Men and women's deodorants, what gives? [Musing/Rant]

[JimmyJazz]

6 hours ago, MarRister said:

Wtf does Africa smell like? What a bizarre name. 😂

It's made up of apparently African spices and aromas according to Lynx's marketing. I believe Vanilla and Geranium are the two strongest scents and it's been described by people as warm and exotic.

 

I'm using Lynx Africa at the moment because it was on sale last time I was in Boots, £2 for 300ml! Bargain! And I do think it smells really nice provided you don't lather yourself in it.

[Janus the Fox]

African Safaris I know aren't the most… pleasant of smells  

[Lord Revan]

I'm pretty sure that there is not a difference, just different smells.

[daveb]

Or just different packaging.  

(possibly with the same scents under different names, such as "unicorn sparkles" vs "manly welder's sparks")  

[Lilibulero]

There are some lovely musk/vetiver/sandalwood blends that I love, so I buy the scent because it's neither male nor female.

[Acing It]

I haven't read all the answers here but there are people claiming that deodorants respond differently on different people. The different 'brands' of hormones someone has within them should be a factor in how this reaction takes place, hence the women's and men's deodorant to some extent. This may be entirely BS though, so don't quote me. I'm too lazy and it's too late to look for anything to underpin this too. 

I bet, though, that a lot is the normal gendered BS in society. I bet that if you were to put some 'women's' deodorant in the men's hygiene bags, some would rather throw it away than use it because basically the cap is pink or something. 

[AavaMeri]

9 hours ago, Acing It said:

I bet, though, that a lot is the normal gendered BS in society. I bet that if you were to put some 'women's' deodorant in the men's hygiene bags, some would rather throw it away than use it because basically the cap is pink or something. 

Yeah, I'm operating under the assumption that a guy might not want to have a girly-looking deodorant, not matter how homeless or sweaty he is. The gendering thing sits in our society tightly, and I think it's an useless fight to force a homeless dude to use sparkly unicorn deodorant rather than just pick him something guy-like that costs the same. At worst, the homeless guy might see it as a poor joke aimed at him, and that's not the intention. If one wants to fight for pink deodorants with a guy, it's better to pick someone who can choose his deodorant on his own.

The sparkly unicorn deodorant should go to the most pink hygiene bag I can find, so the contents match to the package and someone loving pink and sparkles can be happy. In fact, the ideal could be that I could match hygiene products with bags so that the hygiene products in the bag match the look and there are no surprises. Even things like a blue bag having  a blue toothbrush and so.

Now I finally managed to find some affordable unscented antiperspirants on sale, hooray! \o/ (Usually a white or turquoise neutral-looking package, kinda looking like they could be from a pharmacy.) Now I can make unisex hygiene bags!

At one point I considered if olive counts as a girly smell or unisex, but I left that on the shelf.

[Albine]

Reading over a few comments I think there is some over all truth regarding marketing and biology. "pink" and scent and marketing kinda go together. men do sweat more and tend to go towards masc scents vs women.   But on the other side of the coin, to a homeless person does that really matter? If I was homeless and someone gave me a bag of hygiene products would I be questioning the gender of  deodorant? probably not  but that is just me  

[AavaMeri]

I heard from the aforementioned homeless help organization that they let their clients to pick the bags they want rather than just give them. They don't want the workers to define the clients by picking bags for them. That's a good thing to hear!

[daveb]

2 hours ago, AavaMeri said:

I heard from the aforementioned homeless help organization that they let their clients to pick the bags they want rather than just give them. They don't want the workers to define the clients by picking bags for them. That's a good thing to hear!

Ah, cool

Then making themed bags as you described is extra helpful - they can choose a bag that appeals to them.  

[nanogretchen4]

Some options to consider: 

 

1. Give money to homeless people and let them make their own decisions about what to spend it on.

 

2. Give money to a food bank or homeless shelter so they can buy needed items at a bulk discount. Your money will go much further and be more usefully spent than if you use it to buy toiletries at retail prices.

 

3. Collect an assortment of toiletries and maybe have a big box of soaps, a big box of period products, a big box of condoms, a big box of deodorants, etc. Give the recipients empty bags and tell them how many items they can select from each box.

[Acing It]

6 hours ago, Albine said:

But on the other side of the coin, to a homeless person does that really matter? If I was homeless and someone gave me a bag of hygiene products would I be questioning the gender of  deodorant? probably not  but that is just me

I'll just put this here from your profile: "male but leans non binary" 😄

[Acing It]

3 hours ago, nanogretchen4 said:

Give money to homeless people and let them make their own decisions about what to spend it on.

I think there's a catch 22 in there. I can imagine that, if I were homeless and hadn't been able to take care of myself, I would find it very challenging paradoxically, to go into a shop and buy toiletries, because I would find it very difficult to go into a shop at all for being conscious how my lack of hygiene would affect other people and how they look at me. I think in that sense, providing a hygiene bag to them would be a boon and welcomed. Just another perspective, not criticism of the point you're making which generally is a valid one. 

[Acing It]

I'm not sure about men sweating more. I think this could be in the same realm as women don't burp or fart. 

[AavaMeri]

16 hours ago, nanogretchen4 said:

Some options to consider: 

 

1. Give money to homeless people and let them make their own decisions about what to spend it on.

 

2. Give money to a food bank or homeless shelter so they can buy needed items at a bulk discount. Your money will go much further and be more usefully spent than if you use it to buy toiletries at retail prices.

 

3. Collect an assortment of toiletries and maybe have a big box of soaps, a big box of period products, a big box of condoms, a big box of deodorants, etc. Give the recipients empty bags and tell them how many items they can select from each box.

Option 3. would fit best, even though I don't think I have power to change the project at this phase. Letting everyone pick what they want from a selection of bins indeed would be an ideal solution, it would cater people better than grab-all bags. However, if there are left-over items from the project that don't go into bags (things like we have surplus of shampoos), I think we are going to donate those separately. The homeless help organization will have use for those.

Options 1. and 2. might be most rational options (though with option 1. I see problem with the homeless people who are severe drug users or alcoholics and have problems with self-control (there are a fair share of them), to them gifting hygiene products directly is most rational thing to do), but that isn't really what our organization does. Our organization is pretty much a volunteer group of crafts people and bargain hunters (who are experts of the prices and sales in their local stores), and we kinda think it more like "we want to give a bag of goods to these people so a) they have this stuff they need and b) they feel like having a gift from someone who cares". I think one explaining feature is that this organization largely consists of moms ^^' It is also in line what we have previously done, such as making/buying and filling pencil cases and backpacks for school kids from poor families and baby care bags for new moms in a poor financial situation. I admit that things could be done more rationally and there is a kind of egoistic streak of "I give someone something they need, and I want to feel it kinda personally". The hygiene bags for the homeless kinda follow the history of the organization.

Finland also has monetary support system for jobless and/or homeless people (how good it is, I'm not 100% sure), and the homeless help organization assists their clients to claim that support.

[Albine]

My 2 cents to give money to homeless probably would encourage them to buy items that they probably should not be buying like alcohol and or drugs, which is many cases is why they are homeless in the first place (not all but a large %).  Food, Clothing, Hygiene products  all good stuff to give them as well as affordable housing and possibly classes on how to get them back on their feet in a job or housing situation

[Reindeer]

On 5/10/2022 at 4:22 AM, AavaMeri said:

Hello, feel free move this topic if it isn't in the right place.

Long story short, I'm middle of a charity project that aims to collect and donate filled hygiene product bags for homeless people (this is within a volunteer organization, I'm not the only person participating).

 

The original idea was to separate the bags by gender (or sex, rather?), which makes sense to some extend (like in case of sanitary pads or and so). But I was still like, "that's just stuff to make someone clean, why can't there be unisex bags, is it the pink tax again?" Even without the whole "people aren't just of two cis-genders" thing, unisex bags would just make sense, as you don't need to estimate the gender/sex ratio of the attending homeless people. At least there could be that there could be feminine, masculine, and unisex bags, and the unisex bags could even out any gender statistics as anyone can have them.

And then I faced the hurdle: deodorants. 

I noticed that there is a WALL between men and women's deodorants, with only few products overlapping. I personally use odorless antiperspirant that probably is pretty unisex (there are more male-aimed variant of it tho), but it is more expensive than my budget for the charity project allows. So with the cheapest decent deodorant options, it's either... flowery smell or some sort of sport smell? What the heck is a sport smell?? Isn't the point of a deodorant that you don't smell sweaty??

Please explain this to me. @___@ Gendered deodorants, why? Is it expected that dudes and girls smell different? (I got a terrible sense of smell, too.) Also, any ideas of affordable unisex-ish deodorants or antiperspirants? Can't promise everything can be found in Finland, tho.

Some advice, go to some place like dollar tree or dollar general. They will have cheap knock off no brand everything. Also yes female to male scent is usually flower or mens which often just reaks of alchohol. I guess we assume if men smell like a clean scrape they are sanitary. Its the same with cologne. Most men cologne smells like a bottle of alchohol dilluted with water. I could literally throw whiskey, rubbing alchohol and a bit of water in a container and call it cologne. No one would tell the difference. 

[AavaMeri]

8 hours ago, Reindeer said:

Some advice, go to some place like dollar tree or dollar general. They will have cheap knock off no brand everything. Also yes female to male scent is usually flower or mens which often just reaks of alchohol. I guess we assume if men smell like a clean scrape they are sanitary. Its the same with cologne. Most men cologne smells like a bottle of alchohol dilluted with water. I could literally throw whiskey, rubbing alchohol and a bit of water in a container and call it cologne. No one would tell the difference. 

Haven't got exactly those, but after some research I did find some Finnish (or in-Finland-operating) "dollar stores". I've got improved idea on where to get what cheapest. Still not on the level of the sharpest bargain hunters in our volunteer organization, but still better than when I started.

I must admit, in addition to my poor sense of scent, I don't really smell deodorants at stores, because I have a mask on and it makes any smelling harder ^^' I just trust on that whatever the store mostly sells is something that people actually buy... Whenever possible, I grab unscented antiperspirants, because anyone can use those.

Side note: I got a sharp-nosed mom who is prone to get overloads with too smelly things, so in my childhood, most of the hygiene products were unscented. Makes me even less familiar with this whole scent sector. Nowadays I try to get unscented anyway, partially because I don't trust my sense of smell and want to avoid smelling awful to someone with more sensitive nose. Additionally, I don't really enjoy scented products in general, because I can't smell too mild ones and I get a headache of too strong ones, and the safe line is thin.

[daveb]

(I'm with you and your mom on that side note. Unscented products for the win, or as "unscented" as they can be. I have even ordered stuff online, such as unscented soap, unscented hand sanitizer, etc.)

[AavaMeri]

Update: Officially we decided to have men-targeted, women-targeted, and unisex/unscented options. I think this is further good, because unscented options also cater people with allergies or sensitivities (and unscented is pretty much as unisex as you can go). Women-targeted bags also come with an assortment of period products (well, maybe not something that applies to all women, but still to a fair share of them). Any extra stuff that doesn't go into bags (we have a TON of tooth paste for example) will be donated as a separate bulk to the same homeless aid organization, so they can further give those to the people who need them.