I Smell Trouble

by Charles

There's trouble all right.  Trouble in Berkeley city.  This website spells out the next wave of malodorant activism.  Some excerpts:

• Body Odor Rights Activists of Berkeley California
• Fighting for your right to communicate naturally
• Deodorant is Barbarism!
• Body Odor can communicate what words can't. Our natural smells let others know our moods, our availability for sex, our essence, our dreams. To cover it up or wash it away is like sewing your mouth shut.
• 2006 Goals:  Destroy deodorant manufacturing plants.
• Vaginal odor rights are our next threshhold to cross.
• Oppressive douche companies must be removed from mother earth.

They're inspired by ELF and they're itching for a "lawsuit against America".  Or maybe they're just itching.  For the record, I don't use deodorant.  I also don't know if this is satire or real, but either way it made me laugh.

Comments

[xanax]

"Vaginal odor rights are our next threshhold to cross."

Can't wait for the Senate hearings on this one.

[Jackmormon]

As a native of the People's Republic, I take umbrage!!!!1!!

[hilzoy]

My guess: satire.

[Paul]

I'm certain that's "satire." This gives it away to me:

"It's not easy bein a big breasted Black woman" Elma told us she feels she is being discriminated against on the job for smelling natural. How can she take care of 6 kids and work 2 jobs with no man and NOT smell normal?

But, y'know, maybe you encounter people who really say things like that. I haven't.

The funny thing is, I'm not certain these nutty activists aren't satirists, either.

[Charles Bird]

I'm to change "malodorant" to "malodorous" in typepad, but it's not letting me in.

[xanax]

I don't know hil, after all it is Berkeley (the French dept?) where anything's possible. However, in the interest of fair and balanced scientific research, I just e-mailed 'em & asked if they were serious.

Will keep you posted as more facts become available.

[Jackmormon]

No, no, no, Hilzoy. I have taken all the umbrage and intend to leave none for the satirists.

[Anderson]

"The vagina is a self-cleaning organ!"

(Remarkable how many *non*-Tom Robbins links one gets by googling this slogan.)

[Phil]

Ten bonus points to Charles for not giving in to the impulse to title the post, "I Smell Something Fishy."

Let the beatings commence.

[dutchmarbel]

It has to be satire, a serious US webpage couldn't discuss the item without some Eurobashing :)

[Alopex Lagopus]

I just communicated with myself. With pride, since I'm in Berkeley too!

[nous_athanatos]

Paul--The UCLA Professors page is entirely serious. It only reads like satire to people with a sense of humor. No surprise, since we know that partisans don't think and probably do not smell the taint of hypocrisy which clings to their texts and make them seem so ironic to all but the choir.

[Anarch]

For the record, I don't use deodorant.

Charles Bird Stinks And Is Ruining This Site!

[Ginger Yellow]

"They're inspired by ELF and they're itching for a "lawsuit against America"."

The Erisian Liberation Front? Cool. Operation Mindfuck lives!

[DaveC]

Holy Chao!

[Ginger Yellow]

Don't have a Chao, man.

[Charles Bird]

Ginger, your comments are welcome but we do have posting rules.

[JP]

The Erisian Liberation Front? Cool. Operation Mindfuck lives!

That's a relief, I was thinking Will Ferrell was behind this.

[Ginger Yellow]

Sorry. Didn't occur to me that anyone would object to a little swearword thread on self cleaning vaginas . I'll keep my language in check in future.

[Ginger Yellow]

That's "...in a thread..."

[Tully]

Somewhere, both Robert Anton Wilson and Tom Robbins are chuckling gleefully.

[BORA]

This is not satire! Body Odor discrimination is a very serious problem. Billions of gallons are wasted on weekly, biweekly and daily showers and laundry to rid the air of what's natural. And if you don't play the game of "hide the nature" you get penalized at work, socially, sexually, politically, etc. We are not an invisible group. We are just kept silent by misogynistic workplaces who threaten us with illegal termination if we don't waste water. Yes, deodorant plants MUST be removed willingly or unwillingly and yes we ARE motivated by the ELF. We must not stop under any circumstances from ridding mother earth of anti-nature radicals.