I stink. Chances are, you stink, too: we all stink. Post-pubescent odors are fain to cling to skin and clothes, inspiring a huge market for odor-neutralizers. But how do modern people mask their scents? How do the scents come about? It is a simpler explanation than one might expect.
Today, you can buy deodorant “creams, powders, sprays, towels, and roll-ons.” Many do not realize that deodorants differ from antiperspirants, even though both tend to be sold abreast. The Cambridge Dictionary defines antiperspirant as “a substance that is put on the skin, especially under the arms, to prevent or reduce sweating.” On the other hand, deodorant is “a substance that you put on your body to prevent or hide unpleasant smells.”
What strikes me about the definitions is that only deodorants are designed to hide smells, whereas antiperspirants are designed to prevent sweat. How, then, do they both stop the stench with inherently distinct functions? The question lies in what causes smell. Harvard Health purports that “Sweat itself doesn’t have a smell. The odor happens when bacteria come into contact with the perspiration your apocrine glands release.” Moreover, a 2015 study of underarm bacteria concludes, “96% of sequences assigned to the genera Staphylococcus, Corynebacterium and Propionibacterium.” You do not need to know the bacteria species to understand their implications: sweat + bacteria = stink.
The ways we combat our underarms with deodorant “were introduced in the late nineteenth century,” according to The National Museum of American History. Before then, talcum powder was the most popular home remedy for keeping skin dry and odors away. With the introduction of Mum deodorant to the commercial markets in 1988, the Western world changed. Its active ingredient is zinc, but antiperspirants to follow would overwhelmingly employ aluminum.
Aluminum may not be the element people expect to stop sweat. Some even question the safety of placing metallic derivatives on the skin. To address the first insecurity, an Iranian team tested how aluminum operates on a chemical level in 2011 and reaffirmed that “the metal ions precipitate with mucopolysaccharides, damaging epithelial cells along the lumen of the duct and forming a plug that blocks sweat output.” In layman’s terms: aluminum salts form a fine gel on the skin, preventing sweat from exiting the pores. This protective aluminum layer has worried consumers in recent years. Some go even as far as to claim that aluminum exposure promotes “neurotoxicity, Alzheimer’s disease, and breast cancer.” However, these fears are unfounded– empirical analysts can assure that correlation does not equal causation. A 2017 study proves beliefs that aluminum as found in antiperspirants creates disease are “not supported by consistent scientific data.”
If people are afraid of antiperspirants, though, is there even a point in wearing them? Consider the famous 1955 sweaty T-shirt study by Swiss biologist Claus Wedekind: “Wedekind had a group of female college students smell T-shirts that had been worn by male students for three nights, without deodorant, cologne or scented soaps. Overwhelmingly, the women preferred the odors of men with the most dissimilar MHCs to their own.” MHCs, for reference, are “[groups] of genes that code for proteins found on the surfaces of cells that help the immune system recognize foreign substances.” The sweaty T-shirt study suggests that humans evolved smelling each other’s B.O. and still exhibit biological preferences for certain musks. In Brazil in 2005, the investigation was furthered with a group of 58 students. This time, they tested body odors from both sweat and urine. Interestingly, they “found a significant correlation only when female smellers evaluated male sweat odors.”
What does all of this mean for us?
Well, if you want to attract a woman, perhaps you don’t need to drown yourself in cologne: opt for a neutral antiperspirant instead. If you are a woman, perhaps aluminum antiperspirants are also the most effective deodorants, seeing that they chemically inhibit sweat and often have pleasant aromas.
As for what scent to favor, experts say vanilla is a safe bet. The Crossmodal Research Laboratory at Oxford University predicts, “vanilla is likely so universally liked, not because of its molecular structure per se, but because of ubiquitous early exposure (it is one of the odorants that passes to breast milk), not to mention in a historical context its anti-microbial, medicinal, and anxiety-relieving properties.”
The next time you shop for a stick or spray or roll of deodorizing antiperspirant, check for aluminum as an active ingredient and vanillin as a scent. It’s science!
