http://www.care2.com/greenliving/your-axe-makes-me-sick.html
Your Axe Makes Me Sick
Dear Annie,
My boyfriend uses a lot of Axe products, including the Axe Shower Gel body wash and cleanser, and Axe Deodorant Stick. I can’t stand the smell and have gotten so sensitive to it I now can pick it up on guys at work. How do I get them to stop using it without causing them to be offended? –Sherry, VA
Dear Sherry,
I had been alerted to the strong smell of Axe when my daughter Lily wrote about it in one of her Green Girl blogs. She talks of having to walk through clouds of Axe on the guys end of the hall as she went to and from her dorm room last year. I also know Axe products are incredibly popular.
So I started investigating. First, I had to get over my impression that I had mistakenly landed on a pornography site when I first went to the Axe site. All the sexual innuendo surrounding the product line caused me to expect that they contain hormone disrupting chemicals because the advertising notes about their deodorant stick that it has “hook-up friendly scents,” and their body spray is “available in nine powerful scents.” That language doesn’t sound good at all to someone like me who has an eagle eye for toxics, because it appears as if the products contain synthetic scents designed to affect your hormones (I can’t find evidence that they contain pheromones although many suspect this is the case). Who needs that in the cubicle next to you at work? Somebody should look into whether or not such products can be considered sexual harassment!
I put Axe into the cosmetics chemical safety database Skin Deep. Low and behold, 66 products showed up and they fell into a range of moderately hazardous to the most highly hazardous categories. Axe Shower Gel Recovery, the bodywash/cleanser, had a highly hazardous score because the ingredients in the product are linked to cancer, developmental/reproductive toxicity , violations, restrictions and warnings, allergies/immunotoxicity, neurotoxicity, endocrine disruption, bioaccumulation, organ system toxicity, and more. Need I go on? Your body is telling you the truth. This stuff isn’t good for you.
I came across this quote on the Internet from a woman who wrote about nestling up to her husband who was wearing an Axe equivalent. She wrote, “My husband wore this several times. If I was around when he first put it on I got a headache and became nauseous. But after it wore off so I couldn’t smell it anymore, I definitely felt some loving feelings stir.” Someone should tell the guy that if he had a shower with plain, real soap his wife would find him more attractive.
Sherry, you might be doing your boyfriend a favor to let him know that his Axe is hurting, not helping, his cause. You might even make him this DIY formula for Bay Rum Aftershave and give it to him for the holidays. It smells divine. Or try learning about natural perfumes.
As for the office, while searching around the internet I came across a few stories of male managers asking guys wearing Axe to cut back because the entire office was affected. Maybe find a male manager and ask them to take the issue into their hands.
I’d like to open this up to our readers. What is the best thing for Sherry to do about this situation at work?
related stories
-
(1 comment)
-
(7 comments)
-
(12 comments)
Robyn
Melissa
Deepak
Eric
Dave
Dr. Brent
Isha
Susan
Delia
Michelle
Wendy
Megan
Hilary
Ann
Judi
Ronnie
Kelly
Lily
Terri
Betsy
Cait
Andrew
Jana
Annie B.
Veronica
33 comments
add your comment »THANK YOU So Much for this article! I am one of those people who is XXXtremely Sensitive to Cologne's & Perfumes. For myself, the biggest offender is "Giorgio Beverly Hills" - within minutes of exposure to it, my throat begins to close. I'm so sensitive I can walk into a mall and if someone has Giorgio on, I can tell you within 30 seconds. I can rarely go to a theater, rarely go out to dinner. Thank You for bringing up this Very Important issue - Lawrence
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
thanks...
Kabin
Konteyner
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
A bit of caution about recommending "natural perfumes" in Axe's place. Some of us with scent sensitivities react just as badly to natural scents as synthetic ones. In fact, even while I might find some synthetic scents unpleasant in aroma, they don't necessarily cause me to break out in hives, wheeze or become nauseous. They're just sort of strong and . . . nasty smelling. I've had reactions to natural scents that do cause the above reactions, though. For people like me, the only natural that is really better is clean, not perfumed.
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
Very interesting responses that beg to ask our daughters and even ourselves as women, where does our value, worth and beauty truly come from? It is bad enough that the media seduces both girls and women into believing the lie that "gift wrapping" will make them more appealing, successful or happy but now they are going after our sons too!
Shame on Unilever for selling double standards. As a mother of a teen and preteen sons, I'm not "buying" it nor will my boys be deceived on my watch. My teen actually threw out his Axe gift because it was stinky. Little did we all know. Ha ha.
Thank you for a great, thought and truth provoking article!
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
that sucks for you.........................
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
On a side note, I find it so ridiculous that Axe and Dove belong to the same corporation (Unilever) and Dove is trying to sell us 'true beauty' and meanwhile the girls in the axe ads are portrayed in quite a different way. Oh, marketing! It's all sickening.
AXE - CONTAINS CHEMICALS, NOT SEXINESS!
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
I have a couple of problems with Axe...being an asthmatic, that stuff is dangerous.
An even bigger problem I had with it, being the mother of three sons', were the commercials trying to convince them they needed this crap to 'get the girl'.
Good old-fashioned parenting came into play with a lesson that 'everything you see on tv isn't necessarily fact'. And if that's what it takes to 'get the girl', she's probably not the kind of girl you'd want to keep anyway.
I know we as women have been bombarded with ads, etc on how we should look, smell, feel according to some company who wants us to buy their product, but it really ticked me off to see it happening to the male side now. That is not equality.
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
I use Axe. Got it for free. Will use it until it is gone. Yea, it probably overwhelms but the smell wears off.
It would seem like a cheep body wash with a high price marketed to single 15 to 30 year old men.
The upside is that I am way over 30, married, and happy to use free body wash as long as my wife doesn't complain.
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
My cousin and his room always stink of Axe or something similar - it is beyond me how he got a girlfriend smelling like that.
Luckily for me, my boyfriend is a college student who likes $100 perfumes... So he has to keep it veery subtle! He's wanted an Armani for about 8 months now, and I think he's no closer to getting it since then. Bliss...
As for clothes... I have a really hard time finding clothes I like - I find most of the fashionable stuff in stores simply ridiculous! When I'm as ugly and deformed as a Bratz doll, or a hooker, I'll dress that way. Meanwhile, I'm happy in jeans and a 'go green' t-shirt.
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
Women who wear too strong perfume have been asked for at least the past 2 decades to tone it down (usually a manager or HR has to be consulted to make an "anonymous" suggestion to the department, and then the perpetrators are contacted individually, and discretely).
The same should apply to men. Not, of course, as "the cologne smells like my boyfriend's stinky and headache inducing stuff", but that "certain fragrances that some [male and female coworker have been wearing] have been giving me a headache and nausea.
Most corporate offices respect this.
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
Facebook account: