative feeling that somehow sweating is dirty and gross. How is something so humanely natural treated with a dose of shame?
The answer is we’re conditioned to strive for cleanliness, as apparently, that will make us more desirable.
Regardless of how this learned behaviour came about, feeling shame around sweating is a natural reaction and your feelings about it are valid. When you’ve spent your entire adult life being told body odour is something to hide, how could you not feel a little embarrassed when you catch a whiff of yourself?
Feeling shame around our body’s natural odour is a learned behaviour. Fortunately, anything that can be learned can also be unlearned.
Feeling shame around our body’s natural odour is a learned behaviour. Fortunately, anything that can be learned can also be unlearned.
So how do we begin to unlearn this behaviour?
- Understand why we sweat. There are differences between psychological sweat and cooling sweat, and how you manage the two vary
- Let your body self-regulate. Blocking sweat glands with ingredients such as aluminum in antiperspirants doesn’t give your body the chance to learn how to regulate its own temperature. Essential oils such as rosemary and sage assist in the body’s natural sweat regulation
- Get to know how your body smells, you might find you like it! Your shame might be stemming from unfamiliarity with your body and what it’s doing for you, so stick your nose in your armpit next time you’re wanting to hide and experience first-hand how wonderful your natural scent can be
- Wear clothing you feel comfortable and confident in, that allows for proper ventilation and isn’t smushed right up into your armpits.
- Talk about it. The best way we can dismantle societally learned behaviours is by talking about them with our peers, breaking through the ingrained beliefs to come out the other side
Thoughtful ingredients for your underarms
While we at Nala encourage unlearning behaviours that don’t serve our daily lives, we also understand that doing so takes courage and time. That’s why we use deliberate and selective ingredients in our free-from deodorants to actively neutralize odour.
Our combination of ingredients, like arrowroot powder, activated charcoal, tapioca powder, and baking soda work to dry and neutralize odour before it even happens. Ingredients like rosemary CO2 extract, organic virgin coconut oil, organic tea tree leaf oil, LEMA oil, lemon myrtle extract, and bergamot have antimicrobial properties that help combat the intermingling of your sweat with the bacteria that causes body odour.
We top all of that off with beautiful essential oils like sandalwood, grapefruit, and copaiba oil.
You can unlearn shame and feel confident and secure at the same time.
You can unlearn shame and feel confident and secure at the same time.
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