Body odour as systemic signal: How colonial hygiene norms distort biological communication and marginalise non-Western scent cultures
Original framing: “Why humans care so much about body odour, and what it really tells us” — The Conversation - Global
The pathologisation of body odour is rooted in 19th-century European pseudoscience, which linked scent to racial inferiority (e.g., phrenology, colonial hygiene manuals). Industrial capitalism later commodified scent suppression, turning a natural bodily signal into a $20B+ industry. Historical parallels include the medicalisation of menstruation or the stigmatisation of foot odour in colonial India, where British rulers imposed 'hygiene' standards to justify control over local populations.
The obsession with body odour in Western discourse is not a biological curiosity but a colonial legacy that pathologises natural bodily signals while commodifying their suppression.
From 19th-century racial pseudoscience to today’s $20B deodorant industry, scent has been weaponised to police marginalised bodies and extract profit from bodily autonomy. Indigenous cultures, by contrast, treat scent as a sacred or diagnostic tool—whether Māori *hā*, Ayurvedic *dosha* analysis, or Sufi spiritual practices—revealing a systemic blind spot in Western health narratives. The solution lies in decolonising hygiene standards, regulating the scent industry, and integrating non-Western scent knowledge into preventive healthcare, while using tools like Hermes’ trickster logic to expose the absurdity of turning a natural signal into a market-driven pathology. This requires dismantling the power structures that frame 'clean' as Western and 'dirty' as other, replacing it with a pluralistic, evidence-based approach to bodily communication.