Slate: Deodorant Is a Tool of the Patriarchy or Something

Satire is dead:

Deodorants were created to solve a fake problem and thrived thanks to the patriarchy. https://t.co/fuBEVucSvw

— Slate (@Slate) June 22, 2019

It’s a rough slog in comedy these days with the leftists having permanently moved into Insanityville. I prefer a reductio ad absurdum approach to humor, which is difficult in a world where everything is racing to the absurd.

Although I know better, I clicked the link to this one hoping for a tongue-in-cheek post. I know, I know, it’s Slate.

The article was chock-full of enough Third Wave Feminist nonsense to make you bring up dinner.

For example:

We don’t need aluminum-free deodorant, but the social implications of products that allow women to sweat are good anyway. Deodorants were first sold in the late 1800s, with antiperspirants following shortly thereafter. But it took a bit of time for the concept of masking and/or stopping sweat to take off. Early marketing campaigns, as journalist Sarah Everts has reported, were designed to make women—and they were first marketed just to women—embarrassed about the entire concept of perspiration. A few years ago, Everts dug up sponsored newspaper stories from an early antiperspirant company called Odorono (that expands to: odor-o-no). They had titles like “The most humiliating moment in my life: When I overheard the cause of my unpopularity among men” (spoiler: it was sweat) and “If you long for romance don’t let your dress offend with ‘armhole odor.’ ”

A more sensible view of all of this would be to acknowledge that, as we progress as human beings, we become a bit more refined. I’m not saying that as someone who is thought of as a paragon of polite society virtue. I wrote a post last year about the fact that we all shower too much and it isn’t good for us.

There is also the fact that men use deodorant, antiperspirants, and body sprays in an effort to smell better for the public good. If keeping the sweaty funk off is a tool of the patriarchy, it’s the worst one ever.