hygiene

[quietann]

So... could someone please explain to me *why* fen are more likely to have problems maintaining adequate bodily hygiene than other people? I outgrew the not-showering-enough habit by the time I was 14 or so (though a friend's mom had to tell me I needed deoderant, probably a year after I actually started needing it.) I don't especially understand why people would choose not to stay clean, when the means for becoming clean are available to almost everyone....

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

1. Fen are often mal-socialized to begin with, and good hygiene is part of "proper" socialization.
2. Legitimate complaints about their hygiene get ignored as yet another form of teasing or harassment. And, in fact, "you smell" often *is* a form of teasing and/or harassment. I know an *adult* who was harassed at work by coworkers who engaged in mobbing behavior and chose to harass zir by registering bogus complaints with management about zir alleged lack of hygiene. Needless to say these complaints were made up out of whole cloth and they also caused this individual great distress, to the point where sie went looking for other employment.
3. The belief that the body doesn't/shouldn't matter when evaluating someone, it's the brain and/or spirit and/or personality that count.

[halleyscomet.livejournal.com]

Don't underestimate the power of "getting lost" in a task or project.

I know all of us have lost track of time at one point or another and suddenly realized that X hours had passed without the time having been noted. Autism, OCD and the like are all common in Geekdom, and can lead one to quite simply forget about things like taking a shower. Anything that predispositions one towards hyper focusing on a task can lead to this.

Just yesterday, my desire to get the QA task before me done, combined with the fuzzy thought processes stemming from the nasty cold I'm fighting, resulted in me noticing I'd missed Lunch at around 5:30 pm. The hours between 10:30 and 5:30 had blended together into one mass of clicking, checking and marking off results. I suddenly realized I needed to eat something, go to the bathroom and stretch.

If I can get that lost in a rather dull and monotonous task, one can only imagine how lost I could get in something I'm enjoying, like attending a Sci-Fi convention.

[(Anonymous)]

this was something I was going to address, too. It's 4:30 and I haven't showered yet, because I got up and had a pile of things to do on the computer (for work and volunteer stuff), and the computer is right next to the bed so I didn't get much further. I haven't eaten yet, either, for that matter. I will bathe, because I'm going to work at the bookstore at 6, but I admit that if I was just staying home to watch Top Chef and work on the computer, I might just skip showering.

At a con especially, there's the up until X seeing people, waking at 9:55 and there's a panel you're on at 10, runrunrunI'llcometotheroomandshowerafter, but then you're up and out and no one says anything so you assume maybe it's not that bad, and hey, you can shower this afternoon before dressing for the parties, except then someone says, 'hey, come to dinner with us!' and it just keeps tumbling from there.

(I managed to shower before my 10am panel on Saturday, btw, despite staying off site, by virtue of only sleeping for 3 and a half hours Friday night. depends which rule of 5/2/1 you want to break, I guess ;-) ).

[thespian.livejournal.com]

that was me, btw.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

2) would you believe I got exactly that shortly after I started working at my old job?

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

(prompted a lot of deliberately asking people for confirmation; an answer that came up more than once was "no. I've been around you at Baitcon after days without showering and at worst you just smell more like you, but that's nice." Which gets back as well to the concept of whether someone can smell like oneself and that be okay, as long as it doesn't turn to the sour ick post exercise smell...)

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

wow, how utterly craptacular. :-( Good you got out of there.

Unfortunately workplace bullying and mobbing are a lot more common than one would otherwise think, to the point where several EU countries have enacted laws against it. Some people never outgrow sixth grade, I guess.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

nah. I stayed another 7.5 years, and I've kept some good friendships from there. For all I know it was just one unstable person, but my boss handled it as best she could, and wanted to make sure I knew what was going on.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

ah. at least your boss tried to deal with it. In many cases, the manager is an active participant in the bullying.

[yduras.livejournal.com]

It's not so much a trait of fannish interests, but a trait of poor socialization, which correlates with fannish interests.

[kathrynt.livejournal.com]

Some of it, I believe, is body loathing. In order to get clean, you have to get naked and touch your own body.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Well, and with cons, you have people getting not enough sleep and/or skipping sleep altogether, some of whom don't have a hotel room and are crashing somewhere else and don't have access to a shower.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

Cool thing about the Hyatt that not enough people knew: anyone with a con badge could use the showers in the health club, and there were towels provided.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Well, as you say, not a lot of people knew that. And that's not at all true at all con hotels.

[altaego.livejournal.com]

What about just a different grooming standard and an appreciate for musky odors?

[quietann.livejournal.com]

There is some of that; at a party it doesn't bother me much if one or two people could use a shower. But the event last weekend was 2000 people in a not-big-enough hotel, and yes, the compounding of too many unwashed people is exponential...

[dianec42.livejournal.com]

Hmm yeah, that might be an issue: Most of the year, the unshowered people aren't around large concentrations of each other, so no one is offended enough to be "rude" and tell them to go wash. And then when they do all get stuffed into one place, it's too late.

That came out really incoherent.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

no, it made sense. If one person hasn't showered and needed to usually you have to get and stay pretty close to care (unless they're the very unlucky sort like someone I knew in college who showered every day but I could smell him (the ick, not the 'oh, you smell currylike' kind) several feet away.

[dianec42.livejournal.com]

There may be a misplaced sense of security within fandom: "No matter what I do, these people will love and accept me just as I am!"

It can go the other direction as well I suppose: "No matter what I do, it won't be good enough for you people, so why should I bother?"

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

In some cases I've witnessed, I believe it's been due to an elaborate costume that is difficult to clean. I don't think the person smelled, but their heavy layters of clothing were another story. Febreeze is a godsend for this sort of thing.

[dianec42.livejournal.com]

also... maybe mundanes do the same thing at whatever it is they go to conventions for, and we just don't notice the smell because they're further away? (-:

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I used to attend a lot of professional conferences, and if anything people were over-concerned with appearance, not smelling, etc.

[elusiveat.livejournal.com]

Professional events are also different from social events...

Just a thought.

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

I think it's the lack of socialization. It may be on purpose (Look what a nonconformist I am!) or learned (I think that teaching your kid to wash regularly, especially once s/he hits puberty, is a basic parental duty).

I am very fastidious about cleanliness and can't stand B.O. on others. But then again, I don't identify as "fen".

[drwex]

I'm probably mostly in the socialization category, in the sense that there are a group of folk who - for whatever reason - are not sensitive to the set of cues that go back and forth when two people interact.

I say this freely as one of the people who is himself insensitive to a whole realm of cues that others pick up on. I don't particularly condone it, but I do understand it when others do it.

[c1.livejournal.com]

I don't buy that losing yourself in your work is an excuse anymore. Not since the advent of the digital watch, the palm pilot, M$ Outlook, iCal, Google Calendar...
I wake up, I shower and have a shave. (drwex, I know, that last one is optional.) Fresh clothes, my wallet, keys, pocket knife, and I'm ready to meet the day.

Geekdom has put men on the moon.

Showering isn't rocket science.

Or, maybe that's the problem.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

Showering isn't rocket science.

Or, maybe that's the problem.

**snicker** You may be right! Just think of all the great geeky potential that would be lost while showering!

[dianec42.livejournal.com]

So, would this be a bad time for me to stand up and say, "I HAVEN'T HAD A SHOWER TODAY!"?

Actually, I've been in work situations where there was SO damn much work that something had to go: showering, sleeping, or eating. I'm happy to say I'm not in one of those right now.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

I dunno...I'm one of those people who loves feeling clean *and* has a hard time waking up unless I have a shower. I need hot water to loosen up my muscles, too. I rarely go a day without showering, and when I do, it's usually a very lazy Sunday and involves spending the day in my nightgown and slippers. :)

[goddessfarmer.livejournal.com]

Yea, I like feeling clean too. However - if it's a day of farming, I can't go to bed without a shower, or I'd have to change the sheets in the morning. If I'm being lazy and don't feel dirty, then I'll skip it. But as soon as I have to interact with other people - Shower First!

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I am pretty much the same. There are occasional weekends at home where I haven't showered at all, but that's really unusual.

Believe it or not, as a "tween" I showered once a week, and maybe took a bath or two in between if I felt like playing in the tub. It wasn't a problem until I got hormones, dammit!

[jerkface02.livejournal.com]

i remember my mom telling me i needed deodorant... and to shave my arm pits because they were getting hairy. lol i remember being shocked that there was hair there. i'd never even noticed it before!

*and seriously... ew. people are the nasty.

[earthling177.livejournal.com]

I may be the wrong person to ask, but that won't stop me from talking anyway... :-P

I have a very hard time not showering every day. Usually I shower before sleeping (and it took me some time to learn that trick, instead of the usual when I woke up) because with my allergies it's better if I can spend at least 8 contiguous hours in a clean environment at least once a day.

But I'd like to add to the several explanations above that my impression is that for some people (particularly some that don't live near areas like Boston), they have waited the entire year to be in this particular convention. It's basically their only chance to live among people who understand them and want to geek about the same things they like. They probably find it hard to let go of that and spend time doing stuff they can do every day, like shower, change, sleep or eat. Not that I think that is an excuse, just my impression.

Now, I've heard about the "Hygiene Ninja" and that was weird on multiple levels -- not the least of which is that sooner or later the ninja(s) will "interact" (for lack of a better word) with some freak that has multiple problems in addition to poor hygiene and someone will get hurt. I think that Arisia as a whole should basically discourage the ninja(s) and include somewhere (either in the packet with the badge, or maybe even as "terms of use/sale" for admission) a leaflet stating that people are expected to be clean and how the lack of hygiene is detracting from the enjoyment for the majority. And if/when they change hotels, they should also include in the contract that people not staying at the hotel but with a badge have a right to shower/towels. And maybe also require that people with elaborate costumes have them washed/dry-cleaned/febrezed or something. Bringing some awareness to the issue might help in that it's then the organization's rules, and fen are people who can usually stick to the rules. Probably making people aware *before* they buy their membership is better, because then people who have a real issue with it can just back out of it instead of giving everyone a hard time with "I've spent this much on my membership and you can't stop me!" scene/scandal which we can all do without. YMMV.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

Paulo --

thanks for replying :)

I do know the time-pressure issue, although for me I suppose I am socially self-conscious enough that being clean before anyone other than my husband sees me is essential. I am also diabetic, which makes eating and sleeping pretty essential... so I can be a bit unempathetic to people who don't follow the 5-2-1 rule of conventions (5 hours sleep, 2 meals, 1 shower per 24 hour period, if you don't already know.)

I'm personally fond of the hygeine ninja, although I see your concern. This year's kerfluffle was not even started by the targeted person, but by one of his acquaintances (who IMHO was looking for a fight.) But you are right, inevitably *someone* will be hurt by this.

I think the problem is fairly limited; there are a few people who for whatever reason just don't think the rules of hygeine apply to them, or have physical conditions that make it harder for them to stay clean (and one of the nice things about fandom is that these people are welcome as long as people know that they have a problem in this area...) A public campaign like you suggest is not likely to affect persons in the first group, and persons in the second group may just get hurt feelings because they are doing the best they can.

One of the nice things about the new hotel is that they agreed to make their health club, which has showers and towels, available 24/7 to anyone with a badge regardless of whether they had a hotel room or not. This was not well-publicized IMHO, but next year people will know!