Something I forgot to mention is that living in different climates can also affect how often you need to clean! This video is from the perspective of someone living in the Northeastern U.S. and the particular U.S. (and by extension, European) cleanliness culture. (When i was in Vietnam, it's was so f'ing hot and humid there and I was sweating like i ran a marathon every day.) But even more so, when I talk about showering often and how it *can* be unnecessary, it's more about the millions of shampoos and products that we are marketed to use when we shower, not just the act of rinsing your hair and body with water.

I have a bachelor's in microbiology. Half of my classmates are absolutely germophobic the other half will eat food that fell on the floor in 5 seconds because you need to get your immunity somehow.

People somehow forgot that the main point of cleanliness is health. If it is cold and dry during winter it can be quite unhealthy for your skin to obsessively shower. And if you have different hair structures it can also be unhealthy to wash your hair everyday. So we really shouldn‘t compare our habits to people in a completely different climate with completely different bodily needs.

I'm Russian and I just can't imagine how one can be so obsessed with cleanliness and be wearing outside clothes and boots at home at the same time. For me this is one of the mysteries of the western world

When my sister was a baby my mom told me something her mom taught her, so her baby could sleep on their own without her needing to be next to them. It was to wear a shirt all day and around your baby and when they go to sleep or take a nap, take it off, and wrap your baby in it/put on them (you get the gist) so the baby will smell you and think your around and be more likely to stay asleep longer. And it works! Babies are smart and can recognize the smell of their caregiver. Super cool thing to know :)

It's sad to see how even the most basic of ideals are rooted in classism, racism, ableism and sexism.

interesting! I'm from the Middle East and cleanliness is super prioritised.. I remember when I lived in the UK and told a friend I usually never leave the house without showering because I don't feel good doing that, he called me arrogant. I was surprised, out of all the things you could say he choose arrogance! Cleaning rituals differs heavily from culture to culture

As someone with curly hair, I get shocked faces from people with straight hair whenever I say I wash my hair twice a week. My hair would be brittle and dry if washed it every day! I also think there's a lot of anti-POC mentalities when it comes to hair cleanliness - I hear non-POCs talk about how gross it is to not wash your hair often, and I even remember Onision (?) put out a video years ago tearing apart a Black woman's hair routine because it was so dirty. What people don't realize is both how hair and your scalp's sebum (natural oils) work to regulate our hair's oiliness, and by washing it every day, you're removing those oils and making your hair dryer. Also, textured hair is naturally more porous and needs those oils to survive!

When I started going through puberty at around 13 years old, I would bathe and wash my hair everyday but my hair was still always soooooooooooo greasy that the other kids in my sixth-grade class made fun of me. This culminated in me finally getting sent to the school nurses office later on in the year so she could talk to me about 'hygiene'. She was a really rude, blunt woman who told me straight up that the other kids in my class were complaining about the way I smelled and that they didn't like sitting near me. She then started to interrogate me about whether or not I showered/bathed regularly (i.e. daily) and if I actually used soap, shampoo, or deodorant, and if I knew how deodorant worked. It was already humiliating that other kids would make fun of me to my face about my greasy hair, and then being told that they were complaining at school to anyone who would listen just made me develop a paranoia about being perceived as "clean". I still have hang ups about this. I feel compelled to shower everyday, more if I have to go somewhere later on, I reapply deodorant very frequently if I get even a hint of musky armpits, and even keeping myself clean "downstairs" I feel so self conscious about any perceived smells or odors, that I won't let my boyfriend put his face anywhere near that area. All of it just makes me feel too vulnerable and exposed, if someone smelled me and said I reeked, I would be that lonely, humiliated middle school kid all over again.

as a Black American i find it very hard to break away from my need of cleanliness. when our ancestors were enslaved they weren’t granted the privilege of hygiene practices. for anyone who doesn’t know a very common thing is for Black parents to make sure their kids wash themselves daily. doing things like making sure they clean behind their ear or smelling them is common. if the kid doesn’t do a good enough job they’re told to go back to the bath. so when i met a White mom who said they only wash their baby once a week i was shocked. there is even discourse in the Black community about how often you should replace your wash cloths and towels. with conversations like this it is important to think about racial minorities and how we are conditioned in different ways.

i love being a traitor to the ideal of femininity and an object of disgust 💁‍♀

There's literally a trend right now that are "clean girl perfumes." Also, almost all floral perfumes, and especially designer perfumes, are stripped of their indolic/dirty elements, which are part of what makes jasmine smell like jasmine, or tuberose smell like tuberose

The idea that “Modernity is odorless” is baffling to me. I live in America and the difference between the rural and urban areas is kind of overwhelming. The natural world smells deep and warm, with the wind gently pushing new scents to you. The city smells like vague garbage, cigarettes, and old piss, and then occasionally you get slapped with something entirely else and often worse. I don’t understand why people would think the natural world stinks. How can you live in a city with THAT MANY bad smells and not just lose the sense all together?

I often find it so weird, that characters in movies don't seem to smell stuff. Like when they are in a dark room and they don't smell a gigantic monster or people that are inches away from them.

The idea of cleanliness reminds me of how body hair is viewed on women. My mom always told me we had hair on lady parts for a reason. When the girls in my high school locker room were discussing having to remove hair down there, I was confused. Body hair was seen as gross to them. I grew up seeing it as something natural and part of my body. Being clean, like removing body hair, has been pushed on us by consumerism and society. It’s insane to think back in the youth of my parents, body hair was not seen as gross by men. Same with being clean. I always enjoy how much research you do for all your videos ❤️😎 Thank you.

In one of my high school classes, a guy " malik" spontaneously loudly howled at a girl by telling her how she smelled horrible all the time, the whole class went completely silent, and the girl curled up in a ball under a plastic chair, the teacher came to bring her out of the class, she never came back to school. The teachers told us they were actually already « in the process of conversating to find a way of improving her smell situation », and that "malik" ruined everything. My friends and I were devasted by this situation, it felt horrible to see a kind classmate get shamed in this way for her odour, to the point where she no longer felt welcomed at school.

Growing up, I was told, "Don't smell good, don't smell bad, just don't smell." Meaning keep to basic hygiene and stay away from overly fragrant products. So a lot of the cleaning products I put on myself and use at home are natural and have little to no fragrance. I just don't really enjoy strong smells indoors unless it's from incense or a candle.

Omg this reminds me of the feminine ‘hygiene’ industry and how they claim women’s natural bits are unclean (hence you need to buy this feminine wash). But the 🐱 is self-cleaning and using feminine wash can mess up your ph.

as a brazilian, from our tropical climate and indigenous heritage we have a VERY strong cleanliness culture, it's very common to take one too many showers a day with perfumed soaps, using scented moisturizers... it is also very common for us to give special soaps as a gift on birthdays, christmas, etc hahaha

I was raised by a homeless mother, we slept in a bed sit due to my father being in rehab. I remember as a tween I became obsessed with smelling nice using cheap perfume and using olive oil on my ends. I associated human smells with poverty and I was obsessed to get out of it.

Since Mina reads comments, I wanted to share my pov. I am from Azerbaijan and many people wash their hair 1-2 times a week. And many people would consider this gross. However, when we do take a shower, it usually lasts about an hour or two and includes washing our hair 3 times (on average, some people do 2 or 5 even), body exfoliating with "kese" and "urusum", rubbing your feet with special type of stone (to exfoliate, called "dabankes") and body wash twice. This extensive routine is the norm and is done once or twice a week.

As a disabled person I often don’t have the energy to do more than the bare minimum and I always felt ashamed when people said they shower every day because I physically cannot do that. My condition can also cause excessive sweating which made me feel really gross in high school

Damn, it’s crazy how Mina just keeps churning out these incredibly well edited and deeply researched videos.

As a massage therapist in the US I can always tell when someone has just showered and scrubbed their bodies before a massage, and not in a positive way. They have stripped away any natural oils and I have to sooo much more lotion because their skin just sucks it up. When I get to know a client I tell them to not stress about it but if they really want to take a shower before hand to only use soap on “hot spots” - pits, privates, under breasts, and feet. For the most part your back and arms are not going to smell

One thing about the public libraries and removing people from the library because of smell: Most who work in a library don’t want to ask someone to leave because of odor, it’s truly a last resort. In my experience, I only truly enforced when it was tied to other cleanliness issues. One example was having to ask people to leave because they were covered in urine or their clothing was so soiled that it was ruining furniture. It’s sad and if the library staff member is a good person they’ll handle it quietly and respectfully. The law in California was probably passed so that libraries in the county did not have to be worried about being sued over claims of discrimination because of these situations. The movie The Public is an excellent example.

When I lived in Benin, people would shower 3-4 times a day but wear the same outfit for two days in a row, and I was always asked why I changed my outfit every day but only showered once. The perception of cleanliness varies so much culture to culture.

I have an anecdote of the harms that our modern cleanliness obsession can do: I remember, when my sister and I were very little, there was this one time where she adamantly refused to take a shower because at school the mother of another child had said to her son something along the lines of 'You need to wash your hands so you don't look like them. They bath less often than us and that's why their skin is darker, they lack cleanliness' while pointing at a black child. I don't remember the exact words, but I remember that my sister, maybe 3 or 4 years old, believed her, and she didn't want to bath because the lady had made her believe that if she did the color of her skin (which she liked as it was) would wash off. She told mom 'No me quiero desmorenizar' which would translate to 'I don't want to loose my morena-ness' (In my nation we call a person of a brown skin tone moreno or morena). And you know, now we laugh about how that's not possible and how funny the word she used to express her fear sounded, but I still feel kinda sad it had to happen in the first place. Edit to correct misspellings.

I am also a fan of Zoologist perfumes! What I love about Tyrannosaurus Rex is how it starts out so metallic and medicinal and smoky but, over the course of the hours it sits on your skin, it becomes really green and lush and floral, transitioning from the lava and tar pits to a prehistoric jungle. It's the closest experience to actual magic that I've had from a purchase and I love it, even if it's something I don't wear out of the house.

As someone with low energy and has taken microbiology and basic medical classes, sometimes the best way to deal with the knowledge that everything around us is gross is just a good old fashioned don't think about it, it will stress you out and you will mostly not be able to do anything about it. I literally last week learned concerning things about peanut butter and made the conscious choice of "I will be ignoring that fact"

I'm italian, here if you said that you wash every day (including shampooing hair) you'd be met with stunned faces. It Is a common belief that water and heat damage hair a lot. I'd say the average person uses shampoo twice a week. Also we don't necessarily shower every single day but we do wash body parts that tend to smell more such as feet, armpits and 'down there'. Having a bidet helps a lot

I’m Mexican, so cleanliness and smelling good has always been a part of our culture, even during pre Hispanic times, it is said that the mexicas would bathe a total of three times a day because smelling bad was considered an offense to the people around you, because of this they had bath houses called “temazcales” that were filled with warm water and scented herbs that where used mainly by the elite, but the common people had their own steam rooms at their homes allowing them to keep clean on a daily basis, this stayed through the years becoming very important for us till this day to smell good, but the access the internet allows us to have to see the way other cultures live made me realize how consumerist cleanliness culture is, especially in the US, every now and then I see tiktoks of people who have collections of 20 different body scrubs and body washes, or those videos of people refilling their bathroom cabinets with all types of dental floss and deodorants, no one needs that many things for showering or self grooming, and that culture has started to spread to some parts of my country (mainly the north) because of our proximity to the US and how influential it is on us, don’t get me wrong, I love a good shampoo and smelling good is always top of my list, and I see nothing wrong with liking that, but there comes a point where it becomes too much

One time I was telling my sister that I wish shaving wasn't introduced because it is so unnecessary but it feels essential considering the society that we grew up in and she was like "yeah but I feel like I'm not clean if I don't shave" and I was like yeah! That's the thing...its not a matter of cleanliness because it's part of you and you don't need to shave your head every other week to be considered clean but we have to in many western areas or we'll be seen as unclean and unkempt

I have a really hard time maintaining societal hygiene standards with regular showers because ADHD and depression, so this video helps me feel a little less gross about it. I still want to bathe regularly and get my mental health on track, but it helps lessen the pressure on me a little bit to know that showering every other day isn’t actually the worst thing in the world for me. Thank you for this!

This Christmas I received a rosewater hand soap and lotion set from my uncle’s family. I put it in the downstairs bathroom without telling anyone. When my dad washed his hands, he was instantly reminded of his grandmother. He hadn’t smelled that specific scent in many years. It’s endearing to know he can remember his grandmother just by the similar scent of perfume she would always wear. I, too, am reminded of my own grandmother when I smell either Gardenia or Jasmine flowers. Smell is a powerful sense.

I do shower very often, but it’s so interesting whenever people get suprised that I wash my hair once a week (maybe a week and a half) and assume I’m dirty for it. I have 4c hair and over washing damages my hair but so many non black people can’t believe it’s clean or natural. My hair needs oils and over washing strips it.

Smell and cleanliness for me can also be strongly connected to ableism sometimes. People are very judgemental about people who smell different or 'bad'. A lot of the time a health condition can have an impact on the way you smell. Maybe you have a hard time washing yourself, maybe you sweat a lot, some people deal with incontinence and there are so many more things that can change the way you smell. Another thing is autism and sensory issues. Also things like migraines. Both my mom and me avoid strong smells and perfumes. Going on public transport can be a problem when people wear strong perfumes or a lot of aftershave or bodyspray. I get very bad migraines and too many smells and sounds can make me very overwelmed and anxious. There are other conditions where strong odors can be a problem like asthma and COPD. Wearing perfumes is fine but it would be nice if more people were mindful about it. Things like avoiding spraying perfume or deodorant in spaces that are not well ventilated

I think one of the most toxic things about “cleanliness culture” is the way we (specifically americans) attach morality to cleanliness. You see this a lot on tiktok where finding out someone has “bad hygiene habits” makes you a bad person. Like you talked about, cleanliness is used to other groups of marginalized people, and framing cleanliness as a moral issue is the easiest way to do that.

Fatphobia has affected my relationship w smell a lot. Being overly-cleanly to try to fight off untrue stereotypes about fat people being slobbish and smelly.

You somehow make me care about topics I’ve never considered in depth before

This video was incredibly interesting. As a POC growing up in a predominantly white area (there were less than 100 students of color at my hs with a student body of about 1000, and most POC students lived in the nearest city and where bussed to and from the school district every day) I was super concerned about my smell as it was brought up by my peers. I don’t think it’s uncommon POC experience to be told that you/your home/your food smells weird. I was always scared I smelled terrible and as a result would try to cover up with an array of Victoria’s Secret body spray as often as I could. I would dread gym class and the thought of sweating and tried to avoid sweating as much as possible. There was also a trend in my school where girls would carry body mists with them to every class and scented lotion and would use this multiple times a day. As an adult I’ve had to do a lot of inner work to get over my paranoia of smell and cleanliness, so thank you Mina for this eye opening history!

As someone who is utterly and ridiculously sensitive to smells, I can attest to the fact that EVERYONE has an odor. I can tell when people are sick. I can tell when they eat high protein diets. I can tell when they eat a lot of soy. And that’s not even mentioning people who smoke, which I think is obvious to everyone regardless of what they try to do to cover it up. Perfumes can knock me down. Even when I put deodorant on myself, it takes me time to get over the smell. Side note about bathing - I do it every day and I wash my hair every day even though I know my skin is super dry and it’s not good for my hair. It makes me feel refreshed. My son doesn’t bathe every day and I expected to point out exactly how stinky he was…but he’s not actually. He smells fine. He smells good. His skin is even drier than mine and his hair is extraordinarily dry and washing too often would not be healthy for him. I used to over wash my face and it exacerbated my acne. When I started using a gentle (and cheap) cleanser and reduced washing, my skin was actually better. So he’s probably on the right track.

I think the “cleanliness culture” is also being partially fueled by the hygiene side of tiktok where girls show off how many bath and body works sprays they have, how many method body washes they have and how many tree hut scrubs they have. They send a message that hair care and body care should each be a 15 step processes. I’m a big fan of the phrase, “less is more”. But to each his own.

As someone who's struggled with personal hygenine my whole life since my parents were neglectful it's hurts a lot when I see people demonized for lack of hygenine or different hygenine.

so not necessarily a perfume, but my cornplant recently bloomed (didn't know they did that) and the scent it gave off would just fill my house around 5pm (the blooms open in the evening). it was like the plant was saying "thank you for taking care of me :)" because I read it's kinda rare for them to do that indoors (idk if that's true).

My college had a dorm where a Chinese professor lived and students living there had to speak Chinese as part of immersive language learning For me, living away from home, whenever I visited that dorm and was hit with the smells of sesame oil, garlic, chili, etc. it soothed me in a way I can't even really explain Especially when it was the same sort of smells that my non-Asian peers would complain about or make fun of me for

Great video! I'd love to also hear you talk about how this 'cleanliness cult' also pertains to acne. Because a lot of the narrative around acne has been, bad skin = bad hygiene.

I'm terrified of smelling bad because of the stereotype that autistic people always have a nasty odour. I've gotten better recently, but there was a time where I'd have a panic attack the moment I started sweating or even as I was leaving the house, because I was so worried that I'd have that "autistic smell" that I had convinced myself of. Definitely some paranoia going on there. But there's an undeniable link between the idea of cleanliness and ableism. After all, the whole way I came to this conclusion was through watching videos of people making fun of autistic-coded characters for how bad they smell. Great video, this needed addressing.

I've wondered about this for so long, I remember the insult of choice as a kid/teen was to accuse someone of being gross and unclean. It definitely messed with me, and of course these insults were applied to things that aren't related to actual hygiene like possessing body hair in perfectly natural places. People won't eat a piece of dry food that fell on their own floor that they regularly clean, but then don't use bidets or close the toilet lid. That's the thing that really confuses me about it all, the hyperfixation on things that are irrelevant while ignoring actual gross things.

Thank god my mom raised me to be clean but not overly clean to the point of obsession. To me it's very normal to only shower every other day and only wash my hair twice a week. Despite not being big on perfume or other heavily scented products multiple intimate partners have told me I smell very good and I myself don't feel dirty or smelly at all. It was only until I started seeing a lot of tiktok discourse about showering habits that basically said that if you don't shower and thoroughly scrub every inch or your body with soap every day you are disgusting that I started doubting my own hygiene and feeling ashamed of myself for not showering every single day. I realise now that this is a very american attitude and being from europe and a relatively cold climate there really is no need to take on those habits that people preach about. Don't let people shame you into unnecessary habits that often do more harm than good and trust your own judgment.

It's a very brief moment, but when Mina says she showers more in the winter, when she's SAD, I felt that. Showering feels like a big *effort* some days and when you don't have the mental energy to look after yourself, it's harder to make that effort. Or conversely, sometimes showering can be a form of self-care and make you feel better.

It’s interesting to see this topic tackled by someone who is pro-scents. As an American who is both autistic and allergic to most things, I absolutely hate how normalized perfume is. I cannot go into makeup stores, or most clothe stores in malls. I have to ask ahead of time when meeting new people if they wear perfume.

Nose blindness is such a thing. I used to volunteer at the stables and barn when I was in vet school, where they had a small herd of goats. Goat smell is INCREDIBLY powerful - if you're not used to it you can smell it downwind from miles away. Hell, when I first started I could smell it on myself even after bathing. But after a few weeks, I physically could not smell it. I think ten later I'm still a bit nose blind to goat smell even though I've only worked there for about a year and a half, and haven't been around goats other than in passing for most of that decade. Similarly, growing up in a smoker's house and having been a smoker myself in the past, I'm very innured to the smell of tobacco; my girlfriend, who's never smoked and whose parents never did either, has to wash her CLEAN, unworn clothes after she comes to visit me because they smell of smoke to her, even though they were kept upstairs, inside a suitcase, the opposite end of the house from the only room my parents smoke indoors. So yeah, I can see that's how it worked. Nobody minded armpit smell before deodorants after all, but after it's the norm to NOT smell like that it became incredibly noticeable to everyone when someone does.

At boot camp, there were girls who really didn’t like me so they told people I didn’t bathe and would throw soap at me. I was ostracized by the girls bc of this rumor that I was dirty. The American obsession with cleanliness sucks when you’re a working woman who sweats. I’m glad the guys didn’t care.

i was taught to shower and wash my hair everyday by my mom, who has no idea how to deal with my hair texture and dryness. it wasn’t until 2021 that i realized that i didn’t have to wash everyday in order to make my hair look nice and it’s been life changing. my hair looks so much healthier and my skin isn’t cracking from dryness. it makes me wish there were more conversations given to kids to explain the wide range of taking care of oneself, i might’ve actually enjoyed my hair routine growing up

In High School, I would douse myself in vanilla bourbon cologne I got from Bath and Bodyworks, and this was before I knew how to properly apply cologne so I was just spraying myself up and down. One girl in my first period class actually came up to me, sniffed and said “why do you smell like a marshmallow?” It was a pretty funny interaction.

12:09 I saw in a BBC documentary that during the post Black Death era, while they did not bath in water, they would use dry cloths to rub down their bodies regularly, effectively removing oil, debris, and dead skin from the body, and would use wooden combs, which does the same thing, and is currently a hair care trend because wooden combs spread sebum from your scalp to your ends. In English society at the time, cleanliness was still close to Godliness, and was a trait which people were judged by. Also, bad smells were supposed to bring bad humors, so people would often place herbs under what was effectively their mattresses and carpets, which was to be changed with the seasons. This applied to working class farmers, as well.

i watched a short recently and the girl used a bar soap, body scrub and body wash, and all with exfoliating gloves/an african net sponge, and she also shaved. so in one shower she exfoliated 4 times, and then when she got out of the shower she used like 3 different lotions/body butters. self care is one thing but it was just over consumption and performative hygiene

In Brazil it's actually taught to you as a child that you should shower 3 times a day and most of us continue that thinking to adulthood. That teaching came from indigenous people so i'd assume my country can be even more obsessed with cleanliness than America sometimes, with people straight up bullying you if you dont smell like you just showered.

I shower and bathe more than I should not because I feel dirty but because it’s just soothing for me. When I shower before I go to bed I sleep like a baby.

I was born with severe atopic dermatitis (basically eczema with no known cause for the breakouts). The doctors eventually found that the fragrances in EVERYTHING was giving me constant agonizing rashes. So no fragrance in soaps, shampoos, detergents, candles, air fresheners... everything. I also was highly allergic to many things in makeup, even now, so I haven't worn make up since I was 12. I wore my mom's brown makeup to look like a scarecrow for Halloween. Worst. Halloween. Ever. I have worn literal TAR shampoo on my face and body, and had to go to school for weeks smelling like tires, so I have become incredibly aware of my scent. I take 2-3 minute showers (and they have to be only mildly warm to help prevent outbreaks), have no fragrances on me, and have never had any complaints of how I smell. Honestly, I get more rebukes for not wearing makeup than anything else. I loved this video!

I had a cousin who was always getting sick as a kid. His mom, my uncle's wife, was a super clean freak (now she's a "normal" clean freak?). He wasn't allowed to play in the dirt, play in rivers or streams, play in the rain, touch animals. You get it. Anyway, someone told her it was because she didn't allow her son to develop a strong immune system since he wasn't exposed to common germs. My uncle got home and set his kid on the dirt outside. I don't think this single act did anything but he's a much stronger kid now, and I truly believe that her ridiculous approach to cleanliness was the cause of his poor immune system as a baby/toddler.

we really need to consider culture differences when talking about this subject. as a brazilian, the thought of not showering every day makes my skin crawl, and that's a habit we got from indigenous people, not portuguese invaders. hearing some european people talk about how they shower once or twice a week is shocking, even considering they have actual cold days in winter (and we don't) lmao

I have a translation of some of the earliest cookbooks coming out of the middle east, and one of the things I found most interesting was that they would temper their pots and pans with aromatic herbs (I forget which - maybe fennel) prior to cooking, because food needed to be cooked in a good-smelling vessel.

I can understand why you may not want to but please consider doing a video revisiting The Care And Keeping of You ♡ That book was honestly a major part of my adolescent development and I'd love to know if it still holds up and might be a viable option for helping my own daughter's learn 😊

i always find it amazing how smells can trigger memories. one whiff of an old deodorant i used to use and suddenly i’m back in 2017. i can feel the rumbling of my old toyota corolla, driving home from work and listening to mac demarco.. weirdly bittersweet

I work in a public library and I literally got trained on how to ask someone to leave if their odor was “offensive” for other patrons :( it’s honestly so sad. I hope I never have to do that….

To add my two scents, I'm black and I don't shower everyday, nor do I use a washcloth. I know some black people would find this appalling. The amount of times I've heard how nasty it is to do these things and it's usually in reference to white people. But I found that I was always very itchy after showering and realized it was because I was showering too much and using a cloth. I started showering less (sometimes I don't wash my legs...the horror) and using my hands only and the itching went down significantly. Also, I hate having to shower. this makes me sound dirty but it is what it is. I hate having to do it. It takes so much effort when I remember that I have to shower sometimes.

My favorite description of a perfume is hands down Odeur 71 by Comme des Garçons. It’s pure poetry and 100% really how they describe this scent. “Smell of dust on a Hot Light-Bulb, Warm Photocopier Toner, Hot Metal, A Toaster, Freshly Welded Aluminium, The Ink in a Fountain Pen, Fresh Pencil Shavings, Wood and Moss, Bay Leaves and Bamboo, White Pepper, Hyacinth, Lettuce Juice.” It’s seriously perfect hahaha! I was raised by dad so I grew up using his cologne. To this day I don’t identify with most scents catered to women. My favorite perfumes are always discontinued. Currently my favorite is Bronze Wood and Leather by Jo Malone. The people at the store told me Americans just don’t like it because of the “heavy leather scent” and that basically the only people who bought it were French. I’m not quite sure what they were trying to say hahaha! When I first moved to NY 20 years ago I loved smelling Demeter scents. Earth worm was my favorite. It literally smells like fresh dirt and grass after the rain. They have scents like Thunderstorm, Turpentine, Lava Rock, Paperback and Play Doh.

I’m personally of the belief that if you live in a cool climate, don’t work out every day, and wear deodorant, no one will be able to tell if you skip a day or sometimes even two between showers. If I already look + feel clean, and my skin and hair are healthy, washing again would be nothing but a ritual for me, because I have nothing I need to wash off. However, I can definitely say I’ve lied about my showering habits in front of co-workers and managers who are expressing judgement about proper cleanliness rituals. I’ve also had put-together looking people reveal to me in confidence that because they have particularly low body odor, they could go a week or more without showering, and no one would be the wiser - Although at that point, not cleaning might actually start to cause rashes or weigh on your mental health. The truth is, you generally can’t tell if a person keeps “clean” habits or not, and most of the time it really doesn’t make a difference, so long as they wash their hands.

The library part from the beginning: just a bit of personal experience from a person who has worked in libraries for about 12 years now. The public libraries have had a policy which could be used in that way. Many of our patrons carry with them strong odors, but that alone would not be something that would typically be the reason to ask someone to leave. That was expected. In fact a couple of the locations I worked out we actually had these large air purifiers that help to neutralize the strong smells a bit. In my experience most of the time if an odor was so strong that someone was being requested to leave the premises, it also included evidence that they had urinated or defecated within the clothes that they were currently wearing. You are absolutely right that libraries are very commonly used by individuals who might have barriers to typical Western conventions of hygiene. Libraries and librarians are generally doing their best to serve their communities though. This means that most systems with the resources(aka funding) now also employ social workers. We all had a list of resources and decent relationships with local service providers. For example, we had bus passes that would get you to a location with free showers and a change of clothes. We helped people to fill out their applications for disability, Health Care, housing, work. With the consent of the individuals, Librarians try to connect them to resources that could help them. At the libraries where I worked we had bottles of water in the summer, gloves in the winter, things like flip-flops for people who didn't have shoes. Most of this was bought by us library workers, all while groups are actively trying to diminish public library funding. A rule like that out of context sounds outrageous and it is. But it is an indication of the breakdown of lots of supports for people, not an indicator of the overall services that are being provided within most of your local libraries.

THE CARE AND KEEPING OF YOU MADE ME THINK ONCE WE GOT OUR PERIODS IT WAS EVERY SINGLE DAY FOREVER AND I WAS TOO SCARED TO ASK MY MOM 😂 f that book lmao

your bravery is commendable. people get SAVAGE about other's hygiene habits. when i was 14 a girl who i sat next to in class for months always complimented my new perfumes and said multiple times that i "always smell so good", but then when her friend told her that i didn't use summer's eve, she got up and moved on the bus bc "she'd always hated the smell of fish". that whole friend group made fun of me for being dirty/smelly. i made all of my friends and family sniff me and all of them said i smelled like my perfume, or my shampoo, or like nothing in particular. learned that day that what you are is less important than what you're perceived as, even for things that can be proven, and that if people have decided you're dirty it's very hard to change their mind about that

One thing that pisses me off about people is how much fragrance they douse themselves in. It’s completely inconsiderate, especially when people do it in a public space. There are people (like myself) who are very sensitive / allergic to fragrance. My face starts to turn red, throb, and it BURNS and itches - this can last hours or even days (I have rosacea). My nose is also very sensitive; I get headaches and my nasal passage itself starts to get irritated immediately. It’s just such entitled behaviour! It actually makes me want to cry because it puts my comfort - a great part of my life - into strangers’ hands.

I once dated a guy who never wore any fragrance but his natural smell was so good to me I couldn't help getting close to him just to sniff him! It was his own scent and I have never met anyone else with this phenomenon. Sadly our relationship ended but I still think about him and that amazing scent. I love showering in super hot water too. I have one signature perfume and only wear it sparingly as not to have it arrive in a room before me.

this brings to mind the recent commentary on julia fox’s apartment video. so many comments on those videos were shaming her for keeping an “extremely dirty” house when it just looked lived in as it would with a small child at home

Mina, please, please make a perfume video! Tell us about your favorites, show us your collection. I'd love to see such video from a well spoken non-fragcom creator! ❤️🤗😍

I think cultural and geographical differences do play a part here, im from south east asia, it's hot and humid you have to shower twice a day, or once minimum. Obviously not everyone CAN shower everyday, you need access to clean water etc personally I work in healthcare with sick patients, so I have to shower everyday otherwise I don't feel clean.

honestly as someone with ocd, ritualized cleanliness is more of a self-soothing experience than anything

As a Brazilian woman it just sounds crazy to hear that there are people who don't shower every day. Nowadays I shower once or twice a day, but when I was a child, my grandma made me shower 3 or 4 times a day 😅 this video is so interesting and well researched, you're amazing, Mina. Now I just want to research about the story of cleanliness in Latin America 🤩🤩

I used to have a terrible want to smell like an entire perfume bottle. I don't have extreme body odour. But I would use strong scented soaps, body oils, creams and perfumes to smell good. It got so bad that people (including my mom) complained that as soon as I entered a room, I filled the room with extremely strong scents. I don't know why I did it but people in my school smelt... well, sweaty. And I, as an insecure teenager, wanted to not be like that. I also generally have a very strong sense of smell and it really influences my life. And I at some point wanted people to know me by the fact that I smelled good and strongly of perfume.

I use to work at a local hardware store in my hometown. There was this one costumer who would occasionally came in and became known as the 'smelly guy' (or something like that) with my managers and coworkers. It really pissed me off, because, yea he smelled musky and it lingered, but he was just an old man who couldn't even walk around very much, didn't talk much but was so sweet and would always smile so nicely to me. And yet I'd have managers and coworkers talking on our walkie talkies saying 'watch out smelly guy is here' or 'get the lysol spray', and even one coworker made jokes (not even really a joke, she seemed quite serious on doing this) about spraying him with lysol. As in spraying him directly. It's just so rude, we don't treat our elders properly in this country, imo, or anyone who differs from the norm. He may have had some disability that prevented him from being able to shower correctly, or something physiologically that caused him to smell and there was nothing to be done about it, but people just notice the smell and make fun of him rather than trying to understand. It's just very rude, and I'm very happy to see this video discussing issues like that.

I was abused at school from 3rd to 6th grade (very religious teacher and me, aparently a "sinner") and one of the "tools" used to excuse it was that I smelt bad, that I was dirty. I've never had trouble with my hygiene until waaaaaaaaaay later in life, when depression made hard things such as showering or shaving, but even though I knew I was clean and that I cleaned myself I always had trouble with that to the point I started wondering if my nose worked or not. I think the only possitive thing from going through something like that is becoming aware of subjects like these at a young age like, it's truly evil how aparently innocuous things are rooted in discrimination. I'm still scared to death of smelling "bad" or being "dirty".

Another thing about smell is that we sweat what we eat, so cultures that eats a lot of spices smell a certain way - for example, which leads to discrimination of some already marginalized groups. One time I read a south korean man, who had immigrated to brazil, say that he was happy when he discovered that brazil uses a lot of garlic on the food, bc then he wouldn't be discriminated about the way he smelled since South korea also loves garlic. This smell conversation is very interesting, and has more layers than I thought of!

Yes! Thank you, Mina! I have long been a supporter of the understanding the "hygiene" is more focused on aesthetic than health and is driven more by advertisement and propaganda than sound medical advice.

I would love to see a follow up video expanding on cleanliness as an alienating and oppressive concept. Like in recent years, medias obsession with “clean girl” aesthetics. I throughly enjoyed this video for history of actual physical cleanliness but now clean is being used as an idea and I’d love to see that explored ❤

The Care and Keeping of You was essential because it taught me about puberty such as what my anatomy was, what a period is, what training bras are, etc when my family and school would not.

Mina NEVER disappoints me! Her content is always so captivating yet so unbelievably educational. I'm delighted by the constant use of perfectly suitable quotes and bibliographic references to illustrate the point that she's trying to prove. Amazing videos, honestly. Thank you so much for this; the world needs more creators like you, Mina!

On the bit about over-sanitizing: my brother used to have a lot of allergy problems as a child that disappeared entirely once he befriended a kid from a farmer family and consequently spent a lot of time on that farm (where his immune system presumably encountered plenty of bacteria to adapt to). Obviously one kid does not a representative study make, but the conclusion that a "well-trained" immune system equals less allergies makes perfect sense to me. Also, thank you for telling us about the Zoologist perfumes! I haven't bothered much with perfumes in a while because they started to seem rather samey to me, but the Zoologist ones sound really unique and unusual. I'll definitely be checking them out!

I’m American and I’ve always felt like I wasn’t clean enough because people since my childhood would talk about showering everyday and how it was gross not to and it’s really cool to see someone talk about this in a neutral way

Shout out mina for finding the most interesting somehow relevant topics in my life that I always find myself pondering in the shower

Loved to know the history behind cleanliness. When I saw the title of this video I immediately clicked as cleanliness has been something I’ve been reflecting a lot about, as Through my personal experience and also seeing different cultures dealing with cleanliness. I feel like this reflects a lot on our state of mind. My psychologist mom used to say that the way our room/house is organised (or disorganised) is a projection of the way our minds find themselves at that moment of life. Thus, chaos would reflect chaos. I also find that the opposite also occurs when it comes to anxiety, depression and other mental disorders (ps for the word “disorders”), as cleaning and organising as to bringing a sense of cleanliness for the chaos in one’s mind. Or representing the urge to solve intangible things that are transferred to solving/cleaning the surroundings. Also in a cultural bias, I felt that in some cultures where sexuality is treated as a taboo, often the obsession with cleanliness can possibly be a way of “cleaning the dirty aims of one’s body”. It’s all just a reflection I’ve been having though. Not affirming anything 😊

Honestly it's really good to hear this bc I sometimes get a lot of tiktoks that talk about how you should Washington yourself and that in general are made to make people feel bad for "not being clean enough"

I see a lot of Brazilians in the comments talking about how everyone in Brazil showers every day multiple times, but I honestly think there is such a significant amount of people that don't but pretend they do. I myself always felt such shame of my body's boddly things, my vaginal discharge, sweating, dandruff, my oily skin...and beeing a neurodivergent person showering feels good but can be so demanding of my executive function sometimes. I don't usually shower multiple times a day and sometimes I do go a day without showering, I do feel kind of ashamed even though I know I don't actually need it, my body odor is not strong and my skin is very sensitive after accutane. I feel like most times if I admit not showering every day this will make be disgusted and think ill of me even though they never have seen me smelly or dirty. This brings up for me such a fear of rejection and humiliation it's actually contradictory because even though I don't follow the social norm here I actually am somewhat clean obsessed and that's frequently pointed out. I imagine that there are other people with similar experiences here.

This has absolutely been a theme I have been thinking about for the last several years, especially as a disabled and neurospicy person. There is so much ableism tied up in Western (North American in my experience) ideas of cleanliness and so many people don’t seem to realize. With my memory and attention span being so fractured, my body hurting and being to hard to work with, chronic fatigue, easily bruised or irritated skin, texture issues, a laundry list of allergies and sensitivities to things like fragrances and colorants and other ingredients that are so commonly used in cleaning/hygiene products, etc. taking a shower is an unexpectedly exhausting and time-consuming experience. It has taken me many years and a lot of patience and gentleness with myself to settle into washing habits that work for me, and to be okay with only being able to manage washing myself on a very limited basis or in stages. It does not look the way those around me engage with cleanliness and I’m okay with that now, but I had to fight to get here. So much of people’s everyday language reminds me of these things, like reliance on deodorants and the pervasive shaming of anyone who doesn’t wear it (never taking any can’t, or won’t/ ethical refusals [marketing, pollution, etc], into consideration), and perfumes for their bodies or homes like febreezes which make me itch or give me respiratory symptoms. I’ve had to sit on public transit for hours with people spraying strong perfumes, coughing and woozy the whole time but unable to take another bus/train, and I was called slurs and given nasty looks when I couldn’t stay upright or tried to ask them to stop. I would very much appreciate a world in which more people would consider the impacts of their ideas of “cleanliness”, and would hold more space and compassion for themselves and others who don’t/can’t subscribe to the same.

Girl I can tell you from personal experience, growing up I got sick often and had a TON of allergies because I wasn't exposed to the "outside world"(germs&dirt) and my mom wishes she had let me out more often from an earlier age...But I am more active outside and now I have lost some of my allergies that I had when I was younger...

These videos are so well done.... I struggle to write a paper for class meanwhile mina makes these lengthy and detailed videos often

I had a time in my life whey I showered daily because I saw it on social media (it was at the beginning of social media) while watching many videos made by American creators. I'm from Europe, where it is not really warm for most of the year. So I went back to showering only every two days and, on the not shower day, giving myself a wash under the arms, my feet and private parts. Nothing more and noone ever complained. My hair is now only washed once a week and not every day, which makes it so much better. And I also grew up in a perfume free household as my mother is highly allergic to it.

I am naturally a messy person and I currently have very bad depression, I've had it for a few years now, and it only increased and got worse and I hate it when people outright say how much of a mess and how disgusting my room is. Like, I know that, but I have no motivation to help or clean up and whenever I do clean it up it ends up going back to the way it was before not too long afterwards. I wish people would offer constant help to people who struggle, or just do anything other than say how messy your room is as it only makes it worse. Not better- Sorry for the rant, please continue on your journey in the comments

29:18 adhd, depression, and other mental illnesses make keeping a daily cleaning ritual damn near impossible. After a huge mental health crisis when I was 22, I was telling my internet best friend that I was getting in the shower and not washing anything besides my rolls, boobs, pits, and crotch. She shamed me. She didn’t know that in the weeks prior to that I hadn’t been leaving bed, I was crying in hysterics like a baby all day, and just using drugs to even be able to stand up without literally collapsing in despair. My family would shame me for not finishing antibiotics I had gotten prescribed when they didn’t know that I had been candid with my psychiatrist about my drug usage, and had subsequently been blacklisted from being prescribed my ADHD medication after taking a break from them during my summer off after high school. (For context, it’s normal for children with adhd and compound mental illnesses to take breaks from stimulants when they take time off to relax.) You can’t mop your floors while experiencing DTs, you can’t brush your hair while your convulsing with crying fits. It’s just impossible.

Best compliments I have ever gotten were 3 times I were told I smell good, even if I had forgotten to put on perfume for I think most of those times. One was my aunt who was measuring me while we were doing a sowing project together, another time with friends at a house when we were all drunk and laying on the couch together and another at a coffee house saying good bye to a few friends after hugs. All of those times just stuck with me, I'm just glad it's something in me I can be very happy about :)