Posted on 08/20/2009 5:11:09 AM PDT by sleddogs
I don’t go to theme parks in the US or UK and nobody could pay me enough to go on a rollercoaster. But when I visit the UK I’m regularly amazed at how bad people smell compared to those in the US. Not as bad as Europe by any means, but it’s still clear there are some differences in hygiene between the US and the UK.
This is sometimes a class-based difference but has little to do with ethnicity. It seems that usually the middle class and above in the UK do wash, while the working class and below seem more slipshod about bathing. American working-class people are for the most part just as clean and fragrant as the middle and upper classes.
In Europe, far more than in the UK, it appears that men of all social classes neglect to bathe as often as they should. Some of them just don’t think it’s manly, and their deodorants are just perfumy coverups rather than being true antiperspirants.
Just a generalization, your mileage may vary.
I worked with a Serbian woman and a Macedonian woman. There seemed to be this competition “who could smell more ethnic” between the two. We kept cans of air freshener in our offices and would spray after one would visit. They tried to cover their lack of personal hygiene with perfume.
Eventually it got so bad that our project manager told them they had to bathe at least every other day or they wouldn’t be welcome at work anymore!
Walmart bingo was a lot easier just after Kartina when the “refugees” flooded the Atlanta area. Now we only have 70,000 welfare families still left in the area.
You don’t have to tell a Houston resident (me) about Katrina refugees.
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