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06 October 2006

 
I was hanging out with Candide for a while this morning. We talked about sumo wrestling a bit - he started out by mentioning my sumo video (very VERY short). It's odd that in Western society (I suppose) we have such rigid ideas of what people should be like. The entire idea of ideal specimens is bizarre, but even more bizarre is the current ideal of a woman. As well as just the outward physical manifestation is the aspect of the hidden human conditiuon. It's like we want to appear complete, invincible, beyond criticism - ideal, in fact. To do that we have to, or want to, hide things that are part of our human-ness. From that I deduce that in our society we are subject to attack by others for things that are just human traits, and that we seek to reduce those attacks by being protective of ourselves to a high degree.

It turns my brain in knots to think about this. Anyway, I mentioned at the time how I felt sumo wrestlers seem to exist with a kind of exposure that is far beyond what ordinary people tolerate. Why are we so unforgiving of each other? I might be alone in having always thought of sumo wrestlers as tender and rather touching. If humans can somehow manage to have this capacity to, say, sweat and be unbothered by sweating and to watch someone sweating and be unbothered by it, then why are there 400 bazillion antiperspirants in the market? It's not 100% an American thing although Americans have taken the denial of the body to stratospheric heights.

Oh yes, you might say, fresh sweat is no problem, however humans become smelly in their juices. That's true enough, but I think we have gone far, way too far, into the direction of hatred of the body and equating traits of the body with weaknesses. Is it all motivated by fear? Fear of offending, fear of criticism? Fear of being seen as less than perfect?

Lucia has a poem about this whole thing in The Body Mutinies, in the poem:

On the Sunken Fish Processor Tenyo Maru
Just as we pray that the Tenyo Maru keeps its hull intact
as it yaws and rocks
on the ocean floor off Cape Flattery, a quarter million barrels
of crude oil inside -
so too are we warned about breaching the social contract,
that glass eye rolling
in our human creek. For what might happen if we lift
the codicils on belching?

My Uncle Tony in Quebec (the one who skied away from the Nazis) had a female relative visiting from Poland who was embarrassed to bring up the fact that she could taste and smell the dishwashing liquid on the plate, and couldn't eat. As people have embraced artificial scents more and more we smell them less and less - which surely is true, too, if for the odors we are trying to erase. We'd all instantly annihilated by the sheer force of the smells if we got into a time machine and went back even a hundred years, I'm sure.

posted by - 4:24 PM

Comments:
I can relate to this a bit. I have not used cologne for about 20 years, nor have I ever used scented laundry detergent. When I'm around someone wearing cologne or perfume it is almost overwhelming. I have a very difficult time walking down the detergent aisle of the grocery store due to the smells. I much prefer eating and drinking from hand-washed dishes over those that are run through a dish washer.
 
I find scented things obnoxious. I walk into a craft/hobby shop and feel as though there is a knitting needle shoved up my nose into my sinuses. There are WAY too many scented whatsises in ppl's houses these days.

Anyway, I wear only deodorant, because antiperspirant is icky and has aluminum in it. Nod uses nothing at all and has no body odor. He was told when he was a child that sweat does not normally stink; it stinks only when ppl are nervous or afraid. He is not either one, I guess!

Scented laundry detergent is HORRID as are those scented sheets for the dryer. I use only detergents with no perfumes or dyes, because we are both highly sensitive and allergy-prone.
 

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I want to ask for thoughts about improving the world -- what do people need? How can things be organised?