I keep seeing posts that repeat the same talking points about hygiene. Guys listing how often they shower, brush their teeth, clip their nails, and saying they’re still single. It’s always framed like “I’m clean, so why does no one want me,” and after seeing it so often, it honestly starts to feel like some kind of hygiene propaganda.
I get that hygiene is important, especially in dating, but it makes me wonder how bad some guys actually were before if “shower regularly and use deodorant” became some kind of revolutionary advice.. Personally, I’ve never met a man who doesn’t shower regularly or reeks of BO. All the guys I know seem pretty normal when it comes to basic hygiene.
Am I just sheltered? Or is this stereotype overblown?
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I keep seeing posts that repeat the same talking points about hygiene. Guys listing how often they shower, brush their teeth, clip their nails, and saying they’re still single. It’s always framed like “I’m clean, so why does no one want me,” and after seeing it so often, it honestly starts to feel like some kind of hygiene propaganda.
I get that hygiene is important, especially in dating, but it makes me wonder how bad some guys actually were before if “shower regularly and use deodorant” became some kind of revolutionary advice.. Personally, I’ve never met a man who doesn’t shower regularly or reeks of BO. All the guys I know seem pretty normal when it comes to basic hygiene.
Am I just sheltered? Or is this stereotype overblown?
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Narcissistic negging.
Women like to virtue signal, by hygiene they mean, good looking men actually
It’s about the same. There’s plenty of unhygenic people from both genders. I wouldn’t say it doesn’t exist though. Go out of your big city and you’ll see more of them.
The stereotype is overblown. Yea, there’s guys who don’t know how to take care of their hygiene, but there’s also women who don’t either.
In my experience this whole hygiene thing was revolutionary for 20% of the guys I met in college and grad school. So not a majority, by any stretch, but enough that it matters.
It’s just gaslighting of men.
Some guys do have poor hygiene. They reek of rancid BO, suggesting they aren’t using deodorant and haven’t showered for a while either. You can smell when they’re near you and their smell lingers after them.
There may be women with poor hygiene too, but women have milder body odour them men, so they aren’t as noticeable.
Sheltered. Go to resorts, where we throw out the bedding and mattresses of workers (male and female). Or check out homeless encampments, halfway houses, hoarders, dormitories, etc etc.
Face it, bros, too many of us stink. We don’t wash our assholes because that shits gay.
Part of it is a bias towards working men…men who do actual work that involves physical labor. In general it’s not a thing.
Go to any con and you’ll see why people think that
Yeah, I’d say it’s about the same. I was in the military and went through boot camp in a coed division. You quickly learn that some females can be absolutely disgusting. As I reflect back on this time. All of us male and female have to wear white underwear. LOL God Bless the Laundry PO because he found out some dudes legit dont know how to wipe.
Then there is my third roommate who moved into the barracks at my A school. I truly discovered the depths of what an uncivilized male could be. Seriously, it was rough. I’m not even exaggerating when I say I almost lost it. There were nights I couldn’t even sleep in the room. Glad that moment in time has passed..
Of course plenty of men are hygienic. There’s also plenty of dirty nasty ones as well
if you wanna know how bad male hygiene can be, go visit an anime/games/comic convention
it will change you
It was me, sorry guys
Some dudes struggle with it, but the bar is pretty low so a lot more people meet it pretty easily. The one that gets me are the women who go into the guys who have the skincare routine, the manicures, pedicures, who put on the aftershave/cologne, etc. because that’s what women are taught is the bar for hygiene amongst themselves; I can imagine most dudes don’t meet that bar (I certainly literally never have).
Also, I hate to speak badly of nerds because they’re my people, but if you ever go to a comic book convention or a busy tournament night at a friendly local game store, you’ll know why they often need posted guidelines boiling down to “please wash your ass, for the love of God”, and I would be foolish to think this has absolutely no overlap with the greater male population.
If you’ve never met a man with bad hygiene I would recommend you go to your nearest college and sit in a comp-sci or engineering lecture or go to a comi-con or anime con lol.
I’ve been there, I’ve smelt it.
The fact is that if there wasn’t any truth to the statement, dudes wouldn’t have to defend their own hygiene.
Of course it isn’t all men. But some men for sure.
Nah I know lots of gross dudes. I work at a pretty big place, we’re all paid halfway well and have good insurance, there’s still a bunch of guys walking around with half rotted teeth. We had two guys at the same time last year who smelled so bad you couldn’t get within 15 feet of them in a huge climate controlled warehouse with tons of air moving around. Like you can let the biggest fart of your life go and never smell it in there, those dudes overpowered even that.
Join the army and find out. You can smell some people’s ball sack.
My gf’s mom’s nickname for me is Clean Boy, so I don’t feel this applies to me.
Men have been getting their dick sucked for 300,000 years.
I’m not convinced hygiene has stopped much of anything
Because men are less concerned with hygiene and self care than the ladies are. We are able to deal with being nasty to make ends meet so the women don’t have to.
Because some women are bullies and they are quite vocal about saying men are disgusting and have bad hygiene. Other women don’t stand up for men in those circles, either.
It’s slightly more socially acceptable for men to be less hygienic, so it just follows.
From janitors who replace soap in men’s rooms half as often as in women’s rooms, the numbers being roughly equal. 😁
Not going to lie as a man I definitely think it’s not an idea it’s just a fact. I’m very hygienic to the point that I feel it’s normal but two things can be true at once. For the most part I don’t think a lot of men wash their hand, and wash their hands effectively at that. I’ve never had problems with men smelling but still.
You’re just sheltered.
There are dudes out here who had to be convinced that wiping their asses properly wasn’t gay. “metrosexual” was a term that was created because “giving a shit about your appearance while a man without being a homosexual” was a bizarre and unnatural concept that apperently had to be defined. And who could forget the “axe body spray shower”?
It honestly feels like people are gaslighting men at this point. A guy says he’s struggling to find someone and the response is always something like “have you considered taking a shower?” It comes off super condescending, like hygiene is the only reason someone could be single. What’s worse is that some men start internalizing it and you’ll see them putting their hygiene routine in their bios like it’s some kind of selling point. It’s sad because it shifts the conversation away from real issues and makes them feel like they’re broken for reasons that aren’t even true.
I work with a very overweight man who always has a funky, unwashed ass smell. Hes the only guy I can remember smelling bad within the past few years, aside from a prominent group of immigrants in my city who don’t wear deodorant. Not sure if it’s a culture thing or they just don’t care, but it can be pretty bad..
Yeah so I work in a hospital and it seems to be about the same percent of people are unhygienic on both genders. I think the lack of hygiene stereotype for men is because boys notoriously like to play hard, get dirty and think it’s funny to not shower right after. Adults though, I see just as many nasty women as men. And yes it is my job to clean these people and I am intimately familiar with the nastiness of people not washing their crevices ever.
For some massively stupid reason, some guys refuse to touch their butthole to wash it. And they don’t clean themselves after they shit with a bidet or tp with water.
Probably because generally men do more labor intensive jobs. And the few that don’t make guys look ridiculous
Lmao nah man. I hope she wasn’t a squirter because that would’ve been pepper spray at that point.
Some stereotypes. Some I have witnessed irl.
I blame the parents. Girls are socialised to think about their appearance more, including hygiene.
For me it seemed to be equal parts stinky hippies in college equally.
But some toilet paper joints in a woman’s ass crack or a little armpit funk isn’t enough to stop me from burying my nose in both or complain about it.
Men and women can both be gross. But I will say that I (40sM) encounter more disgusting men than I do disgusting women. And the most ridiculous shit gets the most attention – for example, the posts about “my husband won’t clean his ass because he thinks it’s gay” – whether or not it is actually true.
A lot of men have never cleaned between their ass cheeks. There seems to be a stigma against men getting soap and their hand up in there
It’s not that guy don’t shower regularly; it’s that guy tend to sweat more and get dirtier over the course of the day.
I work in commercial renovation. That means a lot of heavy lifting, a lot of moving around, a lot of dirt and dust flying around, and very seldom do I have access to any kind of AC on a hot and humid day.
I can shower every morning and every evening, but if you happen to catch me in between when I’m leaving the job site and when I get home and hop in the shower; I’ll probably be dirtier, sweatier, and smellier than most women would get if they went a month without bathing.
Granted; some days are worse than others, some days are better, but I’ve got enough sisters to know that at their worst they don’t come anywhere close to how bad I get on an average day.
>>Am I just sheltered
Yes.
Because it’s true *enough*. Is it every man? No. But men leaving skid marks in their underwear has been a talking point in the culture for decades. It’s not just about cosmetic things like trimming nails, or even basic showering – women will actively wash their butts in the shower, but enough men balk at that idea.
I’ll spare some graphic details, but as a gay man who enjoys giving oral sex, quite a few men don’t wipe or wash back there very often. Certainly not all, but yeah.
I’ve worked with a few guys that just could not figure it out. I also used to work on cars for the general public and I can tell you that people are fucking gross regardless of gender.
One kid we had as a lot porter. He had one shirt that he liked and he wore it every damn day. He also didn’t wear deodorant, ever. They actually ended up giving him work shirts which porters didn’t normally get just to get him to stop stinking up customer cars. The manager had to lay out out for him that either he needed to start washing his ass or find another job.
Experience
Can tell you know, out of all the partners I’ve been with, so many girls don’t wash once a day…
The stereotype is exaggerated.( it’s very much the case of people meeting a few stinky apples, then assuming that all apples are like that.) I’ve met women that are just as bad. If not worse.
Traditionally, men did the heavy, dirty work. So we would come home dirty and sweaty. It became associated with masculinity.
I never thought about it much either but I think you’re on to something! I don’t know any guy that’s like that. MAYBE in high school but not since then.
In the 90s, Jeff Foxworthy’s stand up got real popular and a repeating theme is that men have poor hygiene, poor grooming habits, and poor fashion sense and women don’t. Can’t say for sure he’s the reason why but he managed to singlehandedly change “redneck” from an insult people used to scream at him while walking home to a cultural juggernaut
I work with someone currently that reeks of BO and tries to cover it up with cologne sometimes I think but it doesn’t work.
This platform is biased. The people with such issues are more likely to ask a hygiene question here and get genuine responses here. So you see the question regularly.
The people who already have hygiene skills don’t need to post the question.
Idk, high school, and college years were a challenge for some guys. I’ve known several guys who struggled with substance abuse and depression and upkeep took a nose dive.
I think it’s like most other things.
Men are at the extreme ends of just about everything while women tend to fall nearer toward the middle of the bell curve.
The average man is probably similarly cleanly to the average woman, but the most disgusting people are probably mostly men, so it seems like men are more gross.
build up of smells like BO and not washing yourself or clothes is the worst. If you work and sweat that happens.If you tend not to shower your BO gets worse. Your clothes start to smell like it, your bed smells like it as well as your car. Same with a smokers. But to much after shave is just as annoying! Same as perfumes. Find a happy medium.
Eh, a lot of dudes have some pretty atrocious hygiene and aren’t even aware of the fact they do.
Teenage boys.
Boys going through puberty have a potent smell, and they’re still learning to take care of themselves so taking care of it is often done poorly if at all. Eventually the hormones calm down and the hygienic skills get better.
Men typically grow out of that phase, however some do not.
I managed a mid to high end residential AV shop in my late 20’s. There was a guy there who was rank but just tried to cover it with cologne. You could tell it wasn’t just from a day or 2 as he smelled like it had been at least a week since he’d showered. I talked with him about it a couple of times but eventually had to let him go.
Combine that with the posts from women who complain about their men not wiping their ass or bathing it, only showering once a week or never brushing their teeth or the posts from men who say they don’t wash their legs in the shower or say they wear the same pair of jeans all week without washing them and you have some pretty nasty guys out there.
Nobody I hang out with is like this but some guys really need to get it together with the personal hygiene.
There are some dudes who are nasty. Same with women.
From reddit, because I have seen so many men saying it’s gay to wash your own arsehole…
I keep seeing that “dudes think it’s gay to touch their own ass so they don’t wipe their asses.” It’s been repeated so much that some people think 50% of all men are walking around with shitty asses.
😂 I think like maybe one or two dudes think this but it’s become “2.5 out of 5 men…”
reality
Honestly, it’s a stereotype that exists for a reason. My freshman year of college, I lived in a triple occupancy dorm with two roommates and 3 suite mates… I understand the stereotype after 3 days.
Back in the day a friend of mine met a woman in a bar. I was with him. He slept with her a couple of times then broke it off. I asked him why and he said when they got in bed her feet smelled so bad he had to put on cologne to cover the smell!
I guess the real question is, if there are lots of stinky woman, are more men able to overlook it cause they want to get laid?
From a women’s point of view, many men I’ve dated lacked basic hygiene and I had to walk away. They weren’t brushing their teeth everyday. Their underwear had holes in it and just overall…meh! They would try to meet me out in sweatpants for lunch with rips and stains.
Theirs rugged vs sloppy I guess. Fine line to walk for some.
I also appreciate a man that manscapes, has good style and knows to wash his sheets regularly. You’d be surprised how hard this is to find. I had to explain to and ex about what a mattress cover was, caused you know, nothing worse than changing the sheets for him and seeing years of sex evidenced on the mattress 🤮.
This question better belongs in ask woman because the men all won’t see themselves in the question 😂 (yes I know there are stinky woman, )
Sinks and soap at the portable restrooms on construction site is a recent thing
Clearly you’ve never worked in the trades
Men like the idea that a process will lead to an outcome. They think that being fashionably pretty will make women like them. When that doesn’t happen, they complain. That’s all this is.
I’ll just day this, I’ve heard 12 stories about a man picking shit flakes out of their crack, I’ve heard maybe 4 stories of a woman doing anything that rancid
I had a friend in college who was a classic stereotypical internet troll. Spent way too much time on 4chan, rarely ever left his dorm except to come smoke weed with me and play video games. But yea, the dude smelled horrible. He rarely showered.
I feel like it is reminiscent of a time in which it might’ve been common for men to be out in fields toiling all day, with ladies at home with kids. Just having dirty nails and tussled hair, being sweaty or w e. Idk
It started with my male roommate leaving pizza boxes under his bed until he had a few thousand ants there. Then the stereotype folded a bit when my other roommate invited his gf to live with him and she liked to drape crusty panties over the towel bar in the bathroom.
I’m still leaning towards women being a smidgen cleaner, but it’s a close race.
Actually when a guy smell bad a lot of people call him out.
Now when a girl smell bad everyone is afraid to tell
Perhaps the idea comes from all the guys I see leaving public restrooms without washing their hands. That seems unhygenic to me.
Not from my home country (Brazil). They take two showers a say on average and they brush their teeth after evert meal.
I am a trans man so I have a unique perspective on this.
When I was still identifying as a girl and using the women’s restroom it was pretty much always clean and everyone washed their hands. I saw girls doing their makeup, putting on perfume, putting on deodorant, doing their hair, changing clothes, etc.
Mom’s tend to raise their daughters with it ingrained into their heads that hygiene and looking put together is important. That’s not to say some women arent fucking disgusting, because trust me some definitely are.
When I transitioned and started using the men’s restroom the differences were very noticeable. I walk into more dirty men’s restrooms than I do clean ones; trash and toilet paper everywhere, piss on the seats and floor, clogged toilets, so many people don’t even bother flushing after taking a shit, there’s almost always at least one stall door that’s fucked up. It’s not uncommon to see men, often times in convention spaces, that don’t shower regularly or take care of themselves in general. Also, boys tend to grow up with their parents not putting as much effort into making sure they are clean and put together.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that most men are unhygienic, but enough of us are that it is noticeable
Well, men definitely spend less on hygiene products than women, but that’s for reasons.
Me. It came from me, the unhygienic man.
Woman here, but I hear enough about this from my spouse. We’re both professionals and work in the same corporate office, where the majority of people are educated (mostly engineers) and do pretty well financially
He tells me the number of men who do not wash their hands after going to the bathroom is astounding. Most women I see wash their hands fairly thoroughly
More men we work with than women will wear the same clothes in the same week. I doubt they’re washing and ironing in between. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but we live in Houston where it’s 8 million degrees outside so sweating is a given
A stunning number of men we work with don’t go to the dentist, despite having very good dental insurance and a dentist office in our facility. All of the women I work with regularly go in for cleaning and whatnot. Similar trend for routine annual physicals, despite having excellent insurance
I can’t tell you how many vehicles I’ve gotten into to go to off-site lunches where the back seat/floorboard is littered with old, musty gym clothes and athletic shoes
I wouldn’t say most of the guys we work with are unhygienic, but there are some and the % is definitely skewed more toward men than women (same education and income levels)
Depressed people struggle with hygiene, sometimes.
I attend group therapy for depression, and it’s pretty common to hear from everyone (myself included) that people fail to complete their self-care goals of “taking a shower.”
You stand and piss. I sit and wipe the seat you missed.
I work in three retail stores and often go to the restroom there. The amount of men that I hear in the stalls that take a dump and then just walk out, would astonish you. And they don’t even wash their hands either. So there’s a bunch of men that don’t wipe their ass or minimally wipe I’m sure.
Im someone that cleans toilets as part of my job. Women are considerably more filthy then men
Normalized misandry
I don’t see a correlation. I do see my degenerate family members and in society guys sticking their hands down their pants and getting nut sweat all over the place, though. Attractiveness levels vary for those nasty mofos.
Dirty women I bet
There are certain demographics of men where it’s a lot more common.
3 of the worst smelling places I’ve ever been to:
Let’s be honest, some people are just foul. Men and women. There are some ladies out there not taking care of themselves either.
From the people who saw a few of us being unhygienic
Like the dude i called out in the theater for not washing his hands, he ran off like a child as i washed mine
The difference between an average men’s room and average women’s room becomes clear evidence for why that stereotype exists.