Deodorant.. Optional?!?

Refitting this 100 year old sailboat has taught me more than humility and tested more than my toughness. Much to my surprise I learned that deodorant, yes DEODORANT, what I once believed to be an integral piece to an already limited (acceptable) male grooming puzzle is believed by many, or at least by some, to be unnecessary. If a man could accurately be judged on one activity and one activity alone, I believe his grooming habits and overall hygiene have potential to be the most revealing.

Deodorant usage or lack there of.. became a topic of discussion after four of my coworkers and I went away for our first long weekend (3 days off instead of the usual 1) to an island named Gozo. As fate would have it, we discovered a few hours after our arrival, that none of us remembered to bring soap on our expedition. After joking about having personally taken my quick bath in the bay located a stone's throw away from our front door I said I also applied deodorant (aka a Frenchman's shower). To my utter amazement the ONLY other man present in the group who even bothered to wear deodorant regularly turned out to be French himself. I must take this time to insert a disclaimer here: The results I gathered from my statistical parametric test have a minute possibility of misrepresenting the greater population seeing as the entirety of my immediate test group equaled four, my control group is Maltese, and the line of work I am currently in is atypical.

In my opinion, there can be three conclusions drawn from this social mini experiment... (And luckily in my blog, my opinion and the opinion of Spartan King Leonidas are the only two that count for anything..)
1.) French Shower's for men do consist of deodorant. HOORAY's & huge sigh's of relief can be heard from Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and if the winds over the English Channel are blowing in a strong NW'ward direction the UK!!

2.) Deodorant is a strategically formulated lie used to control and brainwash the masses into being obedient consumers of unnecessary goods. In turn, filling the pockets of already rich deodorant tycoons who are vying to take over the world one "Pacific Surge" armpit swipe at a time. If this is true, I shake my fist in fury at you money hungry pigs. But at the same time am very appreciative of doing so with the luxury of knowing that my underarm will most certainly be dry and smell fantastic.

Or,

3.) I work with people crazy enough to want to build a boat, so why would they need deodorant like your average number crunching, cubical sitting Joe?


This question opened the flood gates that soon rocked my most basic hygienic practices and beliefs to its core. Is it possible that the application of deodorant on a daily basis (what I once believed to be a fundamental responsibility of each member of a close living society) is not really expected of us at all?! With questions like these only two months into my boat building experience, I can't even imagine what future questions will boggle my mind, body, and soul.