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How this Queenslander came to terms with her fear of sweat | Katherine Feeney
Puberty spent in a tropical savanna led to me being constantly anxious about wet patches on work shirts. Then I discovered how to make sweat sexy
Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email and listen to our podcastGrowing up as a teenager in Gladstone, in the year 2000, three things were essential: a pair of wraparound Oakley sunglasses, a school bag in the satchel style of the Australian Olympians; and an arsenal of aerosol antiperspirants (Vanilla Kisses for the girls, and the latest from Lynx for the lads). Without this weaponry, particularly the propellants, puberty in the tropical savanna promised to be painful and pash-free. The fear of sweat, and its consequences, hung like fog over the school’s timber port racks, punctuated at regular intervals by bursts of chemical clouds aimed down shirt sleeves at sweating armpits.
Decades have passed since. I’m now in my 30s, living in Brisbane’s subtropics, in a house built in the same decade and, bizarrely, in the same style, as my old high school. Like the school, my home is a two-storey rectangle with an almost-flat roof. It is also without mechanised climate control, save for a few hardworking fans, just as my classrooms used to be. Sweat is inescapable, especially in summer. You’re wet from the moment you towel off after a shower; damp even when the deodorant goes on. Head out the door for the commute, and the back of your shirt is already clinging to the streams of perspiration snaking down your spine. This clamminess and its promise of wet patches on work shirts used to spike the same sweat stress that drove my schoolyard body spray obsession – a stress that contributes untold thousands of my own cash to the multibillion dollar deodorant industry.
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