Is that also against their religion?

It may be a cultural thing, Wilso--Islam started in a region of the world which was not noteworthy for a great many public baths, and without running water in the home.

I had trouble concentrating that's for sure.

I've had the same experience with men wearing too much cologne, or women wearing too much perfume. In such cases, i'll get up and change seats.

I agree with Setanta. America, and certain other western nations, have become obsessed with a level of cleanliness that is unheard of in other parts of the world. We use deodorant soap to wash off our natural smells, and then apply frangrances give off an attractive odor.

There has to be a middle ground!

Maybe there is a middle ground, but i'm with Wilso, i wouldn't want to live in such an environment.

Two years of lectures, and this was the first person I've sat next to who really wanted to make me throw up. God the stench was horrible. And I'm a smoker, so our sense of smell is normally not that good. But I always use a breath mint if I have a cigarette before a lecture.

Wilso- I wonder if some people are annoyed by the odor given off the clothing of a smoker. THAT makes me sick to my stomach!


At one time I played cards with a fairly large group. There was a woman who always stank, her nails were dirty, and her hair hung in strings. I pulled her aside, and, in a nice way, confronted the issue. Subsequently, there WAS an improvement!

That's the reason I do my smoking outside, so I'm not sitting in the swirl of it. The morning after a night at a club, I can smell the smoke in the clothes I was wearing. There's no cigarette smell in the clothes I'm wearing now, the same one's I was wearing this afternoon. And I put them on clean to go to the lecture.

Wilso- Don't know if you can get it where you live, but Proctor & Gamble makes a product called, Febreze. It is used to freshen up clothing that is not exactly pristine, but not dirty enough to be thrown in the wash.

I find that in Florida, in the summer, I could change clothes a couple of times a day. Febreze is a boon out here!

Or you can try smoking in the nude

Gautam- I am afraid that certain "parts" may pick up the smoke odor!

When I was working night shift at Baybank in the main office building years ago, I worked with the lasar printers in a pretty confined room. Well, there were only 3 of us that worked in that department and this one guy I worked with had one of those stenches, so I know what you're saying. Just him walking by me made me gag. I confronted him about it one night and he got all bent out of shape and started screaming discrimination. The guy was also the laziest person I've ever worked with and I always ended up busting my butt to make up for what he wasn't doing. I told my manager that if things didn't change that I was out of there. Well, needless to say, things never changed and I was gone.

Oddly enough, perhaps it is against her religion. Islam has ridgidly prescribed rituals for washing and cleanliness which were laid down before the invention of soap or deororant:

Ablution and bathing

When your god has been that specific about personal hygiene, doing anything more may be construed as impious.

Terry, you've been here for quite a while, but i've not ever noticed you before. A belated welcome to the site. And thank you for a cogent comment on the topic.

Before we get too judgemental about others and secure in ourselves about all this...

...there are cultures on this planet that truly do not like to be around Americans because of their smell.

We eat more beef than almost anyone on the planet -- and beef imparts a very distinctive odor to our bodies. To many people -- particularly orientals -- the smell is very obnoxious.

When a person doesn't bathe for a long time, especiall if their family members don't bathe, they can't smell their own scent.

I went on a camping trip with a group of people for a month, no showers, and even the stink of the boys went away. I couldn't smell anyone, they couldn't smell anyone, but when we got back to the main camp, with showers, no one would get near us and sent us straight to the showers.

So this woman is probably unaware or unbelieving of her smell. If her family member's don't bathe, she won't be all gung-ho to take a western or japanese style daily scrub-a-thon (I personally love showers, but that's just me.) I can't think of a polite way to suggest it to her.

The most difficult thing that I ever had to do was to call one of my students aside and talk to her about body odor. The only reason that I did was because the other students were downright cruel to her about it. One of the other teachers, knowing that this girl and I had a good rapport, asked me to do so. She broke into uncontrollable sobbing. I felt as though my soul had body odor. I resolved never, NEVER to do such a thing again.

Aside to Phoenix. Did I smell like smoke in Cocoa?

Letty- Let's just say this. Before Florida enacted the complete "no smoking" ban, if one person was smoking at the other end of a large restaurant, I could smell it!

UhOh!