greentheo

Whether we believe it or not, cultural norms play a big part in our daily actions. They can determine seemingly inconsequential things like who goes first through a stop signed intersection when two people get there at the same time.  You know the hand wave, the light blink… etc… the polite wave that’s really more like a condescending “See I’m being the bigger person here and letting you go first” wave.)

Sometimes cultural norms have large consequences which seem trivial. Body odor is one of those seemingly inconsequential topics. In America the very idea of your own body producing an odor that can be smelled by anyone at any minute distance is absolutely terrifying and repulsive.

Scientists believe that BO has some very important roles to play including sexual attraction and the health of our future children!

Sweat is also a way for you to eliminate toxins.  Amazingly the under arm is one of the largest concentrations of sweat+lymph glands. It’s a central elmination point.

Perhaps BO then is one of our body’s way of communicating to you about your inner health (bad BO = more toxins, good BO=less toxins).

And yet nillions of dollars, trillions of gallons of clean fresh drinkable water, and countless productive hours have been spent on this one chore.  It’s such a powerful norm that culturally we’d prefer to get Alzaheimer’s disease and brain cancer[1] from the Aluminums in anti-perspirants than to smell like ourselves.

What other cultural norms do we as Americans have?  What do we consider taboo?  What do we consider holy?

How do these choices affect our communal health, our individual health and our environment?

Will anyone else join me in boycotting traditional deodorant and showering techniques? Anyone?  Anyone?

1. Aluminum, a neurotoxin which affects diverse metabolic reactions., Joshi, JG [↩]

Related posts:

1. Save water, save your skin

This entry was posted on Monday, March 1st, 2010 at 6:26 pm and is filed under Green, Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.