Being male and body hair and deodorant?

[Alex_or_Ben]

Hi, I was wondering about how men grow their armpit hair and how do you use deodorant?  I am asking because I used to shave my armpits before and the deodorant would work because it is against the skin.  But without the shaving part, how do you prevent being smelly?  I have a problem with taking showers (sorry if it is too blunt) because my female body parts don't fit with being male and I just hate taking showers.  Am I the only one who struggles with taking showers because of my pre-op body being the way it is?  Do you have any ideas on what to do?  I just hope you have ideas because it is July and summer around here.

Anything would be helpful.
Alexander

[barbie]

Hi, I was wondering about how men grow their armpit hair and how do you use deodorant?  I am asking because I used to shave my armpits before and the deodorant would work because it is against the skin.  But without the shaving part, how do you prevent being smelly?  I have a problem with taking showers (sorry if it is too blunt) because my female body parts don't fit with being male and I just hate taking showers.  Am I the only one who struggles with taking showers because of my pre-op body being the way it is?  Do you have any ideas on what to do?  I just hope you have ideas because it is July and summer around here.

Anything would be helpful.
Alexander

Most men do not care about armpit hair. I have never used deodorant.
I think, in summer, just taking shower every morning is enough to prevent any offensive odor.

barbie~~

[sparrow]

Boys smell.  Forget the deodorant. 

I wore deodorant for a while.  It's essentially cologne.  It doesn't matter if it's on the hair or skin; when you lift your arm, the blended BO/cologne scent wafts out.

Antiperspirant is different -- it needs to be on the skin.  Fortunately, what sticks to the hairs will rub off on the skin throughout the day.

[Alex_or_Ben]

   Both of you made me laugh.  Thank you for your sense of humor.   

[FTMax]

Showering is more important than the deodorant. Smell will be more noticeable when bacteria builds up in the hair, which will happen faster if you aren't showering often.

If it's an option for you, I'd recommend getting a packer with a slim harness and wearing it while you shower. That way, you see something male when you look down. The thinner harnesses work best for this because you can get them wet and ring them out without too much trouble.

[sparrow]

Binders are sleeveless, right?  Would it work to wear your binder into the shower and scrub up?  It might help to do that on laundry day so you can change into a dry binder.

Whatever you don't wash is going to smell after a while, especially if you're binding a lot of the time.  But the armpits really are the worst.

[Alex_or_Ben]

Max and Sparrow,
You both are amazing and imaginative!  Wow!

Thank you so very much for your ideas!  I will try it out ASAP.

[Promethea]

Antiperspirants block a necessary biological function, perspiration, and as such can cause cancer.

The method I use and that has proved more effective (I still have male BO as I'm not yet on HRT) is potassium alum crystal deodorants. It's like a stone or crystal made out of potassium alum salt. Sweat doesn't stink. We have bacteria on our skin that eat or sweat. It's their "poo" that stinks. Potassium alum keeps these bacteria from proliferating, so you can sweat like a fake witness and still not smell!

[Arch]

The method I use and that has proved more effective (I still have male BO as I'm not yet on HRT) is potassium alum crystal deodorants. It's like a stone or crystal made out of potassium alum salt.

Hunh. I tried those crystals back when I had a fairly inoffensive female pit odor, and they didn't do a thing for me. Now that I'm male and smelly, nothing seems to work, but I have to admit that I haven't exhausted my options yet.

Nowadays, I perspire excessively all over my body in moderately warm weather, and I hate it. Things have been much worse this summer because of the humidity. I live in a dry area, but it sure hasn't been dry this year.

I am particularly self-conscious about underarm and crotch odor. I hope that the latter will become less of a problem after I have the hole sealed up, but that's likely two or three years away. Not sure what to do until then. And the underarms...whew! I've tried wiping my pits with rubbing alcohol right after I shower, and that doesn't even do much for me. After that, I use a conventional (hypoallergenic) antiperspirant/deodorant. I prefer to avoid antiperspirants, but I sweat so much. Now I'm glumly realizing that the antiperspirant isn't doing the trick anyway, so why continue? Not sure what my next move will be. Maybe I'll switch to deodorant only and find something really powerful. Or underarm shields? I'm that desperate.

[Promethea]

Are you sure it was potassium alum? There's also some other alum, can't remember the type, maybe sodium, but it's the same as what antiperspirants have and doesn't work very well. I know not everybody that sells them explains people how to use them, as I've seen people just rubbing the crystal against their skin like regular deodorant. How did you use them? You're supposed to wet it so that some of the salt dissolves in the water and then you rub it on your skin, you want your armpit hair to be covered in that water.

[Arch]

Are you sure it was potassium alum?

I definitely used it correctly--wet it first--but I don't have it anymore, so it's possible that the formula was weak or that I have my ingredients mixed up. Do you favor a particular brand? While I'm considering my options, I can certainly try again and look for something that is very different from the product I tried.

[Promethea]

I don't buy "brand" deodorants and we're not in the same country anyway. They last a very long time so I never buy them in the same place because I'm not usually in the same place for that long.

I buy from small businesses I find searching the local version of eBay or from organic products stores. A quick googling took me to some warnings about some factory made natural deodorants (not that natural). I'd say buy from a small businesses (making sure it's the potassium type)  or try making it yourself!

Here's how to apply it



And here's some alternatives if the crystal form doesn't work for you.

http://hildablue.com/2013/05/01/dont-sweat-it-make-your-own-natural-deodorant/

[Arch]

I don't have audio at the moment, so I can't watch the video. It was working fine before the upgrades, and the speakers are properly plugged in. Sigh. Maybe you can give me the high points?

I looked up the brand I was using, and it lists potassium alum as one of the ingredients. Maybe they upped the concentration of potassium alum since I last tried the product a decade ago, or maybe I just wasn't drenching myself sufficiently. I might give this stuff another try. I'm not convinced that the compound is harmless, but I'm putting nasty chemicals under my arms now and am getting no benefit whatsoever. In fact, I think I smell worse than I do without anything under there.

[Kitty June]

Just some personal experience. As a guy I never really wore deodorant. Just daily shower and I was mostly good. I never shaved because that would have probably outed me and I wasn't ready for that, but I digress.
If I did use deodorant, I would put it right on the hair and skin. Seemed to work, but I hated showering the next day because it repelled the water when I washed and it took forever to get it off.



Ella

[Gingerbell01]

Boys shower and use deodorant. Some shave pits or at least trim.  As for smell.....try not to

[Arch]

As for smell.....try not to

If "trying" had anything to do with it, I'd be fresh as a daisy all day, every day.

[Promethea]

I don't have audio at the moment, so I can't watch the video. It was working fine before the upgrades, and the speakers are properly plugged in. Sigh. Maybe you can give me the high points?

Sorry, I didn't have a decent connection.

She barely turned the tap on so it was dripping, put the stone under the trap to catch one drip, and then rubbed it against her skin until it was dry.

I personally use a bit more water than that, but rubbing for a while, much longer than roll on deodorant, is the key.

[Arch]

Promethea, the audio problem is with my system.

As for the product, I'm hoping that the local natural foods store has something similar. The weather here has cooled off a bit, but it will inevitably heat up again at some point or be super-humid, so I need to find a solution that works for me.

This "Thai" brand seems to get pretty good reviews. Not quite the same composition.

[Espeon1990]

Personal hygiene is a very important. Smelling bad is a major turn off for most people. People are not gonna want to be around you if you stink and they will most certainly judge you for it. I too have gender dysphoria in the shower but it isn't so bad that it interferes with my showering habits. Maybe put on a pair swim trunks in the shower? Maybe wearing something for men like swim trunks would help you feel better Idk.  Shower daily in the summer and cake on deodorant. I am ftm and I do not shave my armpits, I just scrub them really good in the shower and then I put on gel deodorant. That's just me though. Hope I was of some help to you.

[Arch]

I have a shower packer plus harness that I used when my bottom dysphoria was really getting to me, but I've managed to get to a state where I don't use it anymore. During the time that I was using it, I still had to wash down there, but at least I felt better about having the right kind of dangly bits--sort of, since the packer wasn't perfectly formed. Still, someone suggested it above, and I can say that I found myself much more comfortable in the shower. It's worth a try.

I've never blown off a shower because of my top half. A regular binder is pretty big, even the small ones. But people have used waist slimmers, the kind you buy at Wal-Mart, for binding purposes; they tend to be about eight or ten inches wide, so they are smaller and simpler than a full-size binder and might be more convenient for showering. Still, I don't know how a guy can get clean if he wears a binder in the shower. After all, you have to wash all around there, as well as underneath if you have any droop at all.