How I Gave Up Giving Up Anti-Perspirant For Good and Conquered Fear

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For the past two years I have embarked on a  time consuming and fruitless journey to abandon convention and embrace natural health. By this I mean I attempted to give up traditional anti-perspirant. Everywhere you look, there is an article by some health pundit or self appointed authority/celebrity espousing the benefits of going anti-perspirant free. The health claims are varied, specious, and of course, none are peer reviewed. Nevertheless, tired of my fixations on old fears, I fell victim to this new one.  Sweating is natural, I reasoned, it can't be good to prevent it.

I tried the deodorant route. For those of you currently in possession of a life without the time to research this topic let me explain: anti-perspirant contains properties that curb sweating and odor while deodorant just eliminates the latter. It accomplishes this with a variety of frightening and repulsive aromas designed to make your pits smell like a designated (read: acceptable) odor rather than your own B.O. Deodorants come with fetching names like Fresh Linen which makes you smell like you bathed in laundry detergent or Ocean Breeze which makes you smell like salty laundry detergent or Mandarin Dream which makes you smell like orange laundry detergent. You smell a theme here? The problem with these products is not only the vile and overpowering odor that rises up and hits you in the face every time you raise your arms but the traditional deodorants contain something called parabens which we all know must be avoided at all costs (if you didn't know about the danger of parabens it is far too late to help yourself now, just make sure your affairs are in order, just saying).

So onto the natural products. Tom's of Maine makes a deodorant besides their weird and salty toothpaste. This had bad JuJu written all over it since Tom is my ex-husband's name. He never worked either.  I tried that Kiss My Ass stuff (Hmmm, that is what it's called, right?) but you would have been better off kissing my ass than going anywhere near my pits after a day with that one. I went to that fancy cosmetic store and bought something by a fragrance company with Madagascar vanilla. It smelled great for about as long as your favorite perfume lasts which is about fifteen minutes. So then I tried actual perfume. I had mistakenly bought a bottle of a strong rose fragrance thinking I loved the smell of roses but no one loves roses this much. Imagine being drowned in the most heavily scented cloying red roses where they are stuffed in every orifice and you expire gagging; that would describe this perfume experience.  This would make the perfect deodorant I reasoned. Unfortunately, every time I lifted my arm, red roses wafted up and punched me in the face. 

So I capitulated and conquered my fear. At least the fear of anti-perspirant. I am still in the thrall of the fear of smelling bad.  Fear drives us all for well or ill.  We brush our teeth for fear of losing them or having bad breath and never getting laid. We diet out of fear of never fitting back in our leather pants, having to buy all new clothes, and never getting laid.  My husband is one of those lucky few that just naturally smells good ninety percent of the time.  I believe that the South African/British bacteria that colonize his body have civilized discourse, enjoy Polo, and retire to the veranda for Shandy sundowners. At the slightest provocation of stress or imminent exertion my colony of bacteria riot like visitor's day at the Monkey House.  So I finally gave up my fear of anti-perspirant because it is unlikely I will ever get over the fear of not getting laid.