“There are microbes on our body that produce nasty odours, but they’re not harmful to us.
“And the reason we bath and shower is that we want to get rid of those odours and we want to feel comfortable.
“That’s fine — but as far as preventing disease, it’s really not important.”
In 2022, we hate a stinky person, but it wasn’t always that way, as Yuval Noah Harari writes in his book Sapiens.
“In modern affluent societies, it is customary to take a shower and change your clothes every day.
“Medieval peasants went without washing for months on end, and hardly ever changed their clothes.
“The very thought of living like that, filthy and reeking to the bone, is abhorrent to us. Yet medieval peasants seem not to have minded.”
In the last 200 years, we have become increasingly stink-aphobic, changing shirts and undies, showering and washing our hands constantly.
We can’t handle the natural smells admitted from other humans.
In May 2018, a flight from Spain to the Netherlands had to make an emergency landing in Portugal due to the body odour of a man named Audrey Suchilin.
According to Newsweek, he smelt so bad passengers became nauseous, and at least one fainted.
If that flight had been full of medieval peasants, they wouldn’t have noticed.
They were used to people stinking. Anyone who has visited Rotorua knows how quickly you can get used to a stench.
Maybe it’s time to stop cleaning ourselves.
Power and soap bills would plummet, and there would be no need to build expensive ensuites.
Our country would need fewer pipes, damns and powerplants.
The climate and our import-export deficit would likely benefit too.
Like any big societal change, the unclean revolution will need pioneers to get it off the ground.
The first brave Kiwis who stop showering will be ostracised.
In 2022 a woman who smells like onions, rotten tuna and faecal matter isn’t getting a promotion.
A dude who reeks of blue cheese, rotten apples and wet goat hair isn’t getting a second date.
However, as more and more people stop cleaning, the stigma will ease.
One day a filthy New Zealander who stinks of spoilt milk and dog leavings could become PM.
There might be additional social advantages to everyone stopping washing.
According to recent research, stinking might help us better understand each other.
In a paper titled The scent of emotions: A systematic review of human intra- and interspecific chemical communication of emotions, Elisa Calvi, Umberto Quassolo and colleagues claimed that “evidence has emerged that humans might be influenced by unconscious messages sent through chemosignals in body odours.
“Data concerning the ability of humans to recognise fear, maybe related to the evolutionary role of these emotions in the fight-or-flight reactions, are well known”.
This paper argues that humans can sense and react to signals in each other’s body odours.
Maybe if we didn’t cover our natural smell by aggressively cleaning, deodorising and scenting ourselves and allowed our friends, family and workmates to sniff us as God intended, we would be able to smell who is scared, lying or attracted to us without words.
This would save a lot of time. If you are too shy to tell that special person how you feel, don’t shower, and your body would tell them for you.
We all know people who got overly excited during the pandemic and cleaned their hands too often; as Professor Bloomfield says, they “were washing their hands in a very obsessive way, their hands were being stripped of oils and became dry.
“So it’s not good for us to wash too regularly.”
Cleaning ourselves every day has no effect on our health; it masks our emotions, damages our skin and costs us and our nation money.
I challenge you to take a stand and go to work today, filthy.
Do the right thing and live a life more stinky.
I can’t - I’m single, and I really need ladies to like me, but everyone else should throw their body wash in the bin for the good of the nation.
