Sniff this

Bad habits and personal quirks can be annoying, but sometimes things that people don’t do are even more irksome than the things that they do. When my suitemates don’t wash their dishes, for example, it bothers me to no end. (Don’t cups of stagnant, gnat-breeding water and sauce-encrusted knives and forks sicken everyone?) If I pass a swimmer on the way to class and he/she doesn’t return my “hello,” I get a little peeved. (Am I that invisible? Are they that superior?)

Recently, I have been bothered by a lack of deodorant. This is not a widespread phenomenon, but I do know one person who, whenever I am within five feet of him, I want to grab and shake. “Maybe you can’t smell yourself,” I want to tell him, “but for god’s sake, have a little consideration for the rest of us. I can barely breathe!”

He probably does not smell himself, or if he does, that smell does not bother him. Nor must it bother his girlfriend, as they have been dating for quite a long time without any detectable change in his scent. Yet the smell bothers me, and I am bothered by that very feeling.

Why should I consider natural human smell unpleasant? Was I trained to think (…smell) this way? Practically from birth, we are made to keep ourselves not only looking unnatural but smelling unnatural. We pluck, shave, and brush our natural hairiness into submission, not to mention painting, puncturing, and tattooing many of our natural physical features. Why should we not use flower-scented soaps, herb-scented shampoos, and chemical-scented perfumes to make ourselves smell as unnatural as we look?

Yet, what bothers me is the fact that I have come to interpret these appearances and smells as pleasant and normal to the point of being insignificant and to interpret what is actually natural and human as abnormal and repulsive. Nevertheless, whenever I see (or, rather, smell) this boy, I feel the intense desire to hand him a bar of deodorant and ask him to please, at least for my sake, use it.