Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 18, 1993 TAG: 9312030374
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Short
Historically, upper classes used various unguents to camouflage odors common to working classes. Today, sweat is still class-conscious: On the construction site, it's OK. In the corporate office, it's not.
Other cultures seem less obsessed about it. Europeans generally bathe less frequently, and some cultures still use sweat to send signals - typically, sexual. Ann Brittain, University of Miami associate professor of anthropology, mentions a ritual - she believes Hungarian - where a man dances with his handkerchief under his arm, then hands the sodden cloth to a woman.
Plains Indians - as well as natives of Central America, Australia, Africa, Siberia and some areas of northern Europe - use sweat lodges as methods of purification and spiritual renewal.
Some experts speculate that Americans retain Victorian ideas about bodily functions. But Brittain says this is a sparsely researched subject.
``All I can really say is it's cultural. For a variety of behaviors, there is no `why,' she says. Hygiene practices may stem from something as simple as the availability of water or plumbing.
What Brittain finds most fascinating is the preference for other smells over human ones: ``We go out of our way to wash these odors out of our bodies, then we cover and spray ourselves with the sex odors of plants or the sexual odors of animals.''
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