Why More Korean Women Wear Deodorant Than Men?
By James Turnbull
Contributing Writer
``Men can sweat up to 50 percent more than women,'' or so says deodorant maker Rexona. Yet not only do very few Koreans ever wear deodorant, advertisements for it that have started appearing in recent years have almost exclusively been aimed at women. Far from being counterintuitive, however, a study published last Monday in the journal Flavor and Fragrance demonstrates that women have very good reasons to pay more attention to how they smell.
Researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia asked male and female volunteers to rate the strength of 32 underarm sweat samples collected from both genders, and then 32 more that had been disguised by different fragrances typically used to control or mask underarm odor. While both men and women rated the unadulterated samples as equally strong, 19 fragrances successfully disguised the smell for men, while women were deceived by just two. In further investigation using only female volunteers,' the unadulterated samples were again rated as equally strong, but whereas six fragrances succeeded in disguising the men's smells, as many as 16 worked on the women's. In other words, while women's noses are more sensitive than men's, their own odors are more easily disguised, leading women to wear more deodorant or perfume than men. As an aside, in the mating game, this may not always be a good strategy. Other research has shown that the scent of a woman's sweat is particularly attractive to men at the most fertile time of her monthly cycle.
But there's much more behind the gender bias in the marketing of deodorant in Korea. In their low deodorant uptake, Koreans are the exception rather than the rule. While it's true that the first aerosol deodorant was launched as recently as 1965, the first roll-on applicator tested in 1952, and Mum, the first ever commercial product for preventing body odor, only invented in 1888, every major civilization as far back as the ancient Egyptians has left a record of its efforts at disguising underarm body odor. So what makes Koreans so different?
Diet, weight, fitness and climate certainly all play a role in how much one sweats, how smelly it is, and one's ability to smell others. While explanations involving ethnicity are fraught with danger, it's true that Northeast Asians have fewer apocrine sweat glands than average, and famous human behaviorist Desmond Morris (The Naked Woman, 2007) has argued that this makes them less susceptible to body odor.
Northeast Asians on the whole may emit less odor than other groups, but that doesn't mean everyone, particularly men, should relax about their personal hygiene. That many do is probably at least partially due to a host of cultural and economic factors. For instance, during much of Korea's recent history, deodorant would have been considered a luxury that few needed and even fewer could afford, a notion that still lingers in the gifting of such basic items as spam and cooking oil for national holidays. Furthermore, during Korean men's mandatory military service, a defining experience, youngsters are forced to get used to going without many everyday basics.
On the other hand, given women's physiological advantages and their dominance of the ``smelly industries'' worldwide, the very word ``perfume'' has feminine overtones to many Western male ears. It's reasonable to assume that ``deodorant'' has similar connotations for most Korean men. Yet looking at the popularity of kkotminam, or ``flower men,'' in Korea, challenging traditional notions of masculinity and spending more time and money on their appearance, deodorant manufacturers should be keen to tap into a whole new market.
Unfortunately, the timing's bad; while ``look at this strange side of the recession!'' stories are in vogue at the moment, with everything from skirt-lengths, alcohol and tobacco consumption, the number of breast enlargement surgeries, lipstick sales, and even vasectomies are covered as going up or down with the economy, experience from the financial crisis of 1997-98 suggests that sales of men's cosmetics are about to drop. After four years of 10-20 percent growth from 1992, sales dropped 28.6 percent the next year, and ad spending by 37 percent.
When (if) things pick up though, forget about Korean deodorant advertisements for women that emphasize mother figures and friendships. Expect those for men to associate the right deodorant with sexual success. Another recent study from the International Journal of Cosmetic Science has demonstrated that how a deodorant makes a man feel is much more important than any changes to his scent. Lest that sound like exaggeration, researchers found that women looking at men through one-way mirrors rated those wearing certain deodorants more attractive than others, due simply to the confident swagger the act of wearing the deodorant had given them!
James Turnbull is a writer on Korean gender issues and pop culture. He can be reached via his blog at https://thegrandnarrative.wordpress.com/.